Wreckfest 2 Early Access Review

Break out your neck braces because Wreckfest 2 – the hard-ramming, door-slamming second coming of the hit 2018 demolition racer from smash ’em up specialists Bugbear – has officially T-boned Steam early access. With some stunning track design, a rich array of sound refinements, and even better handling than the original, the early signs are extremely promising. Early, however, is the operative word here, and my experience of Wreckfest 2 so far has been a little uneven. While I absolutely adore the driving feel, the throaty roar of overworked engines, and the metal-mashing mayhem, what’s currently being sold is very slim in terms of toys to smash together and I have suffered a number of crashes – but not the kind I crave in a destruction derby game.

On Steam, “early access” can mean many things, but most commonly it’s either a very rough draft version of a game that will evolve in major ways over the course of a long development (a la Assetto Corsa Evo), or a rather polished vertical slice that holds back the remainder of the content for its 1.0 launch (such as the surprisingly hefty early access version of Tokyo Xtreme Racer). Like the original Wreckfest’s own early access launch before it, Wreckfest 2 arrives as the former. It’s just a demo, really; the kind of thing that used to have a video game magazine glued to the back of it. Here we get four cars, three environments with a couple of tracks each, and a virtual map full of enormous jumps and stunt props. Long-time fans of Bugbear’s games may recognise some of those from the very first “technology sneak peek” demo for Wreckfest way back in 2013, when it was still under the working title ‘Next Car Game’ and fighting its way back to life after a failed Kickstarter. It’s a cute nod to the origins of the Wreckfest story and good fun to tool around in for a bit, even if the enormous ramps, basketball rings, car crushers, and cannons don’t have quite the same novelty in 2025 as they did just over a decade ago.

More impressive is the new Scrapyard environment, which is incredibly eye-catching thanks to the sheer amount of interesting salvage strewn all over the place, and it’s overflowing with destructible objects. Scrapyard is currently home to two circuits that snake their way through huge mountains of loose tyres and stacked car wrecks. These aren’t just cubes with the texture of a crushed car slapped on it; they’re all individual, stripped-down car shells looming like Jenga towers all over the place. What’s impressive is that there are dozens of them, on top of the two dozen running cars that are already screaming around the course trying to put you into a pole at the first opportunity. Some racing games operate under a strict look-don’t-touch philosophy, with invisible walls protecting the carefully crafted trackside props, and pinballing cars away from having any meaningful interaction with anything located off the main racing strip. That was never Wreckfest – and it wasn’t Bugbear’s original FlatOut games before it – but Wreckfest 2 dials the destruction up several notches. It’s a total spectacle, and it’s quite remarkable how smoothly it runs on my setup (RTX 4080, Intel Core Ultra 9 185H) looking as good as it does. It’s a fabulous looking racer, and how Bugbear maintains this massive level of destructibility without major fidelity sacrifices remains a mystery.

The cars aren’t exactly in concours condition, but they’re still bursting with detail and character. The sophisticated, location-based damage modelling that puts dents exactly where they should be as a result of your reckless driving is obviously still front-and-centre – and it remains what sets Wreckfest 2 apart from its peers. This time around, however, it’s even more nuanced. HUD warnings will let you know if you’ve thrown a tyre off a rim, and they’ll slowly chart the death of your engine after you cop damage to your radiator. That is, once your coolant’s gone you can expect your pistons and bearings to go too, along with your head gasket. On track, this appears to translate to your car belching black smoke. I can’t detect a major car performance hit when that happens, though, and I haven’t hit a point yet where my engine packs it in entirely. Broadly, I’m wondering whether engine rebuilds after this sort of damage might be a feature in career mode in the final game, but right now it’s too early to tell, in part because no car or engine tinkering or tuning is currently possible in this initial build. The original Wreckfest features a great upgrade system so it’s unlikely this will remain absent from Wreckfest 2, but the only thing we can do for now is apply paint.

There is impressive and distinct audio for an aching engine as opposed to a healthy one, and it’s part of an noticeably improved tapestry of sound overall. I particularly love the crackle of Wreckfest 2’s new (and currently unnamed) riff on a third-generation Chevrolet Cavalier (for clarity, it was initially dubbed the ‘Striker’, but following some fixes it’s now just called the ‘American 1’). I did initially have some early sessions where layers of sound would gradually drop out – first the engines, then impacts – until I was racing in silence, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it lately.

The actual racing, fortunately, is great. The AI is suitably belligerent, quick when they extract themselves from the pack, and prone to unpredictability and mistakes. Traditional racing and destruction derby are the only modes currently available, though. That does wear thin fairly quickly, but I can’t wait to see what other modes Bugbear has in tow for the final release. Caravans, please – as long as we’re speaking about towing.

The new off-brand Cavalier is actually my favourite of the four available cars to drive, as its front-wheel drive layout makes it quite stable. It’s also easier to recover from being turned around by aggressive competitors. By contrast, the pair of muscle cars here are a hoot to drift, but they generally just want to rotate the moment the AI starts harassing you. Of course, that is part of the deal of a high-contact racer like Wreckfest 2. You’re not going to get much sympathy for being crashed into.

Unfortunately, the crashing I do have had a minor problem with was Wreckfest 2 itself crashing to my desktop. I haven’t really been able to pin down what’s triggering it, and it’s been unpredictable. One afternoon I had a whole string of crashes, straight from the middle of races. The next day, not one. Obviously, as an early access project, Bugbear has plenty of scope to iron out such problems – but it’s still a caveat worth considering for those interested in buying Wreckfest 2 immediately in its current (and very much still gestating) form.