Creative Destruction (PC) Review

Creative Destruction will give you the first impression that it is a Fortnite clone and that is actually pretty accurate. A lot of games get referred to as clones of other successful games, if they only share a couple of smaller similarities. Creative Destruction on the other hand is nearly an identical version of Fortnite, just worse in a couple of aspects. 

It has to be mentioned, that Creative Destruction is first and foremost an 'mobile' game (smartphone game). I will not be talking about this version, since I personally don't like any of these mobile games, which have to be controlled with a touchpad only. (Urgh) The mobile version of Creative Destruction gets good reviews, which is probably why they ported it to the PC. Unfortunately it is not a paticularly well done portation. The steam exclusive version of the game has noticeable technical issues. There for example will appear some unexpected lags and framerate problems (particularly in the beginning minutes of matches), that are very difficult to explain. Creative Destruction is not a especially visually pleasing or High-End PC demanding game, so there should be no excuses for this technical performance. (There are also minor clipping errors and visual glitches during the matches)

The visuals are tolerable, but certainly among the worst of any modern PC games. It is clear that there hasn't been put much effort into improving the mobile graphics with the portation to PC. The game is certainly colourful and you will see some variation of different environments. Needless to say a lot of areas look frighteningly similar to Fortnite and together with the quite similar cartoonish graphic style, creative destruction resembles its inspiration source quite a lot. There are for example also big deserts, ice-regions as well as many green regions of grass and nature in the game. Yes, they are not 1:1 copies of its bigger brother, but the resemblance is undeniable. At least the cities look different, but also more dull in Creative Destruction (Nearly all houses look identical and empty inside). There are some minor highlights like a watch tower, a statue in a park or a tower building, but nothing is really impressive or rememberable in any sense. The map truly differs from Fortnite by offering a mountainous canyon region and a garden full of vines named 'Eden Vines'. 

I don't really want to overemphasize the Rip-Off accusation of Fortnite, but the connection between Creative Destruction and the infamous 'Fortcraft' is kind of interesting. Fortcraft was a mobile BR-game, that was nearly identical to Fortnite (Even much more than Creative Destruction) and also shamelessly stole half of its title. Fortcraft therefore got sued into oblivion and had to close down. Netease, the developer of Fortcraft, is also the developer of Creative Destruction and some of the icons and elements from the UI of Creative Destruction look identical to those of the old Fortcraft game. Very likely Netease simply kept developing the Fortcraft game, changed a few visual elements and minor gameplay elements and rebranded the whole thing as Creative Destruction. I don't really want to take any moral standings, but this kind of practise looks more than just a little bit shady to me.

Another giant similarity to Fortnite is the building system, that is practically a straight out copy of the Epic game. The platforms are a lot uglier and the building process is instantaneously and looks kind of unpolished. I don't know any other BR-game, than these two, that even offers the ability to build platforms and Creative Destruction doesn't even attempt to differentiate itself in the majorities of the gameplay department. 

The building tool/ melee weapon handles differently than in Fortnite. In the Epic game the melee weapons hits the building and trees and destroys them, gathering resources in the process. In Creative Destruction the Destructor simply sucks the material out of the buildings/environments instead of attacking, but also destroying them in the process. The difference may not be that big, but at least the animation did change. A bigger difference is the fact, that you can only collect 1 resource in order to build instead of the 3 different ones, like in Fortnite. 

The weapon selection of Creative Destruction is actually not bad. There are 6 different weapon types featuring Pistols, Shotguns, MGs, Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifles and Special Weapons. The weapon types feature at least two models each, most of them a lot more and the special weapons are fun. They may not always be the most useful, but who can resist a flamethrower or a beehive (Trap that releases deadly bees)? You just shouldn't expect anything out of the ordinary outside the special weapons, they represent all the usual models.

A unique feature of Creative Destruction are the death animations, in which defeated players leave the battlefield with a balloon tied to their arm, transporting them towards the sky. This feature has a nice touch. Another theoretically nice addition is the option to switch between first and third person perspective during a Creative Destruction match. In practise however the game was designed with the third person perspective in mind, which is why I can't recommend playing in the ego perspective.

Something that I really disliked was the lacking customizability of the controls. Once more in theory you can customize all the controls, but in practise multiple keys of my keyboard or mouse were simply refused as alternatives. I understand, that there can be occasional issues, but refusing the arrow buttons as well as multiple others ones is nonsensical, if you give customize options in the first place. At least the other options in the main menu, like visuals, sound etc. are indeed quite customizable. You can switch between different visual filters. This was appreciated. 

