Wreckreation

Steam really needs to give you more review options than "All my friends should buy this" and "I want the studio behind this shut down".
This is a middle-of-the-road game that is impossible to fairly review with a system like Steams. There's enough here to have fun with, but not enough to really stand out among other racing games - a common problem among indie racing games, honestly.
If Burnout's style of gameplay was your jam, you'll feel at home here for sure - expect races, road rage events, boosting, fast turns and lots of crashes. The difficulty here is generally much higher though, with opponent cars easily gaining a significant lead that you'll have to try and close - to the point that I've often just raced the fastest car I have, even in Road Rage events, just so I can keep up. The difficulty feels like something relatively easy for them to tweak later though.
Game performance is acceptable tbh - I dunno what PCs the others are reviewing it on but if you turn the resolution down from the 4K default and put DLSS in Performance that helps a lot.
I think so long as you go in looking for a sequel to Dangerous Driving rather than necessarily a revival of Burnout, you'll have pretty realistic expectations for what's on offer here. It has it's highs, and it has it's rough edges. I paid just £30 and I feel I got a £30 game out of it. You'll have to decide for yourself whether you want a £30 racing game.

This is actually turning out to be my surprise of the year. I've played the previous Three Fields games, and yeah, not the greatest. With each one they've gotten a little bigger and better, but this is finally the modern Burnout-esque game I've been hoping for from them since the start. It might even be better than Burnout Paradise. Mind you, that isn't my favorite Burnout, I like the ones between 2 and Paradise the most (so Takedown, Legends, Revenge, and Dominator), but Paradise was a good game and this is shaping up to be a better one in some ways.
So let's get onto why this game is good, because there's a sizeable amount of it. Firstly, the map is enormous. Staggeringly huge. I'm almost wondering if it's too big. I was watching a Youtube stream the day this game came out and people in the comments were griping that the map is only deceptively large since it seems like the only playable areas are the thin roads stretching through an enormous map. Oh no. Every inch of the map is traversable, even up mountains. And not just that, the wilds aren't endless trees with nothing to see and nothing to drive, there's a lot to do out there. Dirt roads and railroad tracks and hidden billboards and gates and items and areas put there just for humor or beauty or weirdness. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's some weird and funny stuff out there. Exploration is a big part of this game.
I also like how the cars handle though I didn't at first. They're HEAVY. But I've always preferred cars to feel on the heavy side in racing games (shoutout to the original 3DO Need for Speed), it really gives the feeling that you're actually driving a 3000lb. cube of steel and glass. This makes the shunting and jousting and takedowns with the other cars feel all the better, because you really need to strike them to get them to move. Give it an hour and you'll get used to it, it's just a little jarring at first since most driving games don't really do heavy handling and weight anymore. Also, pro tip, the right stick controls your camera angle. In its default position I find it too far back, especially the faster you're travelling.
I'm also enjoying the challenge. The game isn't impossibly hard or anything, but it's tougher than you'd think. You need to be on point to get gold trophies and the AI is tough, most billboards actually require finesse to hit, and when you try to take down a special car outside races to add it to your collection, the game seriously makes you work for it. I've taken down two special cars, the first one was roughly a 5 minute chase and the second one about 10, jousting and fighting the whole time. It actually feels like an accomplishment when you take one of them down.
Also, the game runs great. On my 4070 Ti I have it playing at 4K, everything at max for now since I didn't feel like tinkering at the moment, DLSS Balanced, and getting a steady 115-120 fps. There's shader compilation stutter early on, but that's how it goes nowadays. The game isn't a graphical powerhouse but it's no slouch, and 4K is a demanding resolution to push on most cards except the very top end. I also love that you can go out to the map screen and instantly lose 20-25 degrees from your GPU temp when you want to give it a breather. Use it as your pause screen when you need to take a leak.
I'm just scratching the surface. I have yet to try creating maps, or multiplayer, or live mixing the weather or radio (the radio is awesome! I've been listening to Arena non-stop, the hair metal station), or remixing the roads with jumps and loops, and so on. There's just a metric ton to do in this game. Among other things I didn't mention is it has a day-night cycle with multiple kinds of weather from snow to thunderstorms to fog. You can explore everywhere to the point where it might even need a Platformer tag, never mind Exploration. It feels like a throwback sandbox game from the 2000s in that there's so much to do and find on your own, all done with a sense of humor and fun.

