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Wreckfest Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Wreckfest
  
• Developer- Bugbear 
  
• Publisher- THQ Nordic
  
• PC, PS4, Xbox One
  

Racing games have gotten flashy. At some point people realized there can only be so much variation in the way you realistically simulate physics, so games started selling the fantasy of driving instead. So I half expected Wreckfest to start off with a five minute long introduction movie, with a woman’s voice reminded you how cool everything you’re about to be doing is. Instead I was booted into a straightforward menu. Here the events, here are the vehicles. Go drive them.

That’s reflective of Wreckfest’s approach as a whole. There’s a minor progression system to earn new cars, parts, and events, but it’s a surprisingly no frills affair, with a serious approach to driving. The focus on destruction and damage physics might lead you to think Wreckfest is an arcade racer, especially coming off Bugbear’s previous project, Ridge Racer Unbounded, but Wreckfest is a sim through and through. And while other sims have made headway by offering more casual play modes and flashy career modes, Wreckfest is content to let the driving speak for itself.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of the approach of earlier Codemasters racing games, before they amped up the presentation. There’s a similar simulation first approach here, with assists as concessions to those who prefer a more arcade style controls. The detailed damage model and alerts to your car’s condition bring to mind Race Driver GRID, while the off road track design wouldn’t feel out of place in Dirt’s rally racing. Of course here you’re encouraged to make contact. Good driving manners don’t apply here.

You’ll still need to understand how to enter turns, when to brake, and what a good approach looks like, but you’ll also be able to get some unwilling assistance from other drivers’ cars. If your racing line is off, then lean into it and use the front side of another car to correct your trajectory, sending them spinning out in the process. Or take an approach dangerously close to the outside by using another car as a buffer between you and the wall, sending them careening off road on your exit.

This destruction based focus allows the same weight and nuances of sim racing, but feels more natural thanks to the way its avoids the strict restrictions that other sims put in place to keep you from leaving the road. There’s none of that magic magnetism keeping cars on the road, or invincible barriers that stop you in cold on collision. Cars bound through the air, careen and upturn dramatically, and driving though tire barriers will send them spilling onto the track, maybe even collecting on top of your windshield and making it harder to drive. Wreckfest isn’t totally without regulations–drive too far off the track and it’ll force you to reset–but it’s refreshing to see some of those restrictions lifted.

These lack of restrictions can make driving feel almost like a deathmatch at times. A good hit can knockout an opponent, but the same is true for you. Or more likely, an overeager shunt can send you off track thanks to your own mistake. Wreckfest doesn’t have the same concessions recent sims do either, there’s no flashback or rewind systems here to allow you to correct your mistakes. Combined with the sim style driving, it gives even small hits the potential to turn into big setbacks, and even with the ability to reset onto the track you’ll lose so much time you’ll basically be forced to restart the race. Thankfully, you can restart as many times as you need, but it still ends up turning Wreckfest into a deeply punishing game.

To make any real progress you’ll need to drive clean and play opportunistically. Focusing on causing damage in anything outside the bumper car-esque destruction events is an easy way to continually fail. It ends up discouraging the most interesting aspects of Wreckfest, backgrounding what makes it unique and bringing it more in line with what other sims are doing.

There’s still interesting space to play around in Wreckfest, but it takes itself a little too seriously. For as much as it sells itself on destruction, it often feels like the game is more interested in the proper sport of racing than it lets on. It never lets loose, and so I never felt like I could either.