Instruments of Destruction – PS5 Review

Instruments of Destruction is quite the nostalgia trip. Gamers of a similar vintage to us will surely recognise a little shared DNA with Rare’s 1997 N64 game Blast Corps. In that you drive various vehicles at buildings with the aim of affecting their integrity sufficiently that they fall down. Or as Rare’s Chris Stamper originally put it, “if you knock down buildings, it will be fun.”

So yes, in essence the same game updated for modern tastes. It’s clear that the dev have conceded that Rare have effectively abandoned the IP, assuming there’s anyone left in the building after the latest wave of Microsoft efficiency layoffs.

We’re happy to report that the spirit of the original game is alive and well in this surprisingly generous package from dev Radian Games and now independent publisher Secret Mode, you get a lot for your £15.99. Incidentally, Secret Mode were originally a Sumo Digital subsidiary until they got spun off early this year, but anyway.

There’s a little more here than the original conceit of Blast Corps inasmuch as you have additional goals outside of the macguffin of clearing a path for a nuclear carrier lest there’s an explosion. Here you have goals for not destroying a certain percentage of structures or operating within a time limit. The clearing a path comes into play a little in the latter stages here, but thankfully not so much.

As you play you’ll come across modern structures as well as ancient ruins across the eleven distinct sets of levels. Each level generally introduces a new vehicle, only for it to never be used again, a little like the amazing Titanfall 2 did in 2016. In case you forgot, that’s the game that Respawn Entertainment did before they were destined to be in the GAAS business with the admittedly good Apex Legends, but still. We wanted Titanfall 3 but it simply wasn’t to be.

Instruments of Destruction does a pretty good job of  keeping you engaged throughout since as well a mandatory objective, each level has a secondary objective as well as a challenge unlocked once you’ve completed the main level. These are generally timed based, operating as a sort of time trial mode.

You’ll also find crystals as you play, collect enough at each respective tier and you’ll unlock more vehicles for the challenges. A little like Blast Corps, the vehicles are the real star of the show here. They range from basic earth movers as you might be accustomed to, through to alien balls of death that make short work of structures, usually via an accompanying shockwave as you plummet to earth.

There’s also some nice movie homages you might spot, but we’ll leave them for you to spot as you play through. Never mind the words spoken by your narrator who repeats lines from the N64 game verbatim.

Almost all the vehicles are a lot of fun, but on occasion you’ll struggle to control them. This is most acutely felt in some of the later levels, where Instruments of Destruction reverts rigidly to the Blast Corps template in terms of having to clear a path quickly, but unfortunately your vehicle is pretty much uncontrollable. At least you can skip stages to move things along, but kiss goodbye to the completion trophies.

As well as the main campaign you also have a supplementary mode a little like another game we reviewed a while ago, in this case Trailmakers. We didn’t realise how long ago that was, five years now… Anyway, in that you build your vehicles to complete various missions. In the mode penned Build and Destroy as it is here, you similarly build your vehicle from modular parts.

Here’s the thing, the UI is so small as to be virtually unplayable in this mode. To the extent that we simply couldn’t see the text reliably on the small 1080p set at our girlfriend’s place until we decamped to our own decent 4K set.  It’s a far too common gripe that we wish we didn’t have to keep mentioning. Is decent UI scaling really too much to ask for?

Anyway, when we got to actually play Build and Destroy, it was actually legible. You may cry “oh no, get a decent set at your other place!” That’s all well and good but we aren’t buying a set from a scutter on Facebook Marketplace if we can avoid it. We shouldn’t have to.

The controls were still fiddly when we came to play it, though the tutorial that helped us along was some use. There were stlll issues with the mode though, particularly with regard to the selection of parts via the otherwise useful drag and drop. For some reason, all but one part would be selected, which is really useful when you’re using the clone tool to copy and paste larger sections.

After we got over that bump in the road, we got to it, but it did feel like we were battling the UI more than we did the landscape or the challenges on offer. We don’t recall having this much trouble building vehicles two generations ago on Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on the 360. Despite that, the extra mode is welcome as it fleshes out the content on offer.

In conclusion, Instruments of Destruction is a great spiritual sequel to Blast Corps and is well worth playing. Yes, there’s wrinkles when it comes to the Build and Destroy mode, but everything else is quite literally a blast. Plus, we’ll never tire of smashing up self-driving cars. It’s very cathartic and almost makes up for being tailgated by Karen in her Tesla Model S within seconds of pulling away from the lights.

It’s fair to conclude that Microsoft aren’t worried about the IP as the only way to play it on a current gen console is via Rare Replay. Get to it and smash up some buildings.