Wreckfest will be coming to PS5, first to PS Plus member this May. It’s an old-ish game first released in 2019, but its long, arduous Steam Early Access period makes it feel even older than that.
Bugbear’s Next Car Game may be less exciting when it finally launched in full compared to the early hype it garnered as a Kickstarter project. And the finished game, with two seasons of DLC released post-launch, might have been a sleeper. We never ran a review of it here, though it did get the nod as an honourable mention in a year stack of good racing games.
So here we are. I spent more time on the PC version of Wreckfest the past few days. And guess what, it’s still an absolute banger of a racing game. A banger racing game, if you will.
From The Makers Of FlatOut
Because “banger racing” is the kind of racing you do in Wreckfest. You drive banged-up cars and race in (at the beginning) makeshift dirt and gravel tracks against other beat-up boxes with wheels. Rubbing is racing? Oh, you can do more than just that. Shunt, ram, and nudge them to a barrier, it’s all fair game.
But this isn’t Burnout where a clean hit cuts to a cinematic Takedown. Wreckfest is more like its spiritual predecessor FlatOut (and also the Destruction Derby series) where every crunch of a hit is something you have to live by. Get hit, take damage. No get-out-of-jail cutscene that magically puts you back on track. Not even a rewind button. The saving grace for an irreversible mishap is that restarts are instantaneous, even without a super-fast SSD.
More Sim Than You Would Think, But Still Arcade Fun
In this regard, Wreckfest is more sim than arcade in the simcade physics scale. You’ll need to brake to take corners properly and make careful considerations with car setups to optimise your performance. Car tuning is limited, however, so it’s not all nerdy sim racing here, but knowing which slider to nudge left or right is not only easy to grasp (the description makes it really clear what they do), it also gives you a big advantage when you get it right.
See a race where there’s more off-road surface than tarmac? Bump that suspension stiffness one notch to the left and see the difference when cornering. Track has a decent straight line? Bump that gear ratio to the right a notch for better top speed.
That said, cars still slide and drift around bends easily. And with the driving aids on, you’ll always feel in control of the car. As someone who seeks some challenge in my arcade racers (but not as good to dive deep into sim racing kind of difficulty), Wreckfest has me playing it more like a serious racing game. But without the reprimands when it comes to tapping someone’s rear or sending someone to the shadow realm.
Satisfying Crunchy Goodness
And that’s the real appeal and reason you should play Wreckfest. The realism of physics as portrayed by the game is also extended to the cars’ damage model. And boy, they crunch real good.
Seeing body parts (of a car) shedding off is normal business. It’s the chassis-bending goodness is where Wreckfest shines. Cars deform in various shapes based on where the point of impact is, exposing the engine and tyres that also can be damaged. Sure, they clip horrendously bad and thus takes away a bit of the realism. But it’s still satisfying to see the extent of car damage being modelled here.
As the main selling point, Wreckfest nails its damage model, and plays into the gameplay. Those shed body parts will be debris hazards in the next lap. And in the case of more aggressive races, you’ll be dodging leftover car carcasses of DNF racers who took too much damage to continue. Couple that with a load of physics objects on the side of the tracks that can be damaged, it’s a joy to behold. Final laps will always see the track becoming an absolute wreck. Fest.
Crash-‘Em-Up
The best part of Wreckfest is that the developers understand the fun of crashing cars together.
It’s not just regular races you do in this game. There’s also demolition derby modes that can come in two varieties- the classic last person standing (don’t call it a battle royale) or a high-score mode where you respawn with a fresh new car after the previous one is fully wrecked.
In demolition derbies, it is pure carnage, but blindly ramming head-on will not get you far. Take some notes on the AI, they’ll try to ram other cars in reverse, so that they don’t damage the engine that’s on the front. A legitimate strategy to keep you in the game for longer.
Then, there’s also a mix of pure racing and absolute demolition derby. These races takes place in tracks with criss-crossing paths intently design so head-on collisions can happen. One my favourites has to be a portion of an oval with two roundabouts at each end.
So on longer races where the pack of cars are more spread, you’ll have to be dodging wrecks or oncoming traffic, or join the pile of wreckage that will make others’ race much harder.
Also to note, some of these more closed off tracks have a great solution to prevent wall riding- where driving against a wall without steering is faster than taking a turn legitimately. Put bloody invincible barriers. It can also serve as a great place to gently nudge someone that’s too close on your side.
It’s Silly And They Know It
The events in the career mode embrace the chaos you can do in Wreckfest, and some are just there for the lols. Hey, why don’t you race in this small, circular oval in a three-wheeled car where its big witness is its turning ability? Oh, and why not have a gang of school buses as your only opponents?
Car selection, even with just the base game, is wacky. Limousines. Lawnmowers. Harvest combiners. Sofas with wheels and an engine. You name it.
And you can put on wacky roof ornaments or an intentionally stupid livery on the more normal cars. I don’t know why there is a livery where the sides of the door are spray-painted “DEMOLITION POLITICS”, but that got a giggle out of me. How about putting a baby cradle on the top of your car while the side is spray-painted “SHUT UP AND HOLD ON”. A fitting combo, one might find.
And it gets weirder with DLC. There are bumper cars, ice cream trucks and more wild rides accompanying the more sane choices you can get with the two Season Passes it has since release.
A shame that these roof cosmetics don’t detach anymore. Seeing a gaggle of loose shark ornaments laying around the track was funny, but it’s probably for gameplay reasons this is now disabled.
That Janky UI, Though
The only point where Wreckfest the game resembles the slapped together jalopies it’s been portraying is the menus. It’s not that it’s not snappy (it is for the most part). It’s how the Garage tab works.
Wreckfest has an economy system where you have to buy cars and upgrade them with money earned from races. The parts upgrade menu and paint editor menu is seperated. And for the parts upgrade menu to only be labelled “upgrades” I didn’t expect the cosmetic upgrades was supposed to be there. Selecting a car from your garage is also another seperate menu.
I also don’t like that the whole game just freezes as you have to wait for each car to load to the scene when you are scrolling through the car select menu.
It’s usable, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like there’s a more elegant UI layout that can present the car garage in a more seamless manner.
Another weird quirk for the menus is when you do championship races. You would expect that when you continue to the next race, you are then loaded to the next track.
But no, Wreckfest loads you back to the main menu, you have to hit continue again, and then it will load you to the next track. I understand it’s done so that people who want to quit the game or just go to the main menu mid-championship series can do so. But why not have an option to load to the next track straight away?
It’s the front-end where I feel Wreckfest hasn’t shaken off its janky Early Access edge properly. But to be fair, it’s a minor complaint compared to the many other parts Wreckfest gets it right.
Closing Thoughts
Is Wreckfest worth your time in 2021? Absolutely. You don’t find demolition derby and banger racing games that often today, and it’s fun to do proper races as it is smashing cars just to see it cronch real good. If you want a new Destruction Derby but without the on-foot gimmicks that Destruction AllStars brought in, this is as close as you can get.
On PC, the multiplayer servers are very much alive and you can host your own server too, should you have enough of the AI with seemingly plausible Steam gamertags.
We shall see if Wreckfest on PS5 is as good with the next-gen improvements, hopefully, it is. But even on PC today, Wreckfest is an absolute banger worth your time and money.