Title: Wreckfest
Genre: Racing
Players: 1 – 24 (online)
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC (Reviewed)
Developer: Bugbear Entertainment
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Price: $39.99
Release Date: June 14th, 2018
Without wasting a lot of words, I can openly say that Bugbear Entertainmaint’s Wreckfest is well worth the purchase. You should buy it if you enjoy high-octane, physics-based racing simulators. The game does have some rough spots around the edges, such as the cursor tab sometimes not showing up when navigating the menus, or some of the menus failing to load properly, or some infrequent frame stuttering in a certain parts of the oval asphalt track where the infield comes into view.
I originally purchased Wreckfest some years ago when the game was still in Early Access. But I didn’t bother playing it in Early Access since it wasn’t complete. I wanted to support the developers because they were working on something I felt was a necessary entry in the racing game genre, since most racing games have gone the arcade route or have turned into micrtransaction-laden gimmicky pieces of crap. It can safely be said that was I not disappointed in the decision to support the developers early on.
It should go without — but sadly it needs to be said in [current year] — there is no Liberal Progressive degeneracy in the game.
For as far as I played, customized, and even battled with other players online, there were no rainbow flags, none of that trans stuff, no Left-wing agitprop, or alphabet soup nonsense. This was a real game, made for real gamers.
This is a game about combustible-powered metal on wheels crashing into more metal on wheels, and Bugbear does a fantastic job of delivering the description of that experience.
The meat and potatoes of the game is the Career Mode, which spans five different categories. This is where you’ll earn most of your loot to buy new cars, upgrade your cars, and level up your driver rank to unlock new parts, vehicles, and customization options.
Each Career Mode category becomes increasingly difficult, but typically in a fair way. The early entries center around introducing you to the core mechanics of the game with lawnmowers and couches, and then you eventually move up in grades to more powerful vehicles, classed from ‘D’ to ‘A’.
Each class is represented by its power output, with ‘D’ and ‘C’ class vehicles usually being lumbering and usually slow, such as motorhomes and buses, or limousines and harvesters.
Twisted Metal
There’s a wide range of different vehicles to unlock in the game, and more are frequently added through post-launch DLC, along with additional customization options. However, none of that stuff appealed to me and most of the core content that you get in the base game is more than enough to fill out anywhere between 30 and 60 hours of gameplay, depending on how invested you are in completing the Career Mode or dabbling in the online modes.
There are more than 25 vehicles in the game, along with additional special vehicles you can acquire either by completing tasks in the Career Mode or by unlocking them by earning “Fame” in the regularly updated tournaments. Fame is basically doled out based on how well you perform in the tournaments, which require you to complete certain challenges.
The more challenges you complete the more Fame you earn and in turn you can then use said Fame as currency to unlock special vehicles, such as a cool chrome-skull semi-truck known as the Doom Rig.
The only downside to some of the special vehicles is that customization is limited for them and you’re unable to tune most of them.
In a way this prevents other players from cheating by decking out a semi with tons of performance modifications and armor and becoming practically invulnerable, but it also limits what you can do with certain other vehicle types in the game, such as the motorhomes, the couches, the outhouses, the buses, or the double-deckers.
Outside of Career Mode and Tournament Mode is a the option to create custom events.
Custom events allow you to select a vehicle, track, and the rules of the event – ranging from demolition derby to a straight-laced race – and then compete in said event with the hopes of topping the online leaderboards.
As far as single-player content is concerned, the Career Mode, Tournament Mode, and the ability to create custom events are available to keep you occupied.
Barring those modes, you can dabble in the multiplayer offerings, which include the ability to play a quick match, browse the servers, or create your own dedicated server and host races at your own leisure.
You have a lot of options about how you manage and run your own server, setting up rules or conditions, or even allowing people to play with certain mods enabled.
In fact, there’s a server setup that runs classic NASCAR races using a NASCAR mod that you can download from the Steam Workshop.
If you were one of the unfortunate saps to pick up a copy of this game on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’re fresh out of luck when it comes to improving the game with mods. And oh boy do mods improve the game.
There are some sexy modifications available in the game, such as a General Lee skin from the Dukes Of Hazzard, or the black and gold fire bird livery from the Burt Reynolds classic, Smokey & The Bandit. Other mods add some neat special effects such as additional dust kick-up on loose surface tracks, or lingering smoke trails from burned rubber on asphalt tracks. There’s even a cool bokeh depth of field mod that adds some extra pizzazz to the visual presentation of the game.
But even without mods, Wreckfest is already a sizable title with plenty of content, this includes the aforementioned selection of over two dozen vehicles, most of which can be customized, modified, and tuned to your liking. You can engine swap vehicles just like in Forza Motorsport, so you can move certain vehicles up or down a class, depending on what you require of said vehicle.
