Wreckreation Review – Burnout’s Broken Baby Brother

Destruction overview

Burnout fans have been eagerly awaiting a new game in the franchise. Is Crash reaction the answer to their prayers? Let's see. Wrecreation comes from the game developer Tree Fields Entertainment Limited. The developers seem ready to release an open-world arcade racing game that also features high-speed driving, racing, crashing, stunts and exploration. Games like Dangerous Driving and Danger Zone 1 & 2 share many of the trademarks of Burnout games. These are all arcade racing games with frequent vehicle crashes and destruction.

In Wrecreation, Three Fields Entertainment Limited uses its talents to span an entire universe of racing games across a 400 square kilometer island. In this world, you can decorate and personalize it either alone or in collaboration with friends online. You can create your own place where you can constantly strive to beat, surpass or even surpass yourself and others with tracks, courses and game modes designed by you or your friends. Here you have a large virtual playground where you can do whatever your arcade racing heart desires.

The game combines traditional arcade racing modes such as Drift, Air, Near Miss, Stunt and Time Trials with World Building action. All modes have leaderboards that allow you to compare yourself to your opponents. In terms of world building, you can explore it and create your own tracks and stunts. Using construction tools, you can place jumps, loops, moving obstacles and more almost everywhere on the island. You are in control. This means you can set success criteria for team stunt competitions and races. Additionally, success criteria may vary by location.

Wrecreation offers many options beyond just cars and racing gear. You can color the car body, wheels, enhance the flames, engine sounds, glass colors, tires and much more. You can also mix the music to your liking from the 16 channels. More directly, you can also control the weather, time of day and traffic intensity.

Stunt building

One of the main principles of arcade racing games is to smash billboards to score points. The developers placed them strategically throughout the map, and their placement determined the difficulty of hitting and destroying. “Commercial Break” billboards can be broken, “Advertising Stunts” require a special trick, and hitting “Wrecktaculars” billboards gives the highest score for a stunt.

As you travel around the island, there are empty spots that the game marks as empty lots. Here you will need a constructor. You can not only create tracks and perform tricks, but also build structures that affect the gameplay. Want more high speed cop chases? Then build a police station and see more police presence.

It all sounds great on paper, but the real test is how all these disparate parts fit together into a cohesive whole. You can appreciate the ambition of game developers, but too often their vision exceeds their capabilities. The game is not a complete experience. Being a small team, Three Fields Entertainment Limited was unable to bring the game to the same level as the Criterion Games team did with Burnout. The lack of depth is further emphasized by the size of the island.

A playground spanning over 400 square miles sounds great in theory. Implementing such a large play area poses a huge challenge. The problem is being content. Something is seriously missing. There are no cities or associated infrastructure such as highways, bridges, suburbs, industrial areas or busy central areas. The island is the same everywhere. It's all the usual greenery and rocks. The lack of diversity is evident in racing as well. Each of them feels the same thing, which leads to boredom.

As for the races themselves, there is a surprisingly low limit of only five other opponents. Quite low by today's standards, but not as low as AI. There is quite obvious rubber logic in the game. It really kills a lot of the motivation to really push yourself when you know that no matter how well you race, the AI ​​opponents will catch up to you.

A number of special events are expected. In Takedown mode, you earn points by smashing as many cars as possible within a certain period of time. The best approach would be to stop such events depending on the amount of damage caused to your car. Using time as a limiter will often stop you in the process of dealing damage. A real bummer.

Road Rage = Real Rage

The new Road Rage event is something of a misfire. In this mode, you can only destroy certain cars. It seems like a good idea, but the implementation is disappointing. Destroying other cars will incur a time penalty. The frustration is further compounded by the fact that there are only two target vehicles to destroy. There is also a problem with scoring as some clearances do not count properly in the players' score.

Overall, there are a few major bugs that hinder your enjoyment of the game. In addition to problems with AI, there are problems with the car's handling. Yes, this is an arcade game and not a simulation game, but the basics need to be laid. Let's take drifting for example. The most important aspect of car control in arcade racing is drifting, as it is critical to many things. Drifting is the fastest way to increase energy and overall performance. Therefore, drifting behavior must be tuned so that it behaves predictably.

In Wrecreation, drift when braking is enabled correctly, but there is no way to control it. You would expect them to be able to change the drift angle to control the car. You do this by manipulating the throttle. However, this is not the case in the game. If the car is not moving in a straight line, the game will ignore pressing the brake and gas. You can brake or accelerate predictably when driving in a straight line. If not, then forget about control.

Otherwise, from a technical point of view, things are generally good. The glitches are impressive and are undoubtedly the game's biggest problem. Other graphical aspects are good, if not a bit dull given the deserted nature of the island. The most noticeable frame rate stutter is when entering a skid. In terms of sound, the game handles car and radio sounds well.

More time in the oven

Wrecreation, a game whose vision exceeds its developer's capabilities, is a prime example of a game released too early. It's very similar to the beta version. If fundamental aspects of the game aren't working properly, players won't be able to enjoy ambitious world-building features like Live Mix. To their credit, the developer is committed to fixing bugs and has published a roadmap for upcoming patches. However, these fixes may arrive too late to keep players interested. Burnout fans: wait for the next game or until they fix the bugs in this one.

***PC code provided by publisher for review***