But there are also downsides to this entertainer from Three Fields Entertainment as it attempts to recreate the magic of Burnout Paradise. There’s no semblance of a story on offer here, which means that all of the mayhem you’re causing is left without context. The game’s controls and systems can feel obscure until you get the hang of what you’re doing in its expansive open world. And there are occasional performance issues that might have been forgivable if they didn’t interfere with the results of some very intense racing.

"The lack of assists like ABS or traction controls could put you off if you’re a casual racer."

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and begin with why this one had me sinking hours into discovering new types of races and hunting down new cars to gain that extra edge when taking said races on. Wreckreation is just fun, plain and simple. Its no-frills approach to getting you started right off the bat might even justify the lack of a narrative to frame it all.

I found myself quite immersed in its gameplay loop within an hour after I booted it up, and spent the better part of a rainy weekend mowing down any opponents who happened to get between me and the License Points I needed for my next rank and a potentially new car for me to wreak havoc with. Those vehicles came in different types, with each one having its pros and cons based on the situation it was supposed to tackle.

Race cars, for instance, are good for tearing through tracks and staying ahead of your rivals with the occasional slam or side swipe in order to get them off the road. Bruiser-class vehicles take on a more aggressive role, which gets quite handy in body slam races that require you to eliminate opponents as quickly as you can before the timer runs out. There are off-roaders and hypercars thrown into the mix as well, and special races that require a specific class of vehicle before you can take them on.

"Wreckreation is just fun, plain and simple."

You unlock cars either by levelling up through winning races, each of which nets you a few Licence Points that count toward your next rank, or by finding them out in the open world and taking them down and adding them to your growing fleet. Each car handles well, and keeping them on the road feels challenging enough to keep you engaged without putting off the more casual arcade racing game fan.

The lack of assists like ABS or traction controls could put you off if you’re a casual racer, but for the most part, the game does a reasonably good job of keeping you on the road, provided you handle your car well. While collisions are generally encouraged between racers, hitting a civilian can result in you losing valuable seconds during a race. Crashes during the open world, however, are easily rectified by visiting the nearest gas station for a full repair of your vehicle.

There’s also the option to tweak your car’s looks and make each one stand out via the MixWorld system, along with the aforementioned menu that lets you create custom tracks and events. However, this is where things could get a little dicey for some players. Designing your own track, or rather attempting to, could feel unintuitive and messy for some players. Moreover, the lack of optional body kits, spoilers, and other such customization options made the menu feel a tad limited, although that’s not much of a downer. However, I can see inventive players with a little more determination come up with excellent designs once the game gets some traction.

"Designing your own track, or rather attempting to, could feel unintuitive and messy for some players."

What was a lot more annoying was the limited amount of Licence Points you get, even when you finish first in a race. It made the experience feel too grindy for a title that’s focused on getting you behind the wheel of new and more powerful cars as soon as possible. This was especially irksome since the races themselves felt like they were designed to put you on the back foot very early and then have you scrambling to catch up and take your place at the top of the pack.

Allow me to explain. You begin a race only to find that you need to generate Wreckage Points in order to use your nitrous. You get those quite easily via collisions with your fellow racers or by disobeying the rules of the road, but not fast enough to prevent the majority of your rivals from leaving you behind in a cloud of dust. Once you have enough boost, speeding through a track requires you to be nearly perfect if you want to catch up, as even a single crash loses you valuable seconds that could cost you the race. You could always repeat races and attempt to rank better on them for the remaining Licence Points, but that’s no excuse for the poor balancing on display.

It takes a little getting used to, and you’re still going to find that you’re left behind too often when the rest of the game makes you feel like the star of the show. I’m not against earning my place at the top of the podium, but I couldn’t help but feel like Wreckreation wasn’t giving me a level playing field to begin with. However, I will say that catching up to my fellow racers and systematically taking them out of the equation was a thrill and a delight, with Takedowns being suitably satisfying to pull off and witness.

"I’m not against earning my place at the top of the podium, but I couldn’t help but feel like Wreckreation wasn’t giving me a level playing field to begin with."

Sadly, those thrills were marred by occasional performance issues such as stuttering frames that sent me careening off the track, or a few memorable jumps off ramps where the ground beneath me seemingly vanished into thin air and left me falling into an infinite void until the game decided to put me back to the last place of safety, which was inevitably quite a disadvantage. It didn’t help that there were races where I had clawed my way to the front of the line.

The lack of any options to tweak graphic modes stuck out a little, although the game runs fine on its default settings on a base PS5 aside from the aforementioned issues. Loading times are also quite quick, with the game getting you back into the action quite rapidly any time you fast-travel.

Another issue I had with the game was its collectibles. You either crash through red gates or billboards, with the game promising you a reward in the event you manage to get them all. However, their sheer number and the fact that the billboards need a bit of acrobatic trial and error on each one had me ignoring them altogether, choosing to have fun blazing a way to glory on the streets instead.

"Wreckreation is a fun game to dive into when you feel like just getting behind the wheel and causing some chaos on the streets."

While I couldn’t try out the game’s multiplayer options, my time with it was entirely solo. I can see how the ability to have your friends join in on the fun or dive into another player’s creations can be quite alluring. I just hope that the game’s performance doesn’t get in the way of the fun. The lack of cross-platform play is a bummer, though.

