Xbox Reviews

Review for Constructor HD

 Constructor HD

This Xbox version is a HD-remaster from the twenty year old PC version. It was loved by many gamers back in the day. After six delays Xbox gamers can finally start building stuff in this mafia inspired world, does it have the same quality from many years ago or does the building foundation fall flat on Xbox One? Find out in this review! 

THE GOOD

  • I could have written a lot more positive about Constructor if the mafia bribed us but that’s not the case. The only really good thing I can say about the game is the excellent tutorial. Constructor has such a weird menu lay-out and specific gameplay tasks that a decent and well explained tutorial is a must, and that’s totally the case. It will take just over an hour to complete it, you will learn how to send your employees to clean or build something, learn how to protect your turf, rent out houses and what every button will do on specific screens.

Mixed Feelings

  • Obviously the visuals have been improved but don’t expect to see some graphics like Cities: Skylines or Aven Colony. Constructor misses colour and a decent art style to really impress players, to be honest it just looks like a twenty year old game and that can’t be the goal for a HD-remaster.
  • The game has online modes but even Gigantic or Battleborn has ten times more players. To be honest it is dead on arrival, not 100% the developers fault so still cool of them to make it available. You could still play it with your Xbox buddies, but I’m not sure why you should do that.

THE BAD

  • Overwhelming. This is the main issue with Constructor, you need to do so many routine (and repetitive) stuff in a small window of time that things become overwhelming pretty fast. The constant pressure of taking care of your people, keeping your streets safe from enemies, bugs and even freaking zombies and have enough money to manage everything. Making things even worse is the slow way of moving around your city. Don’t get me wrong, it has some neat ideas but it becomes way to difficult to actually play the game without planning everything by the second on the edge of your seat with two liters of sweat on your face.
  • The gameplay is overwhelming but also unclear and boring compared to others in the genre. Getting rid of damn cockroaches for example seems like an impossible task at first, the game just doesn’t explain you why or how. (thanks, internet guides!) Nah, Constructor is one huge disappointing experience… you basically have fun for the first hour but afterwards you do the same things over and over again.
  • The way you control the game isn’t twenty years old but an actual survivor from the dinosaur age. I hate to say this but I can’t remember a game with worse controls. It just doesn’t work fast enough for what you need to do the in the game. Each screen has some shortcut buttons but there isn’t a coherent lay-out, giving a lot of frustrating confusion.
  • Oneliners, it was a cool thing in video games when I started playing but nowadays stuff like that will get annoying before you even heard it. You have ambient  themed crime music and random sounds but even for a nostalgic game like Constructor I hated how old it all sounded.
  • Please tell me, if you play a game mode that has the description no time limits would you expect a game over screen that says that you failed a mission because you past the time period? To be honest my dear reader this was the moment that I took out the disk and placed it back in the disc box, to be never played again.
  • Even with multiple delays the game still has more bugs than animals on the endangered species list. Menu screens that don’t disappear when they should, workers that get stuck, random freezes, unclickable objects, sounds that glitch, loading screens that get stuck and force you to restart, babies that don’t grow up, the list can go on until we reach the depths of hell.

No other words, just a failure. Constructor might have been a decent game twenty years ago but on Xbox One you should avoid it. I recommend that you stay miles away from it, you never know if those pesky annoying cockroaches can find a way out of the disc. Seriously though, you have much better similar games Aven Colony or Cities: Skylines.

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