Wreckfest 2 early access is as stripped back as its bumperless bangers, but at least Bugbear’s bashing together a good chassis

My windscreen replaced by a wall of racing-suited flesh and jagged metal, I floor it, mashing the accelerator to push whatever power my battered engine can still muster to wheels that may not even still be attached. The car creeps forwards at about 12 KPH for less than 30 seconds.

SLAM. Yep, definitely that’s me wrecked. Time to respawn and crash again.

That was the loop which made the first Wreckfest tick. The FlatOut successor Bugbear Entertainment gradually built up and tweaked into possibly the most fun arcade racer on the market is a lesson in doing what you say in the tin, and doing it brilliantly. In a sea of confused simcades and often pretty dry sims, it knew exactly what kind of battered, rusty hatchback crudely painted to look like a shark it was.

Has Bugbear managed to re-capture that feeling and supercharge it with enough new parts to outdo itself with Wreckfest 2 so far? It’s hard to say, but at this very early point in early access, I’m tending towards yes. It might seem a bit un-Wreckfest to hide behind qualifiers, but the first thing that’ll stick out to you if you fire up this would-be successor right now is that it’s definitely taking the early bit of EA seriously.

There’s no music at all, which means a wonderfully terrifying silence hangs in the air as you navigate menus to pick which car you’re going to sacrifice to the scrap gods and the venue that’s going to play host to that crime. Right now, you’ve got four rides to choose from, with two being instantly recognisable updated versions of classic original Wreckfest muscle cars – the Roadslayer and the Rocket. The other two are new and their names reflect that, with “American 1” being a US-style family sedan that looks very mid-2000s and “European 1” basically being a boxy 80s VW Golf in all but name.

Track-wise, it’s a similar story. The main route of the Savolax Sandpit folk racing ring returns, and one of the two layouts of a new track – the Scrapyard – is basically a revamped version of the first game’s ever-chaotic jump-heavy figure eight Bonebreaker Valley. Beyond those, there’s the main Scrapyard circuit which is the usual kind of banger circuit with some crossovers, a Kingston Raceway-esque asphalt oval that also boasts a figure eight variant and a demolition arena, and the testing grounds.

The latter’s a BeamNG.Drive-style playground of different jumps and hazards designed to let you play around and, well, test Wreckfest 2’s physics/damage model, but each event in it is set up like the usual demo derby mechanically, rather than being straight-up free roam.

If you hop into a single player race or derby, you’ll unsurprisingly be battling against AI foes, but don’t expect them to have proper names as they do in the full version of Wreckfest. Instead, it’s BOT 35 smashing into BOT 2, as BOT 15 powerslides past you. Early access, baby.

So, how’s the actual gameplay? Well, in short, I think it’s the rough foundation of what could very much become a strong step up on the first Wreckfest. One of the first things I noticed, especially when behind the wheel of the throaty muscle cars, is that Wreckfest 2 seems to be a big improvement in the car audio department. There’s not a large pool yet, but each of the cars in the current early access build boasts an engine note that sounds a lot more distinct and richly-delivered than the often kinda samey drones the original’s rides had.

Both the car models and the environments look to be rendered with greater fidelity and more detailed textures – though that does come with the slight caveat that my view could be skewed a bit by having done most of my OG Wreckfesting on PS4, and these impressions being from PC early access. As for how they feel to drive, the answer’s pretty good. There’s no simming going on here, but things feel less like your car’s just floating along in between the tyre-screeching turns and sudden stops. One thing I did quickly notice is that Wreckfest 2’s cars seem to be wired a lot harder towards requiring a very oversteery setup on oval tracks with long, sweeping bends or ones with tight turns.

With a controller, I was suffering a boatload of understeer in such corners if I didn’t initiate a drift big enough to lose me time, to the point where I went into the settings and tried messing with the dead zone settings in an effort to tighten up my turning circle into something less like a what a cruise ship might have. On a wheel, things were much better, with the ability to go lock-to-lock and deliver proper dabs of oppo when sliding really helping the situation.

On more traditional circuits, you’ll find yourself leaning against other racers in tight packs early on, recreating the classic Wreckfest banger race challenge of trying not to get spun out and picking the path of least resistance past whichever accidents are inevitably taking place at various points in the lap.

But, what about those crashes, those bumps, those scrapes, you ask? Well, I’d say the initial moment your car connects with another that’s moving at a decently different velocity is maybe a bit less crunchy and explosive compared to the first game. That’s not to say a lot of damage isn’t being done and your wheel isn’t liable to be thrown out of your hands momentarily if you’re not holding on tight enough, but things are maybe a tad less worthy of being accompanied by cartoony BOOM and KER-SLAM splashes.

It’s very much still possible to get smashed up or smash things up in satisfying fashion – just see the intro to this article, but the damage model feels a bit more complex this time around, something that’s added to by the fact the little notifications you get about specific parts being not in the best shape come in a bit more of a variety. You’ll still be handily told stuff like ‘oops, a wheel has become detached’ and ‘oh brother, this engine’s taken a beating’, but I don’t recall being told before that my radiator was leaking or that my “big end bearings” had been damaged. It did seem a bit unclear how much of a tangible impact these extra details were having on my car’s performance, but they are things that’re a bit less obvious to notice mid-race/fight than, for example, one of your gears taking longer to click in or suddenly having three round things on your wagon.

Delving into a few derbies didn’t really aid me in checking this either, possibly not helped by the fact there’s nothing big enough in Wreckfest 2’s garage at the moment to be a clear ‘tank that can take a lot of damage’ rolling weapon in the way the likes of the first game’s MudDigger or Warwagon are. That’s not a new thing, the original Wreckfest’s early access was without such vehicles to my knowledge, in both cases likely with the intention to stop everyone gravitating to the same car for such events since beefing up your ride via customisation isn’t possible yet – unless painting it pink counts.

You can still have plenty of the usual fun in these events despite this, but suddenly going back to being without the David vs Goliath element latter-stage Wreckfest developed is noticeable. Maybe I’m just suffering from school bus vs driveable loo showdown withdrawal, and all of that ridiculousness will no doubt be coming to Wreckfest 2 in time.

For now, though, the base online multiplayer and single player modes work as advertised, aside from a bit of frame rate droppage I got in one race around the scrapyard. Playing against real people also comes with the added benefit, at least in my case, of watching someone in the text chat suddenly start typing out the lyrics to a certain Britney Spears song as part of plea to the silent session overlord to give the upcoming race more laps.

“Ray tracing [is] for big-balled men” and “Has anyone seen my dad?” are some other things I’ve seen yelled into the void. It’s still a bit too early to tell for definite if Wreckfest 2’s interesting changes to the successful formula will result in a finished product that surpasses its predecessor. But hey, at least we know the community of people determined to give you reasons to want to drive into them so fast their knees end up in weird places has successfully made the jump from that game to what feels like a pretty good early access foundation.