Wreckfest is an all-out brawl of a racing game. Races are full-contact, with track designs that encourage massive shunts as cars criss-cross and shove other vehicles into barriers. Made by Flatout dev Bugbear Entertainment, Wreckfest represents a long-awaited return to form for demolition derby games. After debuting on PC in 2018, it’s since crossed over to current and last-gen consoles – and this week, the Nintendo Switch. Today, we’ll be taking a look at Wreckfest across all console formats, with a particular emphasis on Switch. Just how well can this game scale from Nintendo’s hybrid console all the way to PS5?
Wreckfest’s claim to fame is its destruction. Vehicle damage is fully simulated here, with cars that realistically crumple and disintegrate as they collide. Crashes leave bits of fender and sheet metal strewn over the track, and often send pieces of concrete barriers or tire walls into the air as well. The damage system is backed by a solid handling model, with weighty-feeling vehicles that demand care when navigating corners – but some arcade characteristics that prevent mistakes from being too punishing.
Technically speaking Wreckfest is a good-looking but not especially ambitious title, outside of its superb car damage model. Cars are highly detailed, there’s plenty of trackside geometry, and pop-in is minimal – but indirectly lit shots often look quite flat, car reflections are quite basic and anti-aliasing is absent. It’s a slightly unusual feature set, which is perhaps explained by its initial development in 2012 by a smaller team on a custom engine, but it turns into a winning formula for Switch: conservative rendering tech plus a custom, tweakable engine.
In fact, at a glance, the Switch release looks similar to the last-gen console versions with all core rendering tech intact and a 1600×900 resolution that isn’t far from the 1920×1080 used on Xbox One. It’s only by looking more closely that the downgrades become visible – such as low quality textures and simpler foliage that don’t receive lighting or cast self-shadows. Some other trackside details are moderately simplified as well, like the crowds, while car geometry has been streamlined with boxier fenders, filled-in exhausts and smoothed-out seams. There seem to be some tweaks to post processing too, with motion blur entirely absent. Despite these cuts, Wreckfest holds up nicely and honestly the cuts here are pretty minimal relative to other recent Switch conversions we’ve seen – such as topically similar WRC 10.
Performance is quite solid as well. Just like the last-gen releases, 30fps is the target frame-rate, and it’s mostly achieved. During gameplay, certain dense sections of track or lots of cars onscreen can sometimes cause brief performance drops, while replays are more troublesome and often hit 20fps for extended periods. It looks like Wreckfest is using double-buffered v-sync, so drops are very noticeable when they do occur. Thankfully though, frame-rates are surprisingly consistent overall.