You can also improve the pistons, manifold, air filters, ignition, fuel, exhaust, valves, and camshaft to improve the overall performance of the vehicle. Modifying the armor on the vehicle will improve its durability and crashing efficiency, which is essential during demolition derby runs, but heavy armor will greatly impair the performance of the car, reducing the speed, acceleration, and handling.
So ultimately when it comes to the upgrades you have to pick and choose what role you want the vehicle to perform in the race and go from there. Some cars can be raised or lowered in class based on the engine or upgrades you have installed, while other times you can fit a large engine in a small car and then downgrade it to a lower level by putting heavy roll-cages and armor on the front and back, allowing you to basically take ‘A’ or ‘B’ class vehicles into ‘C’ or ‘D’ class races.
If I did have a gripe with the game when it comes to the vehicles, it would be with two issues: first off, the paint editor in-game isn’t very robust. But again, if you have the PC version of the game you can simply make your own liveries anyway you like. If you’re playing on consoles you’re screwed and stuck with very limited paint decal and livery options for the vehicles. On console don’t expect to create any waifu weeb cars like you’ll find in Forza Motorsport.
The second issue is with the lack of tuning.
Yes, the game does allow you to tune your vehicle but it’s all really basic sliders. You can choose how stiff or loose you want the suspension, which basically changes the ride height, as well as how stiff or open you want the differential lock, or how much force you want applied to the front or rear brakes, or modifying the gearbox for short or long gear shifts.
That’s it.
You don’t have the option of manually fine-tuning each gear like you can in rFactor, or the F1 series, or Gran Turismo. What this means is that you can’t specifically tune your car to shift early with high revs in the lower first through third gears and then draw out as much of the torque as possible in the fourth through fifth gears. That used to be a go-to strategy when playing online to get off the start line really hot, especially with lightweight Japanese vehicles where despite meeting the horsepower limit they were so much faster than many European or American-made vehicles at the same horsepower rank, mostly due to the latter vehicles being much heavier and slower.
So that did sort of irk me with Wreckfest and not being able to have the option to dive into the minutiae of fine-tuning the gears like what you’re capable of doing in the other racing sims.
Racing For Purists
However, when it comes to the actual racing Wreckfest is one of the most realistic sims next to BeamNG Drive thanks to its soft-body deformation physics. It’s far more advanced than the soft-body physics we’ve seen in past games like Viper Racing or the original Flatout. And since the vehicles aren’t licensed, it means that they can crunch, squish, smash, splint, dent, and completely fall apart in thoroughly satisfying ways the likes of which you will likely never see in a Gran Turismo, Project CARS or Forza Motorsport title.
The game affords players the option to change the damage output from a range of settings going from arcade to realistic, and oh boy can you see a difference between each setting. When you put it on realistic the slightest bumps, smashes, and crashes will end your race like the snap of a finger.
If you cut a corner too short and collide with a concrete barrier you might not total the vehicle but it might completely damage the front axle, so much so that you could lose a wheel… or two. Taking jumps too aggressively can result in damaging your vehicle’s suspension, or getting clipped from the side or rear-ended too often can damage your brakes or even funk up your gearbox. And all of these detriments can very well be felt in-game, as a broken gearbox means you have to manually help the gears shift after maxing the revolutions, which adds even more difficulty to the race as you attempt to take turns while also making sure you’re shifting on time.
This particular aspect of the game reminded me a lot of Slightly Mad Studios’ first Project CARS, where precision racing was basically the name of the game, and you absolutely had to be completely in-tune with your vehicle if you wanted to stay on the track and win the race.
You can get an idea of what the hardcore mode is like thanks to YouTuber Jimmy Broadbent doing a video about trying to race as legitimate and clean as possible.
The realistic mode forces you to learn the tracks, learn the vehicles, master the turns, and understand the braking, body weight transference between the corners and the apex, as well as when to be aggressive and when to be passive when passing or being passed.
Wreckfest is one of the rare racing games where you want to increase the difficulty because it actually increases the fun (and the amount of XP you gain). There’s a level of intensity there that forces you to have to pay attention, to race right, and to race well.
You see, Wreckfest isn’t just about smashing cars, it’s also about mastering the art of racing.
Unlike its contemporaries within the genre, there are no driving lines in Wreckfest.
You have to manually learn each and every track, and individually master how each car, truck, couch, or vehicle handles on said track. You can’t sleep walk through the races or you will lose, especially when playing online where a simple mistake will cost you the entire race.
