Almost 18 years have gone by since the release of Burnout Paradise – the last instalment of a short-lived, yet tremendously iconic racing franchise. Its legacy persists, but we never had a truly worthy spiritual follow-up to the Burnout games. Three Fields Entertainment‘s latest title tries to be exactly that, but also a lot more. After a long and excruciating wait, here it is, racing fans: this is XboxEra’s review-in-progress for Wreckreation, played on Xbox Series X!
Once upon a time
The Burnout franchise blasted into the racing scene with the power of a thousand suns. Offering ridiculously fast and spectacular racing with devastatingly destructive crash sequences, this series became a mainstay in any arcade racer fans’ libraries. Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout Revenge, in particular, are lauded to this day as some of the best track-based arcade racing games ever made. The industry was changing, however, and in 2008, the franchise turned open world with Burnout Paradise. Still a stellar game, though it lost some of its identity in the transition to a new game formula.
And then… absolutely nothing. Despite said game receiving a long post-launch support, a re-edition and a great remaster, the franchise has not since been seen. That, and the backwards compatible Xbox 360 version of Burnout Revenge are the only legal ways of playing these games today on a modern platform. The British developmeant team Criterion Games started working on Need For Speed games eventually – culminating in the pretty great Need For Speed Unbound. That franchise may be on its way out, too, unfortunately. Nowadays, Criterion Games are one of the many studios working on the Battlefield franchise (the latest of which we reviewed here and here).
History in the making
In 2014, three former Criterion Games employees formed Three Fields Entertainment. Seemingly unhappy with Electronic Arts‘ management of their team and their work, they decided to branch out, form a new team. Their goal has been evident from the start: try and build a proper spiritual successor to the Burnout games. The limited budget of the team meant that they had to do this step by step. They first created Dangerous Golf – a spectacular destruction-based golf, mimicking Burnout‘s iconic Crash mode. After that, they went for a proper, car-based recreation of said game mode – with Danger Zone and Danger Zone 2, respectively.
These were just a part of the Burnout package, though. A fun game mode where players have to launch their car into a busy intersection, trying to cause as much carnage as possible. All 3 games recreated the formula, rather well, too. A fantastic game mode, but we’re still missing the main course – the racing. Enter 2019’s Dangerous Driving, a sadly rather disappointing arcade racer, and before Wreckreation the team’s final game. It nails the Burnout vibes on a surface level, with a similar handling and track design, but a poor polish, minimal variety and the lack of a soundtrack made it a bit of a letdown.
More than Burnout
It became quite evident that, without a proper budget, Three Fields Entertainment may not deliver us the Burnout spiritual successor we crave for. Work on a more ambitious open world sequel began, and funding was secured via a seemingly lucrative deal with publisher THQ Nordic. The game was eventually announced with a new name, Wreckreation, and shown in 2022. Over three years passed since, with barely any trailer, no proper gameplay showcase, not a playable teaser or anything of the sort. Pretty much only a few, short clips, merely days before launch. After 6 years of development, Three Fields Entertainment‘s most ambitious game is upon us, and we barely even knew what to expect!
What the game promises is more than just Burnout. Iterating on Dangerous Driving‘s racing model, comes a massive open world sandbox to explore. Destructive races and events all across a world that can be explored solo or with other players. On top of many developer-made events, players can create their own tracks, organize events. The host of the session may as well have “dev mode” on. Indeed, they can change traffic intensity, time of day, weather, restrictions on the fly, even rename cars, streets and the town itself or add ramps and other track elements. It’s a sandbox like no other, really. But does it make for a compelling racer?
In the skies
Wreckreation’s opening race is a tad misleading. Not because it shows something that doesn’t normally happen in the game, more so because it takes a while to get there, and it’s not really what you’ll be doing most. It catapults players into a so-called “sky race”, reminiscent of GTA Online‘s custom races. Wide tracks in mid-air with ramps, boosts, loops and more. As the race begins, the game’s relative lack of budget and polish is quite evident. Not quite the first impression I wanted for Wreckreation, for sure.
