Renholdsopprensning av Jorden – anmeldelse (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Renholdsopprensning av Jorden takes me back to The Gunk era—to the days where spontaneous bouts of satisfaction sprouted from cleanliness and snail-like economic growth. It’s a game that I don’t need to learn about in order to understand. More to the point, it’s a game that I can simply dive into and enjoy without needing to onboard anything particularly daunting. I have a vacuum cleaner, a pile of trash, and a fickle hope that, the more I abolish, the more I will be able to restore prosperity to the roots of a desolate nation. Frankly, it’s all in the title, and if Renholdsopprensning av Jorden is anything at all, it’s an open book that doesn’t really need a fine eye to interpret. There’s trash, and there’s a tool that can breathe life back into the soil. Evidently, you don’t need to be a biologist to come to terms with the point of the game.

Unlike, say, House Flipper, Renholdsopprensning av Jorden doesn’t aim to satisfy your thirst for dopamine with wrecking balls and mindless demolition; instead, it uses vast economic incentives and evergreen milestones to quench your cravings, with small pockets of luscious grass and blooming wildlife to fuel your quest to restore peace and tranquility. It doesn’t pat you on the back for your efforts, nor does it make an effort to shout aloud when you overcome a seemingly difficult task. Instead, it asks you to open your eyes and witness your progress. With that, it hopes that you’ll find another reason to clear just a little more space. It doesn’t really believe in sticker charts; it believes in illuminating the possibilities that frequent strenuous grafts. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, then you might want to consider planting your green thumbs in an alternate allotment.

As I said, there’s a self-explanatory solution for just about every obstacle that makes up Renholdsopprensning av Jorden. The goal, in short, is to utilize the power of a vacuum to remove copious amounts of trash, and restore small pockets of the world through economic development. Simply put, you clean a piece of land, spruce up the soil with various gadgets and upgrades, and gradually watch the world return to its former glory. There isn’t a lot more to it than that. In short, it’s a laid-back, plot-free graft that promotes economic growth and the importance of conservation, nothing more, nothing less.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept, and I can’t help but praise Renholdsopprensning av Jorden for the message that it tries so desperately hard to convey. Yet, there’s a problem here that sadly makes an otherwise peaceful task a lot more stressful than it needs to be. The bugs, for instance, and the simple fact that it harbors one too many game-breaking faults to allow you to make progress and carve deeper into its root. Unfortunately, Renholdsopprensning av Jorden does have quite a lot of these teething problems, and therefore it makes it rather difficult to recommend — at least in its current state. It isn’t a bad game by any means, but it is a broken one that has a concerning lack of technical polish.

Thankfully, when Renholdsopprensning av Jorden is running like a well-oiled machine, it does exactly what it says it can on the tin. Like The Gunk, it provides a wholesome terraforming experience that’s as equally satisfying as it is rewarding to romp through. What’s more, it offers a generously sized multiplayer mode that allows up to twenty-five players to represent their organization and create a tapestry of lasting environmental effects. Moreover, it fills each of its spacious biomes with all sorts of sunken treasures that correlate with various mysteries—Area 51 and the Bermuda Triangle, for example. And I’ll be honest with you, there is a lot to uncover here, with <em"hundreds of artifacts and areas to keep you plugging away for hours. But it’s the bugs, sadly, that dampen the overall impact and make the excursion feel less satisfying and more of a challenge.

Of course, if Renholdsopprensning av Jorden can stick a bandaid on all of its wounds and prevent its greenest qualities from meeting a bitter curveball every so often, then it can become a genuinely great game with a lot of shelf life. However, at the time of writing, it just isn’t there yet. Don’t get me wrong, the world is beautiful, and the level selection is clearly plentiful, but the simple fact that the flow of the game and the general process of revitalizing such worlds isn’t quite so graceful is, rather simply, the nail in the coffin here, and the thing that sullies an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable world-crafting experience.

Of course, if you can muster up the energy to overlook its flaws and scrub over the imperfections, then you should be able to find a genuinely satisfying co-op endeavor here. It might not be the most complex game in the world, but it is one that brings a lot of interesting features to the table. Could it be better? Absolutely. Will Magic Pockets apply the necessary bandages to bring it back to life? It seems only time will tell on that one.

Dom

Renholdsopprensning av Jorden conveys a heartfelt message of hope and gratitude, but sadly forgets to bridge the gaps between a brilliant concept and a half-baked reality. Although with a lot of fantastic features—a wide array of biomes, sunken treasures, and a fully integrated multiplayer mode, for example—the bitter truth is that it lacks the technical polish to make its jolly green qualities sparkle. The concept is there, and the design is clearly capable of pooling dozens of hours’ worth of gameplay. But it’s the game-breaking bugs and the frequent issues, sadly, that make it awfully difficult to enjoy for the long haul. In time, perhaps, but as it currently stands, it’s a difficult one to fly the colors for. Still, I wouldn’t lose hope just yet. Give it a month, and you might just find a reason to return to its cluttered shoreline. Here’s hoping, anyway.