I’m not counting, but 6,496 days have passed since Burnout Paradise’s initial release. I totally understand why developer Three Fields Entertainment created Wreckreation, given that the Burnout franchise is obviously relegated to the same storage cabinet where EA has been storing the bodies of Westwood, Black Box, Pandemic, and all the other firms it closed down over the years. It was created for a ravenous audience that has been deprived of one of the most powerful games in arcade racing for far too long, and it is an unabashed Burnout Paradise clone in a number of very obvious ways. After all, sometimes you have to do things yourself if you want them done.
Unfortunately, Wreckreation’s general quality was the one essential element of its spiritual grandfather that it was unable to replicate. As a result, the racer is clumsy, crude, and frequently unsatisfactory, making it difficult for me to continue playing. Even for an indie studio led by former Criterion Games executives, the home of the Burnout series, Wreckreation’s similarities to Burnout Paradise are shockingly profound.
The similarities are so great that there are moments when it verges on self-plagiarism, from the familiar tone of a successful takedown to the digital information ticker at the bottom of the screen. As a result, Wreckreation frequently appears to be more focused on replicating whole aspects of Burnout Paradise’s character than creating a distinctive one of its own. I am aware that it is attempting to accomplish this with a small portion of the budget and team of Criterion’s classic, which is commendable in its own right, but when the similarities are so obvious, comparisons are inevitable.
Crashing Out
From the framerate stutters when I hooked into a drift to the actual sliding itself, which feels a little more difficult than I usually prefer, it was clear from the first race that something was wrong. Wreckreation’s driving characteristics aren’t the best by any means, and arcade races rely heavily on its handling. Although its brake-to-drift handling style is rather simple, it isn’t the kind of drifting that allows you to successfully change your angle during a powerslide. Once you’re sideways, the throttle practically seems to have no effect on your drift angle. I don’t think I ever warmed up to the handling, but I did get used to it.
I particularly detest its peculiarities, such as the fact that cars will come to a swift stop while braking in a straight line, but if you stomp on the brakes in the middle of a drift, your car will just keep speeding forward even if you are fully off the pedal. There are also sporadic instances of extreme understeer, although I’m not sure what causes it. There were moments when I simply wanted my cars to be more sensitive and to snap back into a slide, but they wouldn’t. This could be due to a combination of the type of car and the road surface. That fast, arcade vibe is undoubtedly muted by the steering’s latency.
That fast, arcade vibe is undoubtedly muted by the steering’s latency.
The following event was a stunt challenge where I had to earn a set number of points in a very simple arena of leaps and loops after a quick race across Wreckreation’s elevated stunt tracks. Sadly, even though my car could easily navigate the narrow loops during free roam, it was quickly destroyed for no apparent reason when I attempted to take them on during the stunt challenge. This occurred each time I attempted to drive the loops during the challenge and was continuously repeating. Five minutes in, that’s a serious bug.
I changed my strategy and continued to leap in order to accumulate the points I needed to advance. It wasn’t very difficult, and the stunting is all rather shallow and superficial compared to something like Wreckfest or Hot Wheels Unleashed because of the basic method of auto-leveling cars in the air. Nevertheless, by the time the allotted time ran out, I had more than six times the required score. I failed the task at this stage. Since points don’t instantly bank at the conclusion of the session if you’re still accumulating them in a combo, I really received zero points. They simply go.
Before you check yourself, wreck yourself.
Wreckreation swiftly settles into its mostly Burnout-inspired flow after the stunt-heavy first few minutes. Standard races (where the objective is to finish first), “Takedown” races (where the objective is to wreck a predetermined number of vehicles), time trials, and “Shutdown” events (where you must perform a takedown on a special, marked car while exploring the open world in order to add it to your garage—sound familiar?) make up the majority of what’s offered here. As you discover new events throughout the vast world, you can move through all of this information in whatever order you choose. Unfortunately, this adaptability doesn’t mask how quickly each race gets familiar.
This is most likely due in large part to the vastness of Wreckreation’s enormous map. It is larger than many modern open-world racing games, with a stated area of 450 square kilometers. Although it’s a terrific bullet point, there are several serious drawbacks to this enormous size. The main issue with it is how general it is. There are no towns or cities on this big, square island. One side of the map doesn’t seem any different from the other; it’s just ribbons of dirt and tarmac across bland farmland. It’s just a large green slab with lots of trees and rocks; there are no busy urban areas or alleys full of obstacles. Because there are no noteworthy locations, I haven’t come across any races that stand out.
Ticking them off rapidly became boring because there isn’t much that sets one race apart from another.
Races are better than Takedown races and Shutdowns, but they only have five opponents, which is low by today’s standards, and they rely on some fairly nasty catch-up AI to keep things tense. Due to terrible AI spawns that put new takedown victims too far ahead, takedown races were initially a big source of annoyance. In contrast to Burnout’s Road Rage events, which constantly introduce opponents for you to smash and bash, Wreckreation seriously messed up by making it extremely difficult to catch other cars in the limited time allotted. Hell, sometimes they spawned on a nearby road that you couldn’t get to because of the guardrails, making it difficult to capture them.
Opponents now swiftly streak into the frame from behind, just like they do in Burnout, according to a patch that was issued this week (albeit they still occasionally spawn on nearby roads you can’t get to). However, I must question how it was ever issued in its prior state. To what extent was this game tested? In any case, I’ve always believed that the addition of time limits for Road Rage events in Burnout Revenge was a mistake made by the Burnout series. Burnout 3: Takedown was better without them; the only constraint was the amount of damage your car could sustain. In this case, I wish Wreckreation had taken a cue from the latter.
Additionally, a new version of Wreckreation’s off-brand Road Rage mode adds vehicles that you shouldn’t take down to avoid incurring a time penalty. I really detest competing in them, and I don’t think this is a fun twist. If you unintentionally shunt one of the punishment cars off the road, it doesn’t even count as a takedown; it only takes away valuable seconds from your time limit. Each group of opponents will only have two cars to take down since the worst penalty takedown events feature two marked penalty cars that you cannot crash into. Chasing some of the high takedown totals is very annoying, and it’s much more annoying when they’re not giving you credit for them in the first place.
Verdict
Built using the user-generated content facilities of another game, Wreckreation feels like a supermarket brand homage to a number of better arcade racers. It is full of effort but ultimately uninspired and lacking in design. Even though bashing into my opponents gave me brief glimpses of a fast-paced, captivating arcade racer, whatever excitement I felt was soon dashed by erratic handling, a boring open-world map, a monotonous event structure, and a variety of bothersome design decisions and glitches.
