Car racing games allow us to do the things we always wished we could do. Pushing gorgeous sports cars around scenic mountain views. Powering around corners at high speeds. Hurtling down the road…in the wrong lane of traffic. You know, usual things. My experience with the racing genre has been…limited, to say the least. Outside of Rush 2 for the Nintendo 64, all other racing games have always had an anthropomorphic creature behind the wheel, a la Diddy Kong Racing. Hot take – better than Mario Kart 64. This brings us to a new entry in the genre from THQ Nordic – Wreckreation.

Published by the aforementioned THQ Nordic and developed by Three Fields Entertainment, Wreckreation puts the world of creativity at your…wheel tips? It sounded better in my head, to be honest. Anywho, Wreckreation puts the player into a 400 square kilometer world to explore, create and shape. From what I can gather, the actual locale of the game is set in the Pacific Northwestern United States and/or northern California. This is based on pure observation and little understanding of local flora to that region.

My poor biology scores aside, we here at Gamer Social Club were able to get our hands on an early copy of Wreckreation to explore. So without further ado, let’s dive into what the game has to offer…and why I would make an awful stunt car driver.

The World

As I noted above, Wreckreation appears to be situated in the northwestern area of the United States. You’ll see temperate forests with tall trees, mountains with scrub brush, and lovely coastlines dotted with panoramic bridges. At the start of Wreckreation you are literally dropped into the game on your first track. I say track because, well, the road you’re on is in the sky. We’ll get more into that later. As you make your way through this course, you’ll be taught some of the basics regarding controls. Beyond that though, the game tends to be very hands off when it comes to, well, a lot of the instructional components of gameplay.

You start in the Solomon-Hirsch Headbanger – your run-of-the-mill muscle car. By completing various challenges throughout the world, you’ll be able to expand your garage of vehicles to include low-lying speedsters, to off-road hulks.

Beyond that, there’s not much else to the world. Nothing but the open road and the narrator’s voice to explain challenges and to drop nuggets of wisdom as you progress. That and the tunes on your radio, which from what I can tell, is all music generated for this game. Sixteen different channels, all with their own unique genre.

The Gameplay

Races Galore

It’s a racing game. You’re gonna race, buddy! But that being said, all races are not created equal in the world of Wreckreation. In fact, there are three unique styles of races:

• The Standard – Run through all the checkpoints and outrace the other cars to finish in first.
• Wreckonings – Here’s your route – complete it as fast as you can!
• Road Rages – OK, these are a little unique. Take down as many other target cars as you can in a certain time frame. More caused crashes equals more time on the timer. Oh, and you have a certain number of times you can crash, else it’s game over.

There’s also a little additional caveat. Certain challenges can only be completed with certain cars. You obviously will have only one car at the start. Complete challenges around the world and unlock new cars, as well as the opportunity to unlock new cars.

Huh? That’s right – certain cars, after completing some challenges, will start to appear in the world. To add them to your fleet, simply…run them off the road! With destruction comes creation, I guess.

Challenges will also give you license points to your name. A high license equates to more options and customization in your asphalt world, mostly in the form of Live Mixes. We’ll get into those later.

Wreckords

Wreckreation is slated to be an online world. In that sense, each and every road will have its own unique set of “wreckords” – wreckords that can be held by friends who play. Or by you. Your finesse and skill will determine that. Each road has the following Wreckords:

• Time – Self-explanatory – the fastest drive from one end of the road to the other.
• Drift – How long can you hold that tire drift on those hairpin turns?
  • You also have the ability to see how many drift combos you can link up on your route.
• Longest Boost – How long can you keep the throttle down and hurtle along the road before…the inevitable crash?
• Air – Despite not having wings, you will have plenty of options to make your car fly.
• Near Miss – Again, self-explanatory – how close to that head-on collision with a delivery truck were you?
  • Much like drifting, you can also chain near misses together too.
• Stunt – Various tricks can be performed by driving, via drifting, handbrake turns. Heck, opening and closing your doors while catching air. Get the highest “stunt” score to claim the prize.

Live Mixing

One of the selling points to Wreckreation is that it is meant to function as a true “play with all the options” kind of game. That being said, Live Mixing is highly encouraged to vary it up. In Live Mixing you can:

• Mix Your Car – From paint to finishes, trim to tint, you can customize nearly every square inch of every car.
• Mix Your World – Drop down ramps, loops, half-pipes – whatever you want! You also will eventually get the ability to Mix the World with Sky Tracks. Sky Tracks are exactly what they sound like – tracks in the sky. Build roads that soar into the blue skies, complete with plunging drops and yawning chasms between sections of road.
• Mix…Reality (?) – Want it to be raining? You can make it so! Prefer night drives? Put the sun away! Sick of driving into slow-moving sedans? Thanos-snap all other vehicles out of existence!

The sky is truly (and literally) the limit via Live Mixing. I didn’t spend a massive amount of time, but the creative types could easily spend…hours designing their own perfect routes.

