Not Burning Out
HIGH Addictive gameplay loop.
LOW Minor issues with execution. Some technical problems.
WTF It’s wild to see Burnout Paradise back in some form.
Well over five years ago, I reviewed Burnout Paradise Remastered. It was one of the earliest reviews I wrote for GameCritics and the first racing game I covered, although I had played it on other platforms.
Despite serving as a trip down memory lane, I spoke highly about its direction and how racers had yet to achieve what Criterion had back in 2008, the original release date. Since then I’ve looked at different flavors of racers, ranging from simulators, massive open-world driving games, and countless kart racers. Yet despite all that virtual driving, I have yet to find anything that feels quite like Paradise does (although Criterion tried in 2022).
Three Fields Entertainment (a studio made up of ex-Criterion devs) seems to understand the severe need for an experience like Burnout in our modern era. There are plenty of racers on the market and I’ve loved most major releases, but I can’t deny that pure arcade racers feel like a thing of the past. That’s where TFE’s Wreckcreation comes in.
Wreckreation is a racer played from a third- or first-person perspective. Players are dropped into “MixWorld”, a massive open area full of different events like races and stunt opportunities. The name comes from the fact that players can customize it at any point without ever having to pause. With the tap of a button, options like weather, time of day, density of traffic, and even the color of the current car can be changed, and it’s cool to be able to tailor everything to my own specifications.
The structure of play will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time with Burnout Paradise. Players drive around the open world and compete in races that net them license points. These points raise their license level and earn different unlocks, like new car types. Rather than navigating menus, players cruise around the world and drive up to different events they want to partake in, ranging from point-to-point races to road rage events. Races are mad dashes across a predetermined pathway, where crashing into opponents and driving dangerously is encouraged to fill a boost meter. Road rage events see players knocking target cars off the road, encouraging aggression, but giving players a set number of times they can get wrecked themselves.
Driving feels good, thanks to a floaty and arcadey feel. Cars are incredibly fast and can turn and drift on a dime, making for exciting situations in races and open-world driving. The variety in cars is also healthy, ranging from slick racers, hard-hitting muscle cars, and off-road trucks. None of these are licensed vehicles, but I could have sworn one of my main rides was modeled after the Toyota Supra.
Not only does it feel great to simply drive around this massive world, there’s a lot to discover, including even more customization options to use in the mixing menu than the player starts with, and these options come into play in Wreckreation’s other major selling point — the building.
Throughout the world, players can enter a free-form building mode that allows them to construct roads, ramps, hoops to jump through, and other elements to customize. It’s highly entertaining to be able to affect the environment to this degree in real time, doing things like constructing Hot Wheels-esque monoliths in the middle of the city. Hell, I’m not even that creative, but being able to put ramps everywhere has made exploration even more enjoyable, as I can use them to get to hard-to-reach spots like rooftops hiding collectibles or lofty billboards that I need to crash through for points.
The loop of driving, racing and exploring is excellent, and I love the unbridled freedom on every level of in Wreckreation. The world is malleable, I’m not bound by invisible walls or a critical path, there are no traditional menus, pausing allows players to retry races, there are fast travel options and switching cars is a breeze. It’s all outstanding, but not perfect — my main issue is how things are introduced.
Progression in Wreckreation is slow. Points earned from events are slow to accrue and tutorials are cryptic, and at the time of review, something simple like the controller diagram was buried under a mountain of menus that I had to access from the map screen. It was bizarre. Also within those labyrinthine menus are tutorials for building and designing races — great, but I would have loved playable tutorials to showcase the feature. I can understand not wanting to stifle the freedom with required teaching, but hiding information in menus and a glacial pace for unlocks seems to betray the underlying design philosophy.
There are also some weird presentation issues. The in-game DJ that shouts tutorials at players sounds muffled and can get annoying, constantly suggesting things I don’t want to do and then repeating itself a lot. Graphically, the environments look nice enough, many elements look bland and samey. I also had a few instances of slowdown and some game crashes that forced me out of play, both of which happened during races.
Wreckreation has lofty ambitions, and I’d say it achieves most of them. Driving is fast and furious, and the gameplay loop kept me hooked as I was constantly discovering some new and cool thing while tooling around in my MixWorld. Countless late nights were spent beating a tight time in a race or hunting new cars to collect. While there are more minor issues under the hood than I’d like, those who crave a decidedly old-school open-world racer should take this one for a spin.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Buy Wreckreation – PC – PS – XB
Disclosures: This game is published by THQ Nordic and developed by Three Fields Entertainment. It is available on PC,XBX/S, and PS5. This copy was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 10 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed. No time was spent in multiplayer.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10 for Alcohol and Tobacco Reference, Lyrics, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Mild Violence. According to the site: This is a racing game in which players drive cars around realistic open-world environments, competing in various race/game modes (e.g., Races, Stunts, Road Rage), while colliding with objects and other vehicles. In one game mode (Road Rage), players compete to takedown rivals by forcing opponents to crash; in another (Accident Blackspots), players compete to cause the largest pileups, earning points for the amount of cars and damage taken. Takedowns are highlighted by close-up camera angles, slow-motion effects, and flying debris. Some vehicle ads and billboards depict text with mild innuendo and suggestive material (e.g., “Huge Melons”; “Show us your junk”; “Ball Sack Global”; “Come in store and squeeze our massive plums”; “Inbred Brothers”). One billboard ad depicts a man with a cigarette; a sign inside a store reads “Beer Sale.” Some song lyrics contain the words “goddamn” and “a*s.”
Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are plenty of visual cues during gameplay, in the form of markers and map icons. All of these can be adjusted in the menu. Subtitles are present but cannot be resized. As no audio cues are needed for gameplay, I’d say this is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: The controls cannot be remapped, but there is a diagram.
The post Wreckreation Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
- Security Camera Installation – indoor/outdoor IP CCTV systems & video analytics
- Access Control Installation – key card, fob, biometric & cloud‑based door entry
- Business Security Systems – integrated alarms, surveillance & access control
- Structured Cabling Services – voice, data & fiber infrastructure for new or existing builds
- Video Monitoring Services – 24/7 remote surveillance and analytics monitoring
Author: 360 Technology Group
![RETRO REVIEW: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic [Switch]](https://i0.wp.com/gamersnewz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KOTOR-Malak-1024x576-1.jpeg?ssl=1 "RETRO REVIEW: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic [Switch]")