Also, there are no power-ups to save you like in Bugbear’s original Flaout games. You could accrue turbo by smashing into other racers or objects in the original Flatout games, and then repair your car by picking up the glowing wrench along the way. There are no glowing wrenches in Wreckfest; you have to race for your life or die trying.
Dynamic Force Feedback
All of this is elevated and enhanced on PC thanks to force feedback wheel support as well as Bugbear going the extra mile with bespoke haptic feedback for the Steam Controller.
You can literally feel the shift in weight distribution during turns with the haptic feedback on the Steam Controller, which allows you to make micro-adjustments during turns as you feel the weight of the car moving from left to right during a drift out of a hairpin, or as you feel the shocks absorbing an uneven jump during a landing. While the force feedback on the wheels and Steam Controller can make your hands jittery and really increase the intensity of the race, it also allows you to make more precision-based adjustments while racing. This helps prevent spin-outs in turns where you might feel the feedback informing you that the car is about to slip, or it can help you recover from a pit-maneuver designed to careen you into a wall.
Even better yet you can customize the dampening, the saturation of feedback, the steering deadzones and even the sensitivity in the settings menu. If you have the game but had trouble setting up your steering wheel, YouTuber brtcobra walks you through it on how to get it setup right proper.
Speaking of settings, there are a lot of options in Wreckfest on PC to fine-tune the experience for your machine.
This is basically due to the fact that they had all Early Access to focus on optimizing the game for PC. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than some console port-overs that have found their way onto the platform.
I had the game maxed out and for the most part, there was no stuttering or frame drops other than a few tracks – specifically the oval track variations at the Big Valley Speedway – where the game would dip for some odd reason when passing by the infield. It wasn’t always consistent, and I’m not entirely sure why that was, but I didn’t bother to waste time opening up the debugger to find out what was going on at that specific memory address to cause the issue(s). It only seemed to happen in the single-player portion of the Career Mode, though, and I had no problems with any frame drops, stuttering, or hiccups when playing online or partaking in the tournaments.
Mods For The Win
Then again, I also used the mods to improve the dust kick-up and tire smoke effects, as well as a mod to increase contact effects during collisions. But the stuttering was happening on the oval track even before I had the mods installed.
Nevertheless, the online modes work so much better than I thought they would.
If you don’t have time to browse through a server you can just select Quick Match from the menu and it will find a game for you to join. The only downside with the multiplayer is that there is no split-screen option at all, so you can’t play local two-player or four-player against other players; the only multiplayer options are for online play. But given how finicky the optimization is on single-player, I can only imagine what sort of frame-drops would occur in two-player split-screen.
Heck, maybe once they get things better optimized we’ll see split-screen arrive in the sequel? …Maybe?
Lots Of Replay Value
Options, variety, and track selection are also available in abundance. You can select from 30 different tracks, some of which come with a handful of different variations, not unlike Bugbear’s first two Flatout games, or the earlier Need For Speed titles before they switched over to open-world format.
The Career Mode keeps a lot of the track variety feeling fresh, but I found that the online competitions seemed to select a wide range of different tracks that weren’t even used during the Career Mode, this includes short and long versions of some tracks or reverse versions of other tracks.
It’s one of the few racing games where after 40 hours of play I was still discovering new content, and still have more content to discover yet.
I also like that you can level up and earn credits in the online competitions, so you can still upgrade your vehicles and purchase new vehicles simply by racing against friends or rivals. That’s a really neat touch. It’s just too bad that you can’t save replays, though.
Also, I enjoyed the soundtrack even though the music selection was kind of limited. One Desire’s “Hurt” is absolutely the standout song from the game, though. It sounds like something out of the glam-metal era of rock from the 1980s.
You can check out the song below.
I wish the game had a few more tracks like that, but most of the other tunes are of the hard rock or doom metal variety, so I can’t complain.
Thank goodness there are no rap songs!
As far as the game’s graphics are concerned, I have no qualms. The soft-body deformation is top notch, and the only game that even bothers to entertain such a feature is BeamNG Drive.
I do wish that Bugbear would have at least had an option for the dust particles and smoke plumes in the vanilla version of the game, but if you have the PC version be sure to download TemplarGFX’s Particles+ Loose Surfaces and his Particles+ Hard Surfaces mod, along withc Pritchard’s Contact Effects mod.
But there’s nothing else left to say other than that if you’re a real racing fan and you want a game that doesn’t cut corners and offers you a hardcore racing experience with a nice hefty helping of both fantasy tracks, demolition derby runs, and skill-based races across a number of different surfaces and with a wide variety of customizable vehicles, then Wreckfest is a must-buy for you.
Verdict:
