Three Fields Entertainment consists of less than ten people, key folks at Criterion, who went on to forge a new path for creating arcade racing games. After several Burnout-likes, the trend continues with Wreckreation, a game that nearly recreates the open-world format and feel of Burnout Paradise, with a twist. Wreckreation does give you the power of creation to make the world something yours. Being able to plop down ramps, loops, and tons of items, this really becomes a racing adventure park only limited by your imagination. Creation is not mandatory, though it is an additive experience along with the hundreds of races and things to do. Not everything in Wreckreation comes together like it should, but when it works, it’s a smashing delight.
Three Fields Entertainment has done well to replicate classic Burnout games. IN years prior they released Danger Zone and Danger Zone 2 which replicated the crash modes of Burnout 2 and Burnout 3, respectively. Then with Dangerous Driving, we got a carbon copy of Burnout 3: Takedown that I thought worked really well. While it doesn’t rewrite the rules of racing games, it does give you the tools to mold it into something of your own. At the beginning, Wreckreation feels like somebody else’s game, but in a few hours time begins to transform into feeling like it’s your game.
You’ll be placed behind the wheel of a starter car for your first race, a muscle car that resembles a Plymouth Hemi Cuda 427, and is a bit slow and heavy, but maneuverable. After that race, you’re given your Learner license. Then after several races of your choose, your placement in those races gives you points to then earn your K, C, E, R, and W license (that’s WRECK spelled backwards). Upgrading your licenses gives you access to faster cars and more tools. You’ll have to shunt, slam, and takedown anybody in your way as you speed through dangerous roads to reach the top. While it is a game that has progression, it is not defined by it. It’s a game of two halves: there’s one half of racing and experiencing everything there is. The other half of the game lies with its creation tools, or what’s been created by your friends and sharing that world with each other.
The game world is massive 400 square kilometers, and while it’s not the biggest open-world out there, it is larger than the likes of Just Cause 3 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The entire landmass is called “Wreckreation” and consists of four counties to drive through, each with their own look and feel, filled with mountains, oceanside, deserts, and country roads. While this world is nice, it’s largely unexciting. It’s mostly just four to six-lane roads with nothing occupying the nothingness. There’s not even one metropolitan city to drive through, and houses and other buildings are sparse. It lacks a little bit of identity and place. If this is on purpose because of the creation, and you are given the space to build on that nothingness, that’s not really a great solution for the player.
Mechanics and systems slowly roll out to the player, as to not overwhelm. At the start, you can mix a lot of the world such as renaming the world from “Wreckreation” to something of your own choosing, which I called “Nervous Wreck”. You can rename yourself in the world. Don’t like the name a car is given? Rename it after the car it’s inspired by instead. For instance, you can set the weather to your preference like: sunny, thunderstorming, or a full-on blizzard. Playing at night, and want the time of day to match? You can do that, too. The world exists for you.
Wreckreation exudes shades of TrackMania with the ability to create your own tracks to race on. Acessing these tools is not that easy to do, as it’s hard to find, found only through the map, you can create races as you unlock the types throughout your time playing. You can even “livemix” the world and place down ramps and other objects that can make shortcuts, create fun jumps, or assist in reaching certain collectibles. Being able to create race tracks in the sky really gives you the ultimate freedom. There’s a whole online component of the game to host your world for others to join, or you can join on friends or stranger’s worlds to then compete and complete challenges in. It’s so unfortunate that there’s no crossplay to expand that sense of community and greater chance of discovery.
You’ll compete in point-to-point races, lapped races, road rage events in which you have to take out your opponents and reach a certain goal, and more. Clever touches like “Checkpoint” and “Finsh” being physical objects to crash through instead of flags or flares looks and feels great. After some races, there will be a special car you can hunt down. Make it crash, and the car becomes yours. Some races are locked to a specific vehicle, so you’ll need to own it in order to use. Each event type has six pips below it, which signify your place in that event after having completed it the first time. If it has anything less, then you can go back to try to get first place in order to accumulate more licenses points in an effort to level up. As you tear up and down the roads, you’ll set “wreckords” for your friends to try to beat, and if they beat you, they’ll become a rival and you’ll be given “wreckommendations” to go back to that event to try to beat their score. This is so incredibly Burnout Paradise, it’s like Ethan Hunt of “Mission Impossible” wearing the face mask of the person he’s impersonating levels of mimicry.
The AI you’ll race against varies from formidable to faulty, and more often than not, the AI will stick to roads, go faster than you without boosting. It’s often hard to feel competitive no matter what car you’re driving, even if it’s leaps and bounds faster than your last one. The AI racers will simply rubber-band to you if you get a commanding lead, and while that’s not anything new for a racing game, it just doesn’t feel good when it happens in nearly every race.
The cars in the game are classified as bruiser (steel-forged muscle cars), race cars (lightweight street cars), hypercars (million dollar, carbon fiber cars), and off-road (to get down and dirty with). You’ll have vehicles resembling the look and sound of Ford Raptors, BMW M5s, Mustang GTs, Dodge Chargers, Nissan Fairladys and the like. You’ll find Ferrari and Alfa Romeo types along the way too. Handling is hit-or-miss, as it certainly depends on the type of vehicle, but doesn’t always feel good to drive. There are parking lots strewn about the world, allowing you to swap vehicles but also look at any of the 48 vehicles you have in your possession. Customization extends to your vehicles in ways I’ve never seen before, sure, you can modify the license plate text, car color, wheel color, and horn. But there’s things I haven’t seen before, like changing the color of your brake lights to something nonstandard like green, purple, or pink. You can also change the engine audio to something else more desirable. Does the sound of your hypercar bother you? Well you can make it sound like a truck if you want.
Boost is a large part of the Burnout-like style of arcade race. It’s rather simplified here, as you earn boost simply by driving aggressively and dangerously. The easiest way of doing this is driving into the oncoming lane of traffic. If you take out a vehicle, you’ll earn a full bar of boost as well as a bonus bar to start filling. You can get a total of four bars of boost, and once filled, a boost chain becomes available to you. To do that, you just hold down the boost button until it depletes, and it’ll automatically refresh so long as you never let go of that button. It’s exhilarating and rewarding.
There’s many collectibles to find. There are several types of billboards to smash. Some are as simple as smashing them, others require that you open your car doors to air brake through them or do a flatspin. Gates are back, and there’s 322 (that’s 78 less than what was asked of you in Burnout Paradise).
There’s a staggering sixteen radio stations to listen to and choose from, you’ll have your fair share of dad rock, disco, 50s, synth, euro dance, classical music. It’s all really cool and all but really lacks anything memorable, and I was not familiar with any of the songs found here. Unlike the last game from Three Fields Entertainment, there’s no Spotify integration so that you can just blast the Burnout Paradise soundtrack to scream around mountain roads blasting Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” for the thousandth time.
I have to say, the menu of this game is bad. Like Burnout Paradise, it’s all navigated to through the d-pad from livemixing to the radio to the game settings. At first I thought there was only five radio stations, there was no indication I should scroll down and that’s when I found the remaining eleven. The same thing happened with the settings, I thought I had maxed all the visuals, turns out there was more options awaiting me to scroll down. The game doesn’t indicate that there’s more to see if you keep hitting down on the d-pad. So it’s all too easy to miss something. What’s not bad though, is the photo mode. For a game that is all about racing, and by extension, crashing, there’s lots of amazing things to capture and take pictures of. As an aside, the UI reminds me of Motor City Online (2001), a short-lived Need for Speed spin-off MMO. The game really has this roadtrip vibe to it that compliments that hand-drawn map aesthetic.
Wreckreation utilizes Unreal Engine 4 (version 4.27.2.0), and while it can look exceptional at times, it still ends up looking dated as well. Playing with the latest NVIDIA drivers (version 581.57), I was able to get 110-120fps most times with all settings maxed. Three Fields Entertainment has been creating all their games with Unreal Engine 4, so there’s clearly familiarity and expert knowledge coming into play. I’d be willing to bet they are not using Unreal Engine 5 to avoid any issues with performance, but it sure would look fantastic here.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
Wreckreation is the realization and culmination of what was being built with Danger Zone and Dangerous Driving, to be a competent and capable arcade racer with boundless creation tools. The opponent AI lacks some consistency, the world could feel more alive, and the menu system could use some work. The overall presentation, vibe, and heart is in the right place to be an open-world racing nirvana. If you never interact with the creation tools, there’s still a lot of game to enjoy. While this isn’t a game that lives up to its potential or pedigree of its inspiration, Wreckreation is the closest we’ll get to a Burnout Paradise 2.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
