Wreckfest 2 Review

Living That Beater Life

HIGH Deflecting myself back onto the track by shunting a car off a cliff.

LOW There’s this downhill turn that sends me into a wall every time I drove the track.

WTF Can I seriously race as a school bus?

There’s something aspirational about the racing in Wreckfest 2. When I play a game about high-end sports cars zipping around the Nurburgring, it’s a purely fantastical experience, as I’m never going to be anywhere near one of those half-million dollar cars, let alone be allowed to push it up to a hundred miles an hour while going into a hairpin turn.

Wreckfest 2, on the other hand, offers an attainable dream. Putting on a helmet, strapping myself into a racing harness that’s been welded into the frame of a mid-’80s sedan, and then racing around a dusty figure-eight until I wind up getting T-boned by a VW Bus? If I dedicated my life to that goal starting today, I could probably be doing it semi-professionally inside of a year. It’s gritty, brutal, down-to-earth racing that Wreckfest 2 offers, and, for me at least, that’s where the charm lies.

A racer in its purest form, Wreckfest 2 offers no narrative or strict structure. Online there are races and demolition derbies, and offline players can set up their own races or compete in pre-set challenges where they have to drive a specific car on a specific course. It’s not an experience that’s concerned with having the player perform at a certain level to unlock additional features — the whole goal is to just get out on the dirt and have a great time.

Wreckfest 2‘s stock in trade is brutal, cutthroat driving, where running opponents off the road isn’t just encouraged, it’s a necessity. The racetracks are built around the assumption that there will be twenty cars on them simultaneously, so there are plenty of wide turns, steep hills, and uneven straightaways. Each track is littered with opportunities to send a car rolling into the brush or careening off of a cliff, and players will earn bonus points for doing so. Sure, coming in first is great, but taking down the other drivers on a track feels like the real thing to brag about.

Of course, the main reason the destruction is so satisfying in Wreckfest is the physics engine, which dynamically details every bit of damage cars take over the course of a race or derby. As a pack of vehicles moves into a turn, they invariably start smashing into one another, and metal is soon flying everywhere. A hood here and a bumper there, before long someone will crash and I’ll be swerving to get out of the way of a flying tire. Each new impact encourages such visceral giddiness that I found myself unconcerned whether it was me or my opponent who was cracking up, so long as the pieces were flying in spectacular fashion.

As a passionate defender of violent racing – and someone with literally hundreds of hours sunk into the Burnout franchise – my only real hesitation in recommending Wreckfest 2 is how early it is at the moment. In terms of content, there are just a handful of tracks and a fairly narrow selection of vehicles. It’s still in active development and there’s new content dropping every month or two, but the lack of a career mode isn’t an intentional choice by the developers – apparently one is coming at some point, but for now, all it has to offer is crunching impacts and catastrophic wrecks.

Wreckfest 2 is, at this moment, a promising Early Access release. It’s already a blast to play and offers everything fans of combat racing could ask for – other than, you know, structure and a career mode. Still, there’s already a worthwhile amount of content, including a truly bonkers derby arena full of ramps, loops, and giant metal traps that crush cars like grapes. It’s always a risk engaging with something in Early Access, as there’s a chance that promised features will never materialize. That said, there’s already a lot to love, and for players who long to see a Volkswagen Bug car disintegrate into component parts as it’s rammed head-on by a school bus going 80, Wreckfest 2 certainly has the goods.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Bugbear and published by THQ Nordic. It currently available on PC. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game cannot be ‘completed’ at the present time. Approximately 10 hours were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but it’s basically a T and features Violence. While one could argue that the game offers a dangerous message in the way it trivializes and, indeed, celebrates car crashes, it’s so fantastically presented that I don’t think it will prove to be negatively influential. Also, the game is set in the Burnout world where all of the cars are driverless, so it’s not like human lives, even virtual ones are being endangered.

Colorblind Modes: The game does contain colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

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