Construction Simulator from Astragon and Weltenbauer is ready for you to get your sim on PlayStation 5. Check our Construction Simulator review!
Construction Simulator from Astragon and Weltenbauer is ready for you to get your sim on PlayStation 5. As the name suggests, it’s a game in which you’ll work in a building sim experience as you use various equipment and vehicles to get the job done. This time around, you’ll be building on two maps inspired by landscapes in the USA and Germany. Each of these maps will have its own campaign for you to work on as the owner of your own construction company. Helped by your mentor Hape, you’ll start to gain new and bigger contracts, presenting to you a series of tasks to complete as you explore the two different maps and find the right way of completing each job. You might need to work on some renovations to bring more tourists to an area or work on renewable energy solutions and improve the city’s infrastructure.
The first step on your journey will be to create your profile and character. You can start with the eight available options and then customize them with the available options for their helmet, hearing protection, and some areas of clothing. Select if your character will have glasses and what color they’ll be, add a decal to your character’s helmet, and then you’ll be ready to select a name to get going. After this, you’ll have to select if you’ll be playing in the European scenario or the US scenario. The next step will be to choose a logo for your company, which will be reflected in some items of your clothing. Then, select a name for your company to start your journey.
How will you play Construction Simulator? You’ll control your character with the left analog stick and move the camera around with the right one. Your character can run by pressing and holding down the R2 button and can jump with the X button. The Triangle button will be for interacting with vehicles and equipment. You can drive around in many vehicles, some of which will be good for hitting the road, while others will need to be transported to the location for the contract. You will need to learn how each machine controls, so be ready for it!
The game offers more than 70 machines, vehicles, trucks, and attachments from officially licensed partners, both old and new to the Construction Simulator series. You can look forward to checking out brands such as Atlas, BELL, Bobcat, Bomag, CASE, Caterpillar, Kenworth, Liebherr, MAN, Mack Trucks, Meiller-Kipper, Palfinger, Still, the Wirtgen Group, Benninghoven of the Wirtgen Group, Cifa, DAF, Doosan, Nooteboom, Scania, Schwing Stetter, and Wacker Neuson, as well as officially licensed personal protection equipment for your player character from partner Engelbert Strauss.
Because of this, there are a ton of machines for you to command! You will end up with access to wheel loaders, which can be used for loading large quantities of materials – say, soil or graven – that needs to be placed elsewhere. You can also use the bucked of a wheel loader under suitable conditions for flattening and spreading bulk materials. If you need to move said materials to a distant location, then you’re going to have to place them in the loading area of a dump truck and then drive that to the second location. You also need to remember that sometimes you will need to use a compact loader for smaller construction sites or tighter fits.
What else will you be controlling? You can get behind the wheel of an asphalt paver to apply fresh asphalt layers in road construction, a concrete mixer that allows you to transport large quantities of concrete from the gravel plant to your construction sites so that you can then pour the fresh concrete via the hopper at its rear, or a forklift that can always come in handy when you need to load and unload pallets. As a heads-up, forklifts belong to each respective location, so you won’t be able to use them outside of their designated area.
You can always refer to the manual to learn more about the basics for each machine you’ll be using, information about the locations you’ll visit, as well as the characters that you’ll get to meet during your time with Construction Simulator. These include examples such as cranes, excavators, or rollers, gas stations, the steel trade, sawmills, or vehicle dealers, investor Konstantin von Bledeling, Mayor Isabella Friedberg, harbor master Liam O’Reilly, or tech entrepreneur Skye Duneer.
You’ll work on upgrading the size of your company by completing a series of objectives and reaching specific milestones. Your company will go through three levels, S, M, and L, with each bump in level bringing improvements to unlock, which will allow you to take on bigger contracts. You could get a loan from the bank to buy new machines or cover the rent of a fleet, or have your own workshop to automatically repair stored vehicles by 1% per minute free of charge. You’ll also be able to own more machines, increase the size of your parking lot, and more.
As you complete milestones and contracts, your character will level up. With each level up obtained, it will also gain a skill point to allocate to any of the available skills. These include making it possible for machines to carry more bulk material, being able to use a new compression method for loading more hot asphalt for each new project or being better at driving each construction machine to lower its wear and tear. The one skill I suggest you invest in right away until you’ve maxed it out is the one for Good Business Sense since it will increase how much money you’re paid for each subsequent contract.
The game has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy, and since this is a Cross-Buy title, if you own a PlayStation 5 console, you can work on two Platinum trophies since each version has its own trophy list. The list includes 18 Bronze trophies, 9 Silver trophies, and 5 Gold trophies. There are many objectives to complete as you work towards completing the opening campaign in Europe and the US, complete 25 contracts on each map, discover every location on each map, amass a fortune of 25,000,000 in the US and a fortune of 25,000,000 in Europe, hosting 10 games in multiplayer in the European scenario, hosting 10 games in multiplayer in the US scenario, driving for 100 km, owning one machine of each brand, playing for 2 hours, playing for 40 hours, and playing for 160 hours.
If you’re a fan of the Construction Simulator series, then getting this one on PlayStation 5 is a no-brainer. It expands on what previous games in the franchise have done, bumping up the visuals over its PlayStation 4 counterpart and offering two different campaigns to work your way through. Construction Simulator is available as a Cross-Buy release with a $49.99 asking price, giving you access to both the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost. There’s also the option of the Getting Construction Simulator – Extended Edition version, which, on top of including the game itself, also has nine new helmet designs, new personal protection equipment, a personal sports car for free roam, and a Hape bobblehead for select vehicles for a $54.99 asking price. This content is also available separately in the Car and Bobblehead Pack and the Customization Kit, with each one retailing for $2.99.
Disclaimer
This Construction Simulator review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Astragon.
