BY: Cory Donde
I’ve always enjoyed racing games, but the ones that caught my attention the most were games where car crashing was not only enabled, but also encouraged. Games like the Burnout series and the Playstation 2 Flatout games caught my attention with flashy wrecks that gained you points as your fought your way to the front. Unfortunately, there has been a dry spell over the past decade since the last good destructive racing game Burnout Paradise was released in January 2008, which is so old in gaming years that many people who game exclusively on modern consoles were still in diapers upon it’s release. Now, due to being published by THQ Nordic, developers of the Darksiders series, Red Faction series, and the much beloved SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and developed by Bugbear Entertainment, who created the aformentioned Flatout series and was acquired by THQ Nordic in November 2018, we have a new racing game that has been in development for several years and has finally come to fruition: Wreckfest.
Wreckfest released initially on the PC on June 14, 2018, but was recently released on Xbox One and Playstation 4 on August 27. It was met with favorable criticism with a Metacritic score of 82, but didn’t make much of a splash in gaming news with the Gran Turismo and Forza series still taking the forefront of the racing video game scene. The game surprisingly carries a $39.99 price tag as opposed to most triple A games, which is understandable since the game doesn’t carry as much content as most new games.
I remembered about three years ago when there was a tech demo showing off the destructive capabilities of the game’s engine in a pre-order exclusive when the game was still called Next Car Game, which was a single level with 24 cars to choose from where the player could drive through an obstacle course and destroy the car and easily reset it to start with a fresh vehicle. Afterwards, there wasn’t much press coverage of the game, the game was re-branded as Wreckfest and released on Steam without much of a bang. PC scores were positive, and console releases were announced soon after.
When I booted up the game, I was excited to get back into the crash-happy gameplay I enjoyed as a teenager, and I was pleasantly surprised at first. The game offers a fairly robust campaign, but there is no narrative, just races and destruction derbys to drive in. The vehicle selection is still fair for what you would expect in destruction derby style races but with some interesting additions of school buses, lawn mowers, giant grain harvesters, and even comical sofas with attached engines and steering wheels. The track selection has very few selections, but the variants they add of the same tracks with alternate pathways keeps the racing fresh. There is online multiplayer, but I would advise beating the first two championships of the single player campaign before hopping in because the cars you’ve unlocked in the campaign carry over in the multiplayer matches, plus some practice in single player can help better prepare you for the mayhem of playing against other people instead of AI controlled bots.
Overall, Wreckfest is definitely worth the asking price and is a wonderful refresher in a sub-genre seemingly forgotten over the past console generation. The gameplay is a good balance of arcade and simulation to attract new and veteran racing game fans, and the customization of vehicle parts is simple enough to where you don’t have to be a mechanic to find the best balance for your gameplay style. The only parts of the game I find lacking is a disappointing choice of cosmetic changes to the vehicles with only a handful of paint job choices per car as well as the small track variance which may hopefully change with future updates to the game. I hope to find myself coming back to the game two or three time a month when there’s an itch that first person shooters and role playing games just can’t scratch.