One of my favourite modern racers is Burnout Paradise by Criterion Games. I wrote “modern” there, but it is coming up to being 20 years old! Anyway, there hasn’t been a new Burnout game since 2011’s Burnout Crash!… and it wasn’t very good. There was Burnout Paradise Remastered from 2018, but that’s a remaster, not a new game. You know what would be great? A Burnout Paradise sequel. Wreckreation comes from developer Three Fields Entertainment and publisher THQ Nordic.

“Wreckreation hands you the keys to your very own driving and building open world! Explore 400 square kilometers of pure sandbox joy as you create, race and wreck alone or together with your friends.”

As mentioned, Burnout Paradise was from the dev team at Criterion Games. Wreckreation comes from very similar stables, in that the studio was founded and is staffed by ex-Criterion Games and Burnout alumni. Really, Wreckreation is a Burnout Paradise sequel in all but name (for legal reasons), so get ready for lots and lots of unavoidable comparisons as I write this review. Also, if this is from some of the team who did make Burnout Paradise, it’s got to be great, right… right?

Very much like Burnout Paradise, Wreckreation gives you a massive open-world playground and a selection of cars to explore and cause havoc with. You just hit the streets, drive around the miles upon miles of road and look for events to take part in. All the usual suspects are here too. Lap races, checkpoint races (on and off road) and the Burnout staple of takedown events. You know what I mean, right? You, some opponents, and the chance to ram and smash the AI controlled cars to bits. Complete with an awesome crash-cam so you can see the twisted metal in all its explosive glory. As I said, this is a Burnout Paradise sequel in all but name, you even start events by stopping near them, and slamming on both the accelerator and breaks.

There are some smashable collectibles too. Billboards that you’ll need to seek out and often, work out how to smash through them, usually via a ramp or similar. Smashing billboards will add an extra bar to your nitro meter, very handy… until you crash and lose it. As is tradition, you fill that nitro meter by skilful and often law-breaking driving. Narrow misses with traffic, speeding down the wrong way, jumps, etc. There are some special red gates to find and smash. Oh, I almost forgot, there are repair icons to find and collect too but no, these do not repair your car. Instead, they unlock new track pieces. Yep, you can build your own races and Wreckreation really puts an emphasis on stunts and some OTT track pieces. From simple ramps to the more exotic loops, corkscrews, rings of fire, giant rubber ducks (don’t ask) and much, much more.

You can create your own events on the ground level of the map and even build little stunt areas for fun, using any unlocked track pieces. But the main track creation tool is sky races. As the name suggests, these are races in the sky. While up in the clouds, you can really go wild and craft some absolutely insane tracks with almost no limits. The sky races creation tool could do with a bit more detail in the tutorial, things are not exactly made clear. But after some practise and tinkering, you’ll be knocking up some pretty awesome races with rollercoaster-like tracks.

You’re completely spoiled for choice here and Wreckreation offers up almost limitless options and custom races. Of course, much like Burnout Paradise, Wreckreation comes with a multiplayer mode, so you and some chums can have some chaotic fun together. Team up and take part in any of the pre-made races and events, or make your own races and see how far you can push your friend’s frustrations with some crazy creations. This custom track pieces can also help you out in the main game. See a cheeky billboard or an out of reach repair icon? Just put a ramp down nearby and use it to reach those tricky little bastards.

There is a wealth of content on offer here, and I’ve not even mentioned the cars yet. The more you race and the better you do, the more license points you earn. Earn license points, level up your license and you get new cars to drive. Then there’s the customisations. At any time, you can pull up the in-game menu and change pretty much anything you want. You can rename the world itself, change the weather, the time of day, the density of the traffic. You can even customise your car on the fly, change the colour of not only the body work, but the wheels, window tint and more. Change the names of the cars if you want, and even any of the miles and miles of roads. You can change pretty much anything that you can think of and make your world uniquely yours. It really is very impressive just how much freedom you are given.

The HUD and general presentation is pure Burnout Paradise. The dot matrix scrolling messages, and the voice during the tutorial sounds very familiar. Wreckreation is massively ambitious, especially when you learn that the game was made with a team of just ten devs and a small budget… and this may be why the game has several faults. I did notice some performance issues, from screen tearing to stuttering/FPS drops. You really do not want these kind of issues when you are playing a speedy racer. Just a frame skip or two can send you off track or crashing into some traffic. I have had my car crash and be destroyed just by going around a loop and not hitting anything. I have had my car fall through the road and into oblivion. Plus, several other bug and glitches.

