Wreckreation

Overflowing with ambition but ultimately plain and with no style to call its own, Wreckreation feels like a supermarket brand homage to a series of better arcade racers.

There's a huge amount of fun to be had tearing up the countryside in Wreckreation's open-world aggressive racer.

Wreckreation is a game with huge ideas that didn’t just not quite have the budget to realise them, it pulls itself in too many directions from the off, and that results in a title that feels empty and desolate and as harsh as it is to say, I think this is beyond patching up, I think it’s too far gone in the wrong directions to save at all.

Wreckreation is an ambitious but uneven attempt to revive the spirit of classic arcade racing. While it occasionally delivers thrilling moments of speed and destruction, its unforgiving learning curve, inconsistent handling, and heavy reliance on grind undermine the overall experience. The creative tools and sandbox structure show genuine potential, but the lack of a compelling progression system and meaningful incentives makes it hard to stay engaged for long. In the end, Wreckreation feels more like a promising foundation than a fully realized racing game.

Ultimately, it feels like Wreckreation tries to be too many things at once. An open-world setting allows for a lot of room for players to create events using the Live Mix tools, but driving between events gets dull quickly. As a conventional racing game, the rubber-banding AI makes me lose interest quickly, and the game doesn't emphasize the Live Mix content as strongly as it arguably should. It's a fun enough game, and it's smaller in scope since it was made by a smaller team. It lacks a defining feature of its own that it really focuses on, and it ends up making the game feel more like an imitation of other games.

Think of Wreckreation as a spiritual sequel to Burnout Paradise, only not as polished and with the addition of creation elements. It has some issues, but it's been much improved since launch thanks to numerous patches. If you want to race at insane speeds and take down opponents, it's well worth a try.

As a result, Wreckreation falls somewhere halfway between an indie version of Burnout Paradise and the budget game series Kobra 11 (aka Crash Time). It handles adrenaline-fueled demolition racing well enough to hold your interest, though it benefits from a lack of serious competition. However, due to a lack of variety and a rather weak driving model, the game quickly loses its appeal. Of course, that may not be the case if you’re in the mood to build your own crazy tracks.

Wreckreation isn't bad enough to deride, but it certainly isn't good enough to recommend.

Wreckreation attempts to become the successor to Burnout Paradise; however, it lacks the polish to do so. Even worse, some basic aspects of any racing game are so lacking in care that it's impossible to recommend it in its current state. It feels like a game that launched in Early Access and, had they given it adequate development time, could have been something truly special.

Whilst, yes, it does feel like a slightly less-polished version of a Burnout game, there’s no doubt that this is a lot of fun to play. As someone who put countless hours into Criterion’s long-dormant franchise, it’s refreshing to be able to play something familiar, yet with its own unique mechanics. With that being said, I’ll be giving Wreckreation the Thumb Culture Gold Award!