Wreckreation Review — Open World Engines

If you’ve ever played a game in the Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row franchises, chances are you are part of a large community of gamers who were drawn more to the driving mechanics than the story, combat, or heists in these games. If, like me, you played these games and got a thrill from speeding through huge maps, not necessarily with a destination in mind, and earning points by dodging traffic or jumping ramps, then you probably, like me, wished these mechanics were pushed a little further in those respective games. There’s a good chance you even found yourself wishing for a title that was focused on that specific style of high-octane driving and the minigames that went with it.

Enter Wreckreation.

Wreckreation is an open-world driving sim that only asks you to do one thing: drive. It gives players complete freedom to race across a large map, discovering various driving-based activities along the way and earning points from pulling off risky and high-octane tricks before you inevitably smash into another car or a wall spectacularly. What sets Wreckreation apart is how completely it commits to that idea. It doesn’t just include driving as part of the experience; it is the entire experience.

Understand that I am not exaggerating, in the slightest, when I describe Wreckreation as a truly open-world game focused completely on driving. Not only is there never a point where you step out of your car or are distracted by some side quest or story mission, the game doesn’t even have traditional menus. From the moment you launch Wreckreation, you are immediately dropped into an open world designed around driving your chosen vehicles, and all meta options, from customizing or changing your car to joining a multiplayer lobby, are done through a little side menu without actually interrupting the drive.

I am also not exaggerating when I say the only goal in Wreckreation is to drive. The game allows you to freely roam the extensive map, uncovering new areas as you do and earning points for driving off ramps or dodging oncoming traffic. The world itself is well-designed for this purpose, with open highways, mountain passes, city streets, and wild countryside all stitched together to encourage constant movement and experimentation.

Occasionally, you will find the opportunity for a driving-based minigame scattered throughout the map and easily interacted with by hitting the brake and acceleration at the same time. These activities vary from races to demolition derbies, and shockingly, they transition completely seamlessly. The moment you enter and the moment you end these activities put you on the track or right back into the map as if you never left. This really accentuates the casual nature of these events: join in, win a race real quick, and go right back to what you were doing. There’s no need for clunky loading screens or excessive downtime.

This gives the game an almost meditative rhythm. You just exist in motion, constantly flowing from one moment to the next.

More than just a driving game, Wreckreation fully embraces the spectacular chaos of head-on collisions, something that other driving games penalize or simply allow to exist, despite the fact that it’s often some of the most fun you can have. Wreckreation not only makes crashes more exciting with insane visual effects and an instant replay on every collision, but it incentivizes you to ram, bash, and slam other cars off the road in essentially every activity. It’s cathartic in the best way possible, like the developers understood that the heart of driving games isn’t perfection. It’s the chaos that comes with going too fast and hitting something going just as fast or faster.

Like a sort of real-life Hot Wheels fantasy, Wreckreation also embraces the chaos of video game driving with tracks featuring loop-de-loops, epic jumps, and general over-the-top stunts that make racing at insanely high speeds all the more enjoyable. There’s an energy to the game that makes even the simplest actions feel thrilling, and the inclusion of creative, physics-defying tracks keeps the momentum going. You can even create your own routes, adding a layer of freedom that makes it easy to lose hours just tinkering and testing.

On top of all of this, the game also has a pretty in-depth track creation tool, which allows you to build and test your own tracks in real time with friends. The game is definitely more of a multiplayer experience, but I would say there is plenty to do in single player as well, so long as driving is the sole mechanic you want to engage in.

What I’m saying, essentially, is that Wreckreation is everything you want a GTA V lobby to be if you’re only playing for the driving and the car-based minigames. It fully embraces everything we find fun about driving in these kinds of games and slaps it together in one experience that is diligently focused on it. It does everything you want this sort of driving sim to do, and does it incredibly well, without forcing you to wade through a lot of extra content to get to the fun. It’s an open sandbox that invites you to immediately get into some vehicular nonsense and provides plenty of tools to do so, all seamlessly.

As far as the actual driving itself, I would say it handles pretty well, even on keyboard and mouse. That being said, this is not a game I would recommend you play with a keyboard, but instead with a controller. Or, even better, invest in an immersive driving setup, a racing wheel, pedals, maybe even a seat rig, to take Wreckreation to a whole new level.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Wreckreation. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Wreckreation is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.