Wreckreation

With a vast, open landscape full of creative potential, Wreckreation will unleash your inner child, looping custom courses throughout the world like digital Hot Wheels tracks.

Wreckreation not only gives you a thrilling open-world arcade racer with a varied world to explore along with an expansive multiplayer mode that allows you to build challenges for your friends. Though the final experience has a few too many rough edges in parts, it's still worth it for arcade racing fiends craving something to get their motors running.

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.

Wreckreation takes a very specific direction. For what it’s worth, it’s still a fun time. Regardless, it still feels more like a reimagining of Need for Speed Most Wanted with elements of Burnout and Hot Wheels rather than a full-on open-world Burnout game. The game includes its fair share of issues, such as pacing, rules around crashing, and general oddities when interacting with objects in the world. Having said that, there's definitely fun to be had here; it perhaps just needs some extra attention that a ten-person development team may not have the resources to apply. $40 is a bit of a hard sell for what's on display here unless you are craving another Burnout Paradise or Need for Speed: Most Wanted clone.

There's a lot to love about Wreckreation but its issues, both major and minor, hold it back from being a brilliant sandbox that has you spending hours of unadulterated fun on its streets.

Wreckreation might have its issues, but at the same time, it’s so much fun that you won’t care.

I can't deny that I liked my time spent playing Wreckreation. The high-octane action, the blistering speeds, and the open-world freedom all come together to offer a format that I adore. However, I can't in good conscience attribute much of this to this game, as it's about as blatant a copy I have ever seen, lifting Burnout Paradise's mechanics, UI, race types, and progression almost note for note. Yet, in many ways, the game fails to capture that same lightning in a bottle, with shoddy recreations of many aspects of its inspiration. The only unique thing this game has to offer lies within the creation and online functionality, but due to the lackluster and uninspired single-player core this game offers, I don't think these admittedly interesting features will be enough to get many potential fans behind the wheel.

Wreckreation is a hybrid of Burnout and Trackmania, but it falls well short of the qualities of either. The driving model is initially punishing in an unengaging way, and once it finally begins to make sense, it becomes clear that the game itself is largely empty and expects players to create their own fun. And that simply is not fun. The dream of a true Burnout successor therefore remains unfulfilled even 17 years after the last entry, as Wreckreation fails to deliver it.

Wreckreation isn't quite the arcade racer many fans have been waiting for. Its super-fast racing action and emphasis on taking down rival drivers recalls fond memories of Burnout, and the game's focal point — the ability to build your own challenges and courses wherever you please — has bags of potential. Unfortunately, iffy physics and handling and a lifeless open world let the side down, but there's still fun to be had in this open world racer, especially if you can gather some pals for some online shenanigans.

Wreckreation feels like a well-intentioned clone of Burnout: Paradise. The foundation is familiar and fun, but without the soul of the original, it ends up feeling empty. Great for an afternoon of racing, but the shine wears off quickly.

Wreckreation is obviously the most ambitious project of Three Fields Entertainment yet. It shows but unfortunately mostly in bad or boring ways. While the cars control alright and the placement of new track elements is great everything else falls off. You can never outdrive the other racers, no matter how good you perform. The crash sequences when wrecking other cars more often than not end in complete disaster and the world itself isn’t exciting either.

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.

What needs to be made clear is that Wreckreation has been built by a team of only 10 people with a few small titles under its belt — a far cry from when Criterion was building Burnout Paradise in its heyday. I made similar comments when I reviewed Danger Zone 2 back in 2018, praising the efforts of such a small team for creating something fun. When put into this context, what Three Fields Entertainment has set out to achieve is massive — I can’t imagine how much hard work has been put into Wreckreation. That said, some cut corners, bugs, janky mechanics, and limited content shows that a project of this size may have been too ambitious for such a small team.

Whilst it's clear to see what games have inspired Wreckreation, the game itself pales in comparison to its forebears. A hollow attempt at both arcade fun and badly shoehorned in "live service", Wreckreation is a game as shallow as its unnecessarily large map.