Discoveries

With 91 roads across those 400 square kilometers, there is a lot to see. From lighthouses, to military satellite installations, to (seemingly) defunct ski resorts, the world has a lot to witness. And yes, there’s tracking of all those things! Specifically:

• Billboards Discovered – And boy howdy, there’s a lot of them across the map.
• Ad Breaks – Smash your car through that ad. You know you want to.
• Promo Stunts – Do a specific stunt while careening through that billboard to check it off your list.
• Wrecktaculars – Blast through the sign with your highest stunt score. But beware – someone else might be able to outclass you and claim the billboard for themselves.
• Gate Smashes – Over 300 red gates to drive through with no repercussions!
• Live Mix Unlocks – These are smattered across the map and will require some…creative liberties top reach at times. Live Mix Unlocks give you more creative options when Live Mixing.

Seriously, what I have represents hours of gameplay. And this doesn’t even factor in all the races that you’ll encounter.

Now that I think I’ve covered all the brass tacks, it’s time to go into what I liked…and what I didn’t like.

The Good

Graphics and Exploration

Right away, graphically, it’s beautiful. And while I have a saying that “anything can be beautiful with graphic capabilities nowadays”, I can still appreciate a nice capture of the sunset casting orange glows across the road and surrounding mountains.

Coupled with this were the sheer number of routes you can take around the world. The major raids, sure, but there are also dirt paths, secluded mountain trails, and even train rails if you fancy blasting through train tunnels at the speed of sound.

Side note: some of the road signs made me chuckle. Just something fun that doesn’t make or break the game.

Controls, Mixing, and the Consequences of My Actions

The controls were intuitive and, outside of something I will note later, were straight-forward and clearly explained. Right Trigger equals “GAS, GAS, GAS!”. Left Trigger equals “180mph to 0 in five seconds” (road conditions permitting).

Live Mixing was relatively simple. The only area I ran into hiccups was around constructing Sky Tracks, but I was able to course correct myself after a little trial and error while building. If I were a more creative individual, and didn’t have a deadline when reviewing this, I could have spent a significant chunk of hours just building my own route around the map.

One last thing I will touch on is the crash scenes. Honestly, I’m still a kid and comically ridiculous (and not real) crashes make me giggle. Why yes, I did drive straight off that turn…into the canyon below. And yes, I did manage to roll the car about ten times down the embankment…which then set the care afire.

The Bad

While I did give plenty of positive notes to Wreckreation, I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t point out the aspects that gave me pause.

Repetitive Gameplay

Despite stating that I sink a decent number of hours in this game, I did so because the review warranted it. That being said, I found myself pretty bored…pretty quickly. While there is a lot of variety of mixing up the world, the core concept of the game boils down to three types of races, building tracks, and establishing wreckords to lord over your friends. Added with the fact that Gamer Social Club had an early press release to Wreckreation, the only other names I ever saw mentioned in the game were my own.

Blur and Questionable Choices of Driving a Flaming Car

Another piece that stuck out to me was the sheer…speed at which Wreckreation functions. While I may not be “angry old man yells at cloud” level old, I’m definitely past my prime when it comes to quick hand-eye reflexes. Which in a racing game can spell trouble. When hitting top speeds in certain cars, the world around you just becomes…a blur. While realistic, it does eventually turn into how long you can stave off the inevitable accident. And with the added element of CPU-driven cars that go just as fast, if not faster, and you will always be having that blur.

And let’s talk about that inevitable crash. At times, you would crash, spin, roll, and burst into flames. Sometimes, the game would give you the option to reset immediately. Other times…you could seemingly just drive away? From what I could tell, it might have hinged on whether or not you landed on your wheels, and where you happened to stop moving. I did find myself, more often than not, just wanting to reset as opposed to driving away from the wreck, but was not given the option. It doesn’t seem like allowing the player to reset whenever they wanted after a crash would be too much to ask.

Low-Res Mountains = Time Out!

Those guaranteed crash resets, however, would always happen when you hit certain “boundaries” on the map. Which most of the time take on the form of…low-res mountain crags/rocks. Think unmodded Skyrim low-res rocks. You know the kind.

When going at higher speeds, you may not always notice these until it’s too late. For the fact that the world touts being an open world, it seems like plopping these random “out of bounds” areas is a bit of an annoyance, to say the least.

The Overall

When I started this review, I noted that I had somewhat limited experience in the racing genre of gaming. And there’s a reason for that. End of the day, it’s a subtype of video games that I truly have never felt the “draw” to. It’s not that they’re bad; it just doesn’t itch my gaming scritch. But being a reviewer, I try to put any personal thoughts to the side and remain as objective as I can.

Is Wreckreation one of the better racing games of recent release? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Will it appeal to an avid fan of the genre? I’m certain it will. The one important question, though, is this – did I have fun? I did. But will I remember my time with the game in six months? Probably not.

Wreckreation launches to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on October 28th, 2025.

Gamer Social Club was provided an early-access code for the purposes of this review. This review was played on PC (Steam).