When you jump into any online racer, you’re bound to run into that guy. You know the one; the guy who thinks it’s hilarious to ride your ass, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, cutting you off at the worst time, sending you reeling into a corner or impassable obstacle putting you in dead last. They are the bane of the racing community and in most cases don’t end up at the top of the leaderboard, serving a singular purpose: ruining the experience for the rest of the lobby by making the race as difficult as possible for the other players. If you’re like me and this describes you to a T, Wreckfest may be the perfect racing game for you.

Unlike Forza or the ilk, this game rewards you for creating carnage; not in the Burnout sense of just slamming into whatever you can, but in using your beater demo derby-style car to pound the other racers into the pavement. While winning is still highly encouraged (and rewarded accordingly), the events within the short campaign reward the player for creating as much chaos and destruction to the other racers as possible through a slightly varied set of tournament-style brackets, each with their own set of challenges that focus on taking down other drivers or doing X amount of damage to the other cars, often allowing you to proceed on to the next event, even if you finish in the middle of the pack (or in some cases, last place).

Whether you’re playing offline or online, driving is a blast, even if most of the vehicles feel a little too similar; the unique one-off machines such as the school bus or rocket-propelled couches are the exception to the rule. Even if racing isn’t your cup of Jägermeister, there are plenty of difficulty and assist options in place allowing you to customize your experience, with my favorite being the damage modifier. Since the majority of the vehicles are muscle cars, you know they can take a beating with the default option amplifying this just enough that you don’t feel the need to avoid conflict – you’ll actively seek it out, rushing headfirst at full speed into the opponents, often creating devastating pile-ups. Kicking the damage option up to realistic not only makes each crash potentially devastating to you and your competitors, but it also adds the thrill of maybe, just maybe, having to finish the race with one wheel hanging on for dear life, appearing only to be held on by duct tape and dreams of Dale Earnhardt.

The damage effects really are the star of Wreckfest – every impact, spin out, or event wherein paint is traded looks amazing; so much so that it distracts from other areas that don’t look as great. I’m not saying that anything looks outright awful, but the tracks and backdrops do at times look a bit flat or include muddy textures, especially when you’re used to the picture-perfect landscapes from the Forza series. In many aspects this is the anti-Forza, with things like the uber-realistic physics engine that regularly sends bits and pieces from the cars or track flying as they would on any Sunday afternoon NASCAR race.

There are a few areas that could’ve been improved, especially if you were to compare this to other popular racers on the market. While the popular cars you’d expect in this style of game are all present and accounted for, they’re only cosmetic as there aren’t any licensed names or brands. You can tune and upgrade most of the vehicles as much as you’d like, but the visual customization is extremely limited and honestly a bit boring since you can only select from preset skins and liveries, failing to give the depth that most other racers offer in making the car feel like your own creation opposed to something slapped together by the developers. This caused me some mild annoyances in the multiplayer offering as well, often finding myself seeking out revenge against another player, only to find out half the lobby has the same car/skin/build and I was hassling an innocent bystander opposed to the jackass who knocked me from first place to dead last.

Beyond that I found some issues within the menus, such as delays when it comes to selecting cars and other options – I’d often buy the wrong item in the store, only to discover the error once I went to equip my new machine of destruction. Additionally, the requirement to completely leave the single-player mode to visit the store in the event you don’t have a qualifying car for a race, only to have to toggle back and forth comparing the options/requirements while most games would simply allow you to hit a button to visit the store with the qualifying options being at the forefront, is infuriating to say the least. Yet again, this might be attributed to my laziness, but I found myself leaving these events for last, pushing forward with the cars from my garage until I absolutely had to buy something to proceed.

The one area I cannot overlook is the load times – on some occasions these took longer than the events themselves. I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I feel like I could’ve taken my own car through a Jiffy-Lube style oil change and tire rotation during a few of these offending loading screens, and still had time to make and eat a decent-sized sandwich. This issue rears its ugly head even more when joining other players in an online lobby, which requires a never-ending loading screen, followed by waiting for the event to be completed, and then, you guessed it, another loading screen. Hopefully this issue gets patched out in some way, as it’s the only major issue holding the game back from being an exceptional racing experience.

In a crowded market full of racers that put style and realism over fun, Wreckfest delivers on most levels. Despite some minor technical and design issues that don’t really impact the gameplay, it’s a solid racer for anyone who is looking for a little more destruction in their racing games.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Focus on Destruction Over Winning
• Perfect Balance Between Arcade and Realism
• Difficulty Options/Settings
• Damage Visuals/Physics

Cons

• Visual Customization
• Horrid Load Times
• Cumbersome UI

Wreckfest was developed by Bugbear Entertainment and published by THQ Nordic. It is available on PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Wreckfest, check out the game’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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