Giant Machines 2017 Xbox Series X Review 5/10 *Big machines with big problems* 🚜

Recently released on X Box Series X, Giant machines 2017 comes from Polish studio Code Horizon, also know for The Way, 911 Operator, and Gold Mining Simulator. This being a title from 2017 means that it is showing its age somewhat, in terms of the visuals, but there also other, more serious issues that wind up making what could have been a wonderful trip through over-sized construction vehicles in various situations a plodding, technical mess that boils down to performing repetitive manoeuvres whilst hoping the controls don’t freeze up on you.

The game begins with a pretty solid opening, yes it all feels very ‘assety’ – par for the course with a lot of ‘simulator’ type games – but the Southern American drawl that acts as your mission co-ordinator comes over the radio and tells you that you need to get into a transport cart and head on over to an enormous structure to prepare it for silicon ore mining. Leaving the vehicle shed, there is an incredible sense of scale as you flick through the radio stations on offer and trundle across the empty desert ground to the excavation machine, first fixing a hose, then moving lining it up for the mining, drilling, filling up the haulage truck, and finally getting the ore out of the complex. Played mostly in first person perspective, with various cameras selectable when on a vehicle / machine, the sounds of construction work really well, with each machine having a real sense of weight and power to them. It’s when you want to actually ‘move’ them that the real problems come into play.Each of the seven machines that you’ll be handling have different control setups, which are understandably complex and a bit funky to handle, which makes sense and adds to the sense of immersion. That said, the jank is utterly infuriating and will certainly lead to some checkpoint restarts. For all of their size and power, these machines seem incredibly delicate, with several locking up whilst trying to move forwards (I genuinely thought the trigger on my controller had broken and so used another, but no – the machine refuses to move forward until I restart the section through the main menu, brilliant) and the mining and snow-clearing sections especially got my teeth grinding as I was halted by invisible forces, or by making contact with the environment and basically suffering instakills because I couldn’t quite see what I was doing. 

For instance, at one point, I was clearing fallen logs from a road and the crane I was using touched an overhead bridge in the most delicate fashion…BOOM! – mission failed, your machine has suffered critical damage. The same happened whilst mining, where I had multiple restarts because anywhere I moved, alarms would blare, giving me a second or two to turn the machine off before it broke down. Combine these moments with a section that requires you to move and set up an enormous mobile crane – fun – to them moving four shipping containers from one side of a field to the other, with absolutely no room for error in the most thuddingly tedious way imaginable – not fun.

SUMMARY
In a game where the utilisation of the machines on offer should be a highlight as you get a sense of their sheer scala and ability, it’s the very fact of having to handle them that brings them game so far down as you glitch and awkwardly inch your way to success. Combine this with a plain world that feels lifeless, and a hard sense of linearity in how to proceed and it all comes together to make a game that’s hard to recommend, with each mission resulting in a sigh of relief that the horror is over, as opposed to a sense of satisfaction at what you’ve achieved. There’s definitely a market for this genre, and the spark of some great moments are here, but it really needs a few more iterations before it becomes something even remotely resembling fun.

5/10

💧MELTING💧