One of the most exciting games unveiled at THQ’s showcase today was Wreckreation. It’s a Trackmania or Hot Wheels Unleashed style racing game with a focus on custom content and on-the-fly course editing.
The game’s trailer features bewildering local radio chatter about a gravity-defying race track that suddenly appears in the sky. The trailer demonstrates the game’s ability to build and customize tracks by placing and resizing obstacles and using the track feature as a race for other players/NPCs.
Car-to-car violence certainly piques my interest. The Trackmania series has long offered ‘Hot Wheels-sized’ racing action on rollercoaster-like courses, but with a focus on pure time trial gameplay. Wreckreation seems to offer something a little more nasty. Gradually damage your car to wear it down and you can push your opponent off the road. It’s like a free-for-all game for his four from Smash Bros., using items only from Fox in Trackmania to his Final Destination.
Wreckreation’s sandbox building also has a lot of potential. While Trackmania games have more traditional level editors, Wreckreation seems to have something similar to Halo’s Forge mode, editing the world on-the-fly alongside an active race. Entertainment Boasting the ability of a veteran of the Burnout series (opens in new tab)— These people know arcade racing. There is no release date for Wreckreation yet, but a page has been published on Steam.