Chris InglisWreckreation is an arcade racing game developed by Three Fields Entertainment and publisher THQ Nordic and launched on October 28, 2025. As a spiritual successor to the Danger Zone series and with developers hailing from Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, two of my favourite racing games from the 00’s, I was pretty excited to see how they have evolved the formula. The game features a huge amount of creative freedom taking inspiration from games like TrackMania and Forza Horizon, all wrapped up in MixWorld, a huge open world sandbox with both track and stunt creations. It delivers on chaotic speed and destruction while the massive world is your digital creation playground being able to swap cars easily, customise them, and even adjust the time of day and traffic density to your desire.
The core driving experience is high-octane arcade racing but the arcade element is immediately evident. There is an emphasis on top speeds, spectacular takedowns, and a generous use of boost. If you are coming fresh out of other modern racing games, the car handling feels very arcadey from the moment you hit your first jump. Being able to manoeuvre the car left or right in mid-air with ease takes a lot of the immersive racing feel out of the game for me. However, I quickly got ‘back on track’ with takedowns and completing mini objectives like smashing through red gates or barrel rolling through an advertising billboard.
It’s been 17 years since Burnout Paradise released, and after a few races, the game opened up and has a familiar feel if you have spent time in Paradise City. Smashing rival cars in a takedown, leading to a slick slow-motion wreck sequence, is deeply satisfying and rewarding. Wreckreation features a variety of classic events including traditional races, time trials, and the destructive road rage events where the goal is to wreck a target number of opponents.
Car progression is handled via a Burnout-style license system, where winning events and achieving milestones unlocks new cars and more creation items. Cars come in four collections – bruisers, race cars, hyper cars and off-road trucks. Certain races you come across require specific cars, and you can hot swap cars by finding and travelling to parking lots. Parking lots also act as a fast travel system which makes the gameplay relatively fluid, getting you set for nearby racing action. Finding parking lots and gas stations becomes a priority, with the latter allowing you to recharge your boost and repair your car’s damage.
Taking out rivals with takedowns is fun, but the damage adds up quickly. I also tended to crash a lot as I usually use the handbrake often, but pressing X on the controller made the car do a quick 90-degree turn rather than feathering the hand brake for drifting. This meant I was ramming into barriers or rocks often. I thought I’d be able to smash through barriers at the speeds I was racing but nope, they are impenetrable forces and the cause of me losing some races by falling too far behind. The game also didn’t tell me I was going the wrong way after a big wreck. It wasn’t until I head-on collided with another car that I realised I was racing backwards.
Outside of those issues, the big draw card for Wreckreation is the Mix World feature. At any point you can open the GameDJ menu, pause the action, and choose from a number of dynamic options. Live Mix allows you to start building objects in the world such as jumps, loops, half-pipes, massive sky tracks, and moving obstacles almost anywhere you choose. You can customise the look of your car with paint and other aspects, however I have to point out – devs – you forgot the Australian and New Zealand flags!! You can also adjust the time of day and the density of traffic to create the world you want to race in.
During the review period, and given I am in Australia, I didn’t have an opportunity to invite anyone else into my game world or join others. As such, the open world roads can feel quite empty when you are free roaming and driving between events. The world is covered in a fog of war and so just simply exploring gives you a sense of discovery, but travelling long distances feels quite empty as a single player experience. Now that the game has launches, no doubt there will be much more opportunities to have multiplayer experiences which will help make the game feel more alive.
Overall, Wreckreation is an arcade racer that blends the explosive, high-speed destruction of Burnout with the creativity of a sandbox track builder. While the single-player experience can feel a bit sparce due to its vast, empty map, being able to complete challenges and utilise the Live Mix feature to go all creative in making stunts and track add-ons, there is a heap of multiplayer potential. If you are a veteran Burnout fan who misses the franchise’s specific brand of chaos, Wreckreation is an easy recommend.
This review utilised an Xbox key provided by Plaion ANZ and Wreckreation is out now on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation.
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Str8JaktJim