Astute observers may notice that despite saying I'd refund the game, I have pumped almost an additional 30 hours of play time. Why? Well, truth is, I did refund it. Despite its problems it still felt enough like Burnout that I had an itching to go back and play it. And you know what? It is actually pretty fun. A lot of it is make-your-own fun with the track editor and the 400km² canvas, and its integration with how it works in a social setting is really well done; not that there's anyone to play with so grab a buddy if you pick this game up. Alternatively, there are community made tracks that show up which you can play and a share code system. The discord server is also pretty active despite it being small. So come help the game grow if you end up liking it.

That being said, I still can't really recommend it. Not in its current state, anyway. A lot of the game is multiplayer focused and the multiplayer is dead. What you're left with is a very limited singleplayer that's mostly a collect-a-thon for newer cars. I find fun in that, a lot of people won't, and even if you do there's still the big asterisk with the game's technical problems. There's just seriously something up with the way the physics work in this game. It feels like there are way too many assists coded to keep the car glued to the ground if you're not taking a jump. You'll be magnetized to the road, doing stunts feels more like a predetermined button press rather than you pushing the car way above its limits, the jerky drifting is sometimes coupled with a massive burst of speed and being railroaded into the nearest tree, etc etc. It feels like TFE is afraid to let the car be loose and coded in all these fail safes to make the game safe and accessible, and all it really does is hurt the experience satisfying no one. Bit of a side tangent but there was one point where I had a massive memory leak causing the game to eat up a whopping 24.5GB of RAM.

As I mentioned in my initial review; TFE's games have always been a miss with the general public, but to say they don't care isn't a fair accusation to make. I remember stumbling upon an article some time after Dangerous Driving, the predecessor to this title, released. One of the CEOs opened up about how hurtful comments that their games "look and feel like a mobile game" among many others were. While it is rude, it is unfortunately very true. Both Dangerous Driving and Wreckreation feel like Burnout but everything just feels slightly off making it feel like a very cheap knock off. The only difference is this game looks significantly better, but the technical problems linger. However, there's love behind this game. There's passion. They do care about it. They want to recapture the magic of Burnout Paradise. They believe in this game. Despite the threat of a looming shutdown, they are still trying to update the game through generous donations from players. In a lot of ways I like this game a lot more than Paradise. I believe in the project too. I want the project to succeed. And I may end up being one of those contributors to keep this game alive and see its potential become a reality. Maybe. We need people to keep this game alive nevertheless so consider engaging with the community at the very least.

Original review:
TFE has been having it rough since their inception. Over the last 10 years they've seemingly put out products that left more people unsatisfied than happy. I wasn't really one of those people. I liked Danger Zone 1 & 2, and to an extent I even liked Dangerous Driving. I had this game on my radar, but I heard the launch wasn't that great, so I was going to hold off for a year in hopes the game improved drastically before picking it up. Then suddenly THQ Nordic basically cans the entire project's funding leaving TFE in a tough spot where they are begging for people to buy their game, donate on Patreon, and hopefully get the attention of another investor. I don't want TFE to die. So I decided to take the plunge and fork over $36 smackaroos for this game.


There's a fun game to be had here. It's a remarkable improvement from Dangerous Driving. However, the drifting is abysmal and completely ruins the game for me. There's an inconsistent issue with it where, while drifting, your car starts jerking once or multiple times in the middle of a turn. It feels like you're rubberbanding despite being in single player. It feel like invisible forces and magnets just push your car creating this janky, terrible feeling jerking stutter while trying to glide around turns. It's not enough to really mess you up, not all the times anyway, but it really just sucks the fun out of it. When it works fine, and you perfecrly slam through turns going 165mph, it feels great. Then your immersion is ruined. It's happened too many times in only 70 minutes that I just lost interest. Evidently it was worse when it launched, and the devs have been patching it, but its still f*cked and I personally don't think a major core function of a racing game like that should be broken. Especially 2 months later. Until this is fixed, if it's ever fixed, I cannot justify my time or money into this.

Sorry TFE.

Good luck.