Wreckreation: acrobatic frenzy in a unique driving game

Outside of the Forza Horizon series, which surprises more and more with each passing year, it’s hard not to detect some sort of pervasive decay of the genre. arcade. After the “disbandment” of Criterion and the loss of Burnouts, the latest Need for Speed ​​certainly failed to offer a qualitatively comparable alternative to the best parts of this series, so much so that a hidden abyss was created in the market. which no one has really been able to cover up yet.

THQ ScandinavianShowcasing an enviable assortment during its showcase, it is now trying to immerse itself in this space and has chosen former developers EA and Criterion to do so. His creatures are called Wreckreation, and as we show us, it’s not the “usual” arcade racer with all the speed and awesome chases, but a kind of crazy sandbox where editor and customization are of equal importance to the game. driving model.

let’s find inWreck preview.

Kilometer and kilometer slopes

As mentioned earlier, on Wreckreationpart organizer the beating heart of the experience and this is immediately recognizable even in the hilarious presentation trailer. everything revolves around mixed world A game map of approximately 400 square kilometers that can be fully edited by the player at any time. This is also extremely simple to do: just activate a feature called GameDJ, where you can add elements of various routes to the screen and start having fun; The diversity of the approach seems comparable (or perhaps even higher) to what we saw at Trackmania, so it’s appropriate to expect separate frenzy from the community.

Another distinguishing element here seems to be the possibility to change tracks even during an online race. The transition between guide and editor is actually simple, and the developers showed us a two-player online Livemix session where one of the two players changes the route with various ramps and craziness while the other drives. Undoubtedly an interesting concept that can create hallucinatory moments or sudden confusion in races due to the divine intervention of this or that participant.

If anyone can edit the tracks, what is it?aim? How do you win? It seems that Wreckreation is mostly based on a points system where players decide the rules. The game assigns various points according to the maneuvers performed, the length of the drift, the splendor of the jumps and so on; so it shouldn’t be difficult to shape the rules or create appropriate modalities during the race. Beware, there should still be some primary mods that can be encountered in the game, but our most concrete doubt lies in their existence: In such a “free” project, players will flock to more classic races to avoid confusion, or will it be exactly the sandbox element that determines the success of the whole? Predicting the behavior of a possible future community is currently difficult, but there is a possibility that users deprived of classical goals may decide to ignore the essence of the experience.

family effects

On the other hand, it is difficult to assess the actual quality of the product at the moment. driving model: the team consists of experts who have worked on major games of this genre before, but during the gameplay shown the vehicles had a slight “soap effect”, which scared us a little. Of course, you can’t make real assessments for this type of game from a short video, and if nothing else, there seem to be some pretty recognizable elements in the physical model and effects. The collisions, in fact, look extremely similar to those of Burnout, complete with slow motion while destroying an opposing car. To be fair, a title largely built around a complex fragment editor with such collisions really has the potential for some of the craziest challenges seen online.

Among the other features offered, in addition to the real-time GameDJ, there will also be a separate editor, with which it should be possible to save created tracks and even immediately import more complex creations into the game. Instead, there isn’t much to say about the tech sector, which doesn’t seem particularly exceptional.

The cars should already be aesthetically customizable map (by the way, all changes are immediately available), so it’s reasonable to sacrifice some graphical detail to make the online experience smoother and avoid real-time editor and optimization issues.