The handling? Pretty floaty. The physics? Rather stiff in contacts. Drifts are initially a bit difficult to initiate. Sensation of speed is solid, though there’s an exaggerated use of motion blur, chromatic aberration and so forth. There’s also a lot of elements that seemingly reveal a lack of a clear artistic identity or, at least, coherence in style. A lot of oddly unexciting fonts, very generic 3D models and vistas, even some framerate drops here and there. Interestingly, there’s air controls and air brakes, but you barely get to try that just yet. The game tries to recreate the Burnout feeling in so many ways, but it doesn’t quite convince fully. This sky track segment tells us something: the core driving experience is absolutely not on par with genre’s bests. Quite far from it, in fact.
On the ground
This race ends with a jump, sending us back onto the ground. This is where the real Wreckreation begins. A giant open world, full of wide roads in forest areas, beaches, mountains, but not much in term of cities. At first, it does feel like a rather empty open world, void of things to do. Before long, however, it starts opening up. Billboards to smash, both in regular ways and with unique stunts. Gas stations to repair your car. Parking lots to change onto some new vehicle you may have unlocked. Unique, new vehicles to unlock via smashing them as they speed around. Tons of radio stations, a lot of car customization. And, of course, plenty of races and challenges. Burnout-style Road Rage events are back – basically, smash as many opponents as you can in a limited time. But most importantly: Live Mix, also known as Wreckreation‘s creative soul.
Anywhere you are, with the press of a single button, you can open what is essentially a free form editor mode. Throughout the open world, you’ll find floating tools to collect. Get them, because they’re the key to being able to place items onto the map. Ramps, banked turns, obstacles, custom signs, sky track pieces, dinosaurs: you name it. You’ll start with placing a ramp or a wooden bridge to reach an otherwise inaccessible floating collectible. Before long, you’ll find yourself customizing the road style of a massive, TrackMania-esque construction in the sky with loops, tubes and more.
Freedooooooom
What’s impressive is that these changes don’t need to be saved, nor they disappear when you reload the game. They will stay in “your” Wreckreation world forever, be it offline or online. It’s hard to overstate how ridiculous this is, but the player freedom in this game makes titles like Forza Horizon 5 look like linear campaigns. The player can build anything onto their open world, really. They can customize the weather, the traffic intensity, the collision rules. Even challenges, new on-track races, custom off-road paths with checkpoints can be created. Sky really is the limit.
And this is basically why we opted to make this a review-in-progress, rather than a definitive review. We had the game for about a week, by the time these words are published, and for most of that the game didn’t have its online servers on – surely, in preparation for launch. Despite offering a vast open world to explore in single player as well, with all the Live Mix elements, AI races and so forth, Three Fields Entertainment‘s latest is a social experience at heart. Custom events, session-based records about who can do the longest drift, biggest jump and so forth. You can even have others help you with creating brand new sky tracks. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to fully test these things out, without the community being around yet – especially with the game currently lacking crossplay, with me only being paired with other Xbox folks.
Ambition and jank
Thus, my opinion of Wreckreation keeps on changing – for the better, fortunately. The game’s presentation doesn’t quite do it any favours. Unimpressive graphics, odd visual design choices, floaty handling, physics and destruction that are legitimately worse than the old school Burnout games it’s trying to replicate. It also has its share of glitches with weird collisions, the framerate tanking temporarily at times and so forth. However, not only you get used to this, but the game just keeps improving. The open world keeps getting filled up, Live Mix keeps things fresh, and the possibilities of its online sandbox are practically limitless.
All in all, I intend to play Wreckreation for quite some time, as it finally launches for everyone to see on October 28th, 2025. It may not be the most polished or spectacular racing game on a surface level, but you get used to its jank, as you fill up its immense sandbox with cool things to do – alone or with buddies – there simply is no racing game with such an exhilarating and creative sandbox out there. This in turn makes me forgive some of its oddities and problems. If the community lives up to the game’s lofty ambitions, we might have quite the game on our hands. I will surely revisit Wreckreation after launch, as I’m very curious to see how it evolves from here.
Wreckreation
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Sensational creative options
- Game improves more and more as it opens up
- Very complete and exhilarating online
- Tremendous amount of content, even beyond the custom stuff
CONS
- It can be quite janky
- Inconsistent graphics and visual designs
- Handling is a bit stiff and needs some getting used to