I played the game straight from release and have enjoyed playing it. Sure it's had/ still has some issues, but a number of them have already been sorted through patches. It's just some good ol' arcadey chaotic fun. The handling of vehicles I found a bit mixed at the beginning, but I can tell the improvements after some updates. Performance has been a bit up and down, over 40 hours of playing, about 3 crashes, and 3 (of the same type of game breaker (which I think has been fixed) and one time playing online with friends it was stuttering for everyone (could have been server issue?), because the first time we played it was fine. Also remember this was a team of 10 people and considering many other games (including racing games like Forza Horizon, The Crew, Burnout Paradise) also have had issues at launch, yet I feel like many players forget that.

The good:
EVENTS- A nice variety of events, most of which you'll recall from previous Burnout games. Races, time trials, road rage, stunts. You can even make your own events and challenges which you can also play with friends.
LIVE MIX/DJ MENU- Make stunt tracks, place down props (like ramps, hoops, random stuff). Change the weather, time of day, traffic amount, car stuff, even change the name of the roads and cars.
PHOTO MODE- It actually has a nice amount of options to it to spice up your photo.
(I'd love a replay mode, but I've heard that it can be tricky to implement)
CARS- A good amount of cars with classes including Muscle, Hyper, Race, Off road, and they've just added a free content pack adding more vehicles, including police cars.
DRIVING- Sense of speed is fantastic with the camera zooming out, blur, FOV change. Crashes are great when they don't glitch the heck out (though it can be funny) Handling is fine for the most part, the drifting is almost a no go in some vehicles however, I haven't tested them all out after the latest patch.
MAP- I like it, it's not the best as a lot of it is trees and mountains, but that's so you can build your stunt tracks. You have got big long roads, dirt tracks, drifting corners, mountain roads, beach tracks, a train track. There are a lot of farms (so barns and such) but there are things like scrap yards, oil field, a dinosaur park, football fields, police stations, gas stations, hospitals, huge bridges, broken bridges, billboards to smash, ramps and more. You explore the map to find events/challenges and live mix prop parts.

Mixed:
PHYSICS- There can be issues with things you collide with whether that with other cars or things on the map. I've had at least 4 times where I've launched into the sky. But with 40 hours of playing the game when writing this, that's not too bad? You will notice the AI opponents suffer from more wonky moments I'd say, most of the time it doesn't impact gameplay it just throws you off and makes you go "what?". When things do go wonky it's normally collisions where your car goes inside another car causing it to freak out. Also just trying to use props like ramps/ spirals can cause the car to crash sometimes which can be annoying. Think it's certain cars, but unsure.
AI- At launch they were at their worst but after patches they're much improved. I think in races they suffer badly with the rubberbanding, you could be miles ahead but then a moment later they'll overtake you. I get it's to keep them in the races, but instead of making them keep up in the first places, they suddenly have a rocket boost going way past their top speed.
DRIFTING- At first I gave up with the drifting, but after updates I do it way more often. It can still be a bit janky though, with certain cars though.
STYLE- It doesn't quite have its own identity. It's got hints of Dangerous Driving, Burnout, and then something newish. But nothing really stands out, compared to Burnout Paradise or NFS Hot Pursuit let's say.
ONLINE- Just from the few times I've played online with friends, it's cool that others can see you place props down and such, do events/ challenges together, but it's missing AI racers (I couldn't get it to work, even though it implies it should). You also can't share stunt tracks and events. When there were no performance issues though we did have fun driving around the map doing some events and crashing into each other. OH, and the football (soccer ball) isn't synced up so makes it almost useless.

For me after its updates- 7/10 (originally probably a 6)
I have had fun playing it more so, had a bunch of annoying moments, but it keeps on improving with every update so far. Will keep playing it and hope it gets updated further.