Creative Destruction features Solo, Duo and Squad(4 and 5) modes, thus all genre standards are present within the game. Solo matches load very fast, while squad games can at evening take a longer time for matchmaking. At one day I had 4 times in a row a random squad with the same two teammates, that was a bit bizarre and might speak for lower player numbers outside the peak hours. The only thing that really disturbed me was, that before every match there is something like a fashion contest showing off the most flashy skins of the participating players. That just seemed super weird to me. (Probably done in order to promote cosmetics from the itemshop) 

Aside from the real BR-matches, players can also engage in public or private contests on the matchmaking island called 'Land of Wonder'. It is a nice addition, but nothing too exciting, since it is just a small, arena like, island with respawns for some more relaxed combat. More interesting for me where the Tutorial missions, which give a good introduction into the Creative Destruction gameplay and its distinctive features (plus they reward some Star Coins), as well as the Creative Islands, on which every player can create a small map for themselves. Creative Destruction also has a guild features, where players can come together in a community, which probably makes it easier to find a well organized squad. I don't remember seeing a guild feature in any of the other BR-games, which would make it a unique element of CD.    

Like most other BR-games Creative Destruction also features different seasons and a battle pass, which offers ingame currency and different cosmetics. Some BR-games give players the possibility to buy such a battle pass with ingame currency, while others do not. Creative Destruction is part of the later group. Non-paying players get the Standard-Pass, which involves 4 cosmetics during the 100 battle pass levels and some ingame currency of Gold and Star Coins, but none of the Diamonds, that are needed to purchase the Flex Pass (Start at level 18) or the Flex Pass Supreme (Start at level 55). The Flex Pass contains much more skins and also just enough diamonds to afford another Flex Pass. Standard clothes item can be purchased with Gold or Star Coins, but the majority of items and outfits require diamonds (Only obtainable through real money) and some of these outfits are even time-locked... At least there are Login rewards and daily challenges, which make the accumulation of Gold and Star Coins a bit easier, but the game clearly tries to promote the purchase of Diamonds. 

Usually I would give a short overview of the different seasons of the game, but I didn't find much information in my online research. I will therefore try to shortly characterize the previous seasons by analyzing the respective trailers. (All statements without guarantee...) 

Season 1 was the starting point and launched the game. Nothing really special there, with the exception of a Warmobile fun mode and rockets as vehicles. Season 2 seemed to theme little girl toys and the colour pink!? Season 3 was the first with a real theme, called 'Journey to the East'. As the name suggests, it featured Kung Fu fighters and an asian oriental style. Season 3 apperently also included a Halloween and Christmas event. 'Gold Fever' was the name of Season 4, featuring a Wild West Theme and an invasion of the so called 'West Wind Warriors', who traveled to the CD map to search for goldmines. Season 5 on the other hand went to future with 'Apocalypse' and apparently was the first to actually tell a real story. Some miners in the wild west found a magical cube, that allowed the creation of a robot army. The humans mistreated and exploited the robots and that lead to a resistance group of robots, who started a rebellion against the humans called the 'Dark Age' ( I didn't claim it was a good story). In Season 6 the robots having seemingly been defeated and the humans organized a large celebration concert. Season 7 featured a Samurai theme and introduced a couple of new skins, but didn't continue or introduce any story elements. 'Legend of Altar' is the name of Season 8, which is the most current season. It looks like an army of demons or something invaded the CD map and the player characters have to fight them off in a gigantic battle (There is really no information findable what's actually going on and I found no ingame clues or even mentions either).  

At the beginning of Season 3 CD seemed to have done a couple of bigger map changes to bring more variety into the game. The canyon regions were added as well as Windmill, the Watch Tower, the Sky eye and some modifications of the cornfields and Eden Vines. Since this revamp the maps has mostly stayed the same. Creative Destruction seems to have more Seasons per Year than most of its competitors with them only lasting around 2 months each. Season 8 brought the introduction of Altars, that reward players for praying with bonus effects like an increase in damage or life.

Overall I think the developers had some ideas for a storyline in Season 4, 5 and also in 8 again. But there doesn't seem to be any real influence on the gameplay or map and most of the seasons have no connection with the others whatsoever. So I am not really sure, why they even introduced the seasons and made this trailers. (Very likely because they tried to copy Fortnite, and they thought that Skins would seller easier that way.)

Pro:

-Gameplay is unoriginal, but essentially works well

-Good weapon selection (including fun special weapons)

-Different visual filters

-Variety of different game modes

(-Guild Features)

Contra:

-Disappointing 'Mobile' Visuals

-Fortnite Ripoff (Map + Gameplay)

-Performance problems (Lags and clipping errors)

(-Shady Fortcraft History)

(-Lacking Controls Customizability)

Result:

Is Creative Destruction just a game with 'Made in China' quality? The answer is no, but... Creative Destruction is a BR-game with an emphasis on building, an alright map and okayish gameplay. The problem with the game is, that it doesn't really do anything better than the competition, ergo anything over average. The same elements of gameplay are done better by the competition and CD clearly stands in the long shadow of Epics Fortnite. Asides from that, the portation from the mobile devices to the PC wasn't done too well and visually leaves much to be desired. Creative Destruction can definitely be fun, there is just not real reason to play this in 2020, since there are better alternatives.

5.5/10