I feel that the car crashes can feel a tad “unfair”. You can crash into an AI controlled opponent at full speed and not see and major repercussions. However, lightly hit some traffic at a slower speed and you end up totalling your car. This can cause you to loose a lot of track position and due to some awful (negative) rubber banding, you’ve got little chance of catching up. Tap some traffic in Wreckreation during a race and you may as well just restart the race. Speaking of rubber banding, this is one of those racers that seem to punish you for racing well, as AI opponents will never be far behind (and even sometimes blow past you like you are standing still), no matter how well you drive. I just don’t like rubber banding in games, if I am good at driving, why punish me? Plus, those takedown races I mentioned. The game does not spawn enough opponents fast enough. You are given a target of takedowns to get, but the lack of spawn means that hitting that target is almost impossible.

I also have an issue with the map, it’s too damn big. As the blurb for the game boasts, you get 400 square kilometres to play around it. It may sound stupid complaining for too much game, but there is too much game here. The map is way too big and unfortunately, it feels empty for large sections of it. With Burnout Paradise, you got a big (but not too big) map that some some great variation. A main city, some country, secret hidden areas and more. The map for Wreckreation is very “samey” no matter where you go. It is mostly out in the country and all the roads start to look the same. There’s one huge ring that runs around the entire map, this is where everything looks and feels the same. Aside from a few locations, it’s just long, open roads with not a lot going on.

You can go into the centre of the map, and this is where you’ll find some variation, but not a great deal. There are a few notable places to find like an airfield or an old raceway, but they are few and far between and there’s a lack of variety. I’d have preferred a smaller, but more interesting and densely packed map. 400 square kilometres sounds great, but not when there’s only about 30% of that map worth exploring. Also, the in-game map has a fog-of-war thing, and you have to drive around to uncover it. Now, I have no issue with having to explore to find areas, but the fog-of-war thing makes it all too tedious. Just have the map fully open and viewable, but still have us having to explore to find events and such.

With the map being so huge, there is a fast travel system, as long as you have found a carpark. These can be solo carparks, or ones attached to buildings, like a gas station (which you use to drive through and repair your car). This does make getting around the massive map a bit more bearable, but I still think that 400 square kilometres is too much for a game like this. With the map being so big, I think that the devs have forced themselves to fill it with something, anything. Like the red gates you find and smash that I mentioned before. There are over 320 of them. I smashed a couple of dozen before boredom sunk in and I lost interest. I bet the reward for getting all of them is not worth the time you need to invest to get all 320-odd either. You can have too much of something and Wreckreation is proof of exactly that. Too big a map with vast open and empty spaces, and too much cramming it with pointless filler.

Another gripe is that the cars feel wrong. They seem too heavy and stick to the road, the handling is off. It’s a bit of a mixed bag because, you can speed along the roads and take curves without really slowing down… and it is pretty exciting when racing against opponents. But taking slower corners just feels very wrong and cumbersome. The drifting is too “sticky” too. I do hope that Three Fields Entertainment update the game to fix the performance issues and bugs. Wreckreation has a lot of potential and I think that most of the creases can be ironed out. But I doubt that they can do anything about the map being too big and it being stuffed with a lot of nothing.

Wreckreation comes with a £35 price tag and is available now on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox. Despite the problems, I have had a lot of fun and I’ll definitely be coming back for more after this review. As a Burnout Paradise fan, I am both impressed and disappointed. I love the level of customisation and how you can tailor the world to suit your own style. The racing itself is good, even if the handling needs tweaking. The events are fun and the ability to create your own races add a lot of value. But, my main gripe is the map and how it is just too big and too barren, and too damn samey, it’s no Burnout Paradise map. As I said before, Wreckreation is an ambitious title, perhaps a little too ambitious for a small ten strong dev team?

Seeing as there hasn’t been a new entry in the Burnout franchise since 2011’s (not very good) Burnout Crash!, I think that Wreckreation is as close as we’re likely to get to another title. It may not be as good or as polished as the awesome Burnout Paradise, but it is a damn close attempt and as I said at the start, this is pretty much a Burnout Paradise sequel without having the official Electronic Arts IP. It’s not perfect, but it is definitely worth checking out.