TL,DR; if you're on the fence, wait for some updates to patch the few odd bugs and tweak the little areas. If you absolutely must have some sort of burnout experience and understand this is a new title freshly launched from a team of 10 dedicated devs, absolutely pick up this game.
GOOD;
- Burnout paradise vibes down to a T with the controls practically the same as that game
- The ability to customize the map and street names adds an extra layer of personalization above just the wacky track pieces
- Burnout game modes, billboards, smash gates and Burning r- wreckonings are all here!
- Cars look and sound amazing just like the burnout cars of the past
- Actual sense of speed (bite it Forza)
- GIgantic map full of stuff to find, smash, and gather
- Lots of radio stations, but putting on the burnout 3/paradise soundtrack'll give you the best experience
- Plenty of events to do around the map (people say single player feels dead but it's the exact same as paradise just on a larger map so not sure what the problem is)
DOWNSIDES
- Game is very stuttery on start-up but can be fixed by fiddling with your graphics settings in the easydrive menu. This doesn't completely alleviate the stuttering, but on my 3-year-abused 10400f 3060 rig it seems to have calmed down severely
- Traffic is a little too strong, even light taps can write off your car which can turn a road rage into a controller spiking incident
- Drifting is a lot looser than paradise; the feel is there but counter-steering is non-existent and the car can act strange when trying to exit a slide
- I miss Atomika too but that doesn't mean making the new VO repeat tutorial lines every 3 seconds will fill the void (you can turn off the VO audio if you wish, I have)
Honestly for a team of 10 people trying to capture the magic of what was a Triple A game, it's definitely a good, albeit slightly wobbly basis. If you're on the fence I'd wait until the game gets some updates and is patched up, but as it stands Wreckreation's intent is clear and, bugs or not, shows a lot of promise for the future.

I'm giving this game a political thumbs up and will proceed to kindly screw the game as it currently deserves. I hope 3Fields Entertainment survives in some capacity, but there's nothing to be gained from pretending this wasn't going to happen.
Wreckreation dev "forced" to put staff at risk of redundancy because publisher Embracer offers no "enthusiasm or financial support"
Well, this whole situation is already bad enough to make me run a good cop - bad cop scenario. This game is completely wacko, so why wouldn't my review be?
Good Cop: Fuck Embracer.
Bad Cop: I agree.
Good Cop: But the game has so much potential.
Bad Cop: So does every game, including plenty from studios with much better track records. And, so did every game, including the studios which gone extinct.
Good Cop: But it's simply cruel to fund an indie studio and leave them to dry.
Bad Cop: While correct, as one might say, once is a happenstance (Danger Zone), twice is a coincidence (Dangerous Driving), and thrice is a pattern (Wreckreation).
It may sound cruel, but... I'm all for blaming Embracer all day, that's easy. What's hard is conveying the message that this game is actually worthwhile. If only all those people who tweeted about how bad the news was had actually bought and played the game... They would have funded it, but now the studio needs 65k per month, which is simply unsustainable.
People are aware of the dire situation 3Fields is facing, but they still don't engage with the game. The game's content doesn't travel word of mouth. I can only do my part, giving it a shot.
To put it simply, I know my 3Fields stuff well enough. They are a low-rank studio, and you could easily tell Dangerous Driving was a low-budget product. It's fine. I guess that "feel," that limited scope, somehow made me like Dangerous Driving more than Wreckreation which was supposed to be a sequel in the first place. It was their ambition to turn this into a whole ''sandbox'' adventure.
Speaking of which, it's not a lie that Wreckreation's sandbox has a ton of potential. Burnout this, Burnout that. Fuck that, man. There isn't a single outlet that can avoid mentioning Burnout. It's an inescapable black hole. Before positioning itself as a successor to Burnout, it must first repurpose itself into a genuinely fun racing game.
Look, it's perfectly fine to align your vision with a game series —much more understandable when the studio's founders worked on that project— but you must be doing something wrong if you seemingly cannot escape the shadow of a former series. Perhaps Burnout died so other arcade racers could live. And to strive toward that goal, you only have to innovate. I'm afraid to say that Wreckreation, despite every tool at its disposal, is nowhere near competing with Burnout, and it also can't compete with Bugbear's Wreckfest —which is now seven years old, and there are people still think Wreckreation is sort of a spin-off to that.
The wildest thing (besides the fact I just played TDU2 this year, thought it had the most insane, bizarre physics of all, and Wreckreation somehow topped it) is that Wreckreation is an amalgamation of many things, including (lmao) Burnout, FlatOut, NFS, and even Blur.
The handling is essentially what makes a racer fun. When it comes to a high-octane, "all gas, no brakes" type of destruction/collision-based game, you need to be engaging right out of the gate. You just gotta. And I've got to say that most of the reviews are bullshitting. You won't spend most of your time in the open world (unless you're really thirsty for a collectathon racer) because it's pointless. The map is quite big and never reaches the heights of being an engaging sandbox.
Yes, you can "place" stuff, but I can't see how you're incentivized to. The game seems to be big (or at least it was) on multiplayer and sandbox aspects, but they're oversold. I spent most of my time grinding road races and road rages (which involve knocking out opponent cars). They are ubiquitous and are a collectathon in themselves.
I can only bet one of the reasons the collision is this bad lies in the fact that the game doesn't really have any complexity or an actual learning curve, so the only punishment comes from a limited number of tries in Road Rage and losing time or crashing (thus restarting) in Road Race when you slightly bump into a fucking rock. I've seen people complain about both modes, but it's fairly easy to keep up with Road Rage (you'll rarely run out of time), and winning (as in placing 1st) in road races is again fairly easy but for some reason, gold medals are rather hard to earn. That usually comes from the fact that you constantly need to boost and collide with other cars, which on paper confirms the game's motto: "Drive dangerously and aggressively." But at the same time, this is not a game that rewards shortcuts or cutting corners; you kinda need to follow the lane, wreck through checkpoints (to earn further boost), and actually drive somewhat clean. I just don't get the point. It's nothing like Burnout, as a matter of fact. Bumping into opponents may also boost them (with an incredibly wacky animation) which would have been quite undesired.
The traffic has weird behaviors and occasionally gets locked in the open world (my heart was not ready for another gridlock after MindsEye). Events are spaced out, and while there are Parks that allow you to fast-travel, you might miss them if you run from one event to another (which is essentially how you unfog the map, and yes, the map is fogged, which is fine). You need to drive to an event —even if you've completed it previously— to start it, and you cannot fast-travel to previously unlocked events. That's a massive oversight. The map is actually somewhat hard to read and has the same color palette everywhere, no matter the terrain or landscape.
It's also annoying that when a race ends (despite there being no given input to do so) and you don't restart within a short period, it'll automatically kick you back to the open world. I had to learn about it the hard way when I was relaxing my fingers after busting my ass pressing turbo the whole race.
I feel controllers haven't been adequately filtered, and collision is inconsistent between races and the open-world free roam. The UI is more like a template (and luckily, that's gonna change), and there's simply no virtue in adding hundreds of the "same" races when there could have been more GTAV Playlist/Trackmania-type tracks (they're the best part of the game cuz, hey, you don't engage with traffic, and it's really high-octane with stunts!), stunt races, and an actual crash mode. Not only would they add more identity, flair, and diversity but the current races wouldn't have been as overtuned.
With all that said, it's also great to see a Tight Rope mode in the works and on the roadmap. That kind of stuff is what Wreckreation desperately needs —not more cars (people don't even recognize that there are showdowns that unlock cars in a fashion similar to Burnout) or crossplay for a game that is simply not being played.
I hate how a vignette plays every time you take down somebody, and you must watch it for the 1000th time. It's also in real-time, so it may lead you to make a mistake. It kills the entire flow of the game.
Furthermore, I must highlight that the competition is as stiff as the game's handling. Yes, 2025 has been rough for racers, and 3Fields added insult to injury, but there are still plenty of old games, including Onrush, that added an actual twist. There's Wreckfest 2, an actual Early Access game with plenty of room to grow. It's just how it is.
I am well aware 3Fields is a studio of less than a dozen people, but your game needs to ooze charisma, that's the only way to strike through people's hearts as an indie. Good luck!..
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
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Look, this is exactly what AA games should be. Lower budget, familiar gameplay, but doing something weird and interesting. This isn't super innovative, this isn't trying to be a work of art. It's just a fun racing game that lets you crash into other racers like Burnout and the later Need For Speed games did before it.
Heck, it's published by the corpse of THQ - the kings of AA games.

Is it jank? Oh yes. Is it odd? Most definitely. Is it good fun? Oh yes. Please try this game.
Did you enjoy Burnout: Paradise? Were you frustrated like me that no game (apart from maybe Most Wanted 2012) ever properly followed it up? Are you okay with it being revived if it's by a budget indie studio trying their hearts out? If so, please give this a shot. If not, still give it a shot. It's the first game I'd describe as "properly Burnout" in nearly 15 years, and once you get past the first hour or so and used to the admittedly strange handling and very straightforward gameplay loop, it's like stepping into a time distortion. Takedowns, road rage, car shutdowns, billboards, smash gates, time trials, it is *all* still here, and still a blast. The building systems are pretty intuitive (I just wish the game gave you more reason to use them) and the soundtrack, while mostly public domain, jams pretty hard. Great engine noises too! I can't comment much on performance with a 4080, but I can say it's pretty at full settings.
To TFE: Thank you for making this, seriously. I've had 32 hours of fun and I'm still not done.