I must give credit to the game’s visuals and audio design, while the soundtrack is also solid and keeps things fun. I was especially impressed by the way different engine sounds play out, as well as crash impacts sounding quite realistic and meaty. Overall, Wreckreation is a fun game to dive into when you feel like just getting behind the wheel and causing some chaos on the streets. As an arcade racer set in a sandbox world, there’s a lot to like about it. You might even ignore its issues if you just want to let loose and drive cool cars around.

But would I recommend it to anyone looking for value from their games? I would say yes, with the hope that there are going to be a few updates to iron out its performance and balancing issues. You could, and perhaps should, wait a while to see if Three Fields does a bit of tweaking, and perhaps even pick it up on sale if the timing’s right.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Set to the backdrop of classical music, the trailer for Wreckreation shows off some of the epic creations that are possible in the game, going on to explain how the game’s track creation tools can be used.

The trailer shows that, not only can players build the racing tracks of their dreams, but that players can also theme their tracks however they want by placing different props. The trailer also shows that collaborative track creation is possible between multiple players, and indicates that some players can drive through tracks that are currently in the progress of being created.

Wreckreation was first shown off last year with a trailer. Developer Three Fields Entertainment calls the game the “ultimate open-world sandbox experience” for fans of racing games.

Wreckreation doesn’t yet have a release date, but we do know that the game will be making its way on to PC.

Designed to be the “ultimate open-world sandbox experience” for fans of driving games, Wreckreation will give players a 400 square kilometer world that is theirs to do with as they want. This world, dubbed a MixWorld, can be taken online to race around with friends.

The owner of a MixWorld is considered the main authority of that world in online play. This means that players can choose to either quickly whip up a new race course to play with their friends, or even figure out team-based stunt events. Other players can also be given temporary powers in a player’s MixWorld.

Customisation is a big theme in Wreckreation, with the ability to create insane race tracks, as well as customise cars with paint jobs, wheels, engine sounds, glass colours, tires, break lights, and even the option to switch between manual and automatic transmission.

When it comes to driving, the trailer indicates that it will allow players to go as crazy as they want, and destruction and general wreckage—as the game’s name might imply—are not only allowed, but encouraged.

Wreckreation doesn’t quite have a release date, but we do know that the game is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

The Burnout games, particularly Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout: Revenge, are highly renowned for their attention to detail, incredible speed, and messy crashes. A spiritual successor to the games in Dangerous Driving promises a similar experience, but isn’t able to quite match the frame rate of 60 FPS on base consoles (the game does manage 60 on the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X).

The reason for this, as developers Three Fields Entertainment’s co-founder Alex Ward (who also co-founded Burnout studio Criterion back in the day) revealed while sitting down with PlayStation Universe for an interview, was simply due to the size of the team. The former Criterion developers (the company behind the Burnout titles) make up a small studio of only seven people.

“The base hardware could probably run the game at 60fps but it would most likely be a full year of non stop optimization for a team of at least five people to achieve,” said Ward. “We’re seven people making our game on three platforms simultaneously. More time and more money would alleviate all of that, just like it would for any other developer.”

It’s an understandable situation considering the very small size of the studio compared to the scope of the game, and honestly, it’s impressive they managed the feat with the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X. Dangerous Driving is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

To learn about these changes and about the game’s development, Gamingbolt reached out to the developers at Three Fields Entertainment with some questions and they provided the following asnwers.

"The biggest change is the continued work we have done on the vehicles and what this has meant for the gameplay – the cars now drive at substantially higher speeds, drift corners, and take even bigger jumps"

Danger Zone 2 will be moving the action onto public roads. What exactly does this mean for the gameplay experience?

The move outside is an exciting one for us both in terms of the variety and immersiveness of the gameplay experience. The team looked at real accident hotspots in a variety of locations around the world. In the United Kingdom the team discovered that a stretch of Motorway just outside Leeds tops the league table for recording the most number of car accidents. In Spain, a few sections of the N-632 Autovia was responsible for keeping local repair shops very busy all year around. No data was available for the United States. However, the team found several links discussing ‘what are the ugliest intersections in the USA?” and used those as the basis for the US based levels. (These were the “Kennedy Interchange” in Louisville, the “Circle Interchange” in Chicago and a few others.). The team felt that the UK’s “Spaghetti Junction” on the M6 in Birmingham was a perfect setting for both a spot of Dangerous Driving and a perfect location to set a Danger Zone.

Apart from driving down public roads, what are some of the major changes players will find in this sequel?

The biggest change is the continued work we have done on the vehicles and what this has meant for the gameplay – the cars now drive at substantially higher speeds, drift corners, and take even bigger jumps. Three vehicles are able to earn and use Boost. These changes have enabled us to bring in much longer run ups and to introduce a Run Up Objective to every level whereby the Player is given a side objective as part of their approach to the main traffic hot spot of each Danger Zone.

Has the goal with this series been to replicate the crash mode from Burnout, or to just build upon it?

With every game we make we try and bring something new. We always said we would never make exactly the same game twice. The Run Up Objective and the new vehicle types like the Big Rig are examples of where we have taken it somewhere new.

What would you say is the most important thing to get right with a game in this genre?

So much! But the handling is of course all important as if that’s not right and the cars are not fun to drive it doesn’t matter what else you do.

From what we saw in the gameplay footage that was released, it looks like you will have to drive longer before getting to the crashes. What inspired this change?

It was a natural progression really. We had been doing a lot of work on things like drift and boost and so to include more driving in the levels was the obvious choice.

"We have tried to ensure that with every level there is something new to challenge the player."

The gameplay is fairly straightforward, so what prevents it from getting repetitive quickly?

We have tried to ensure that with every level there is something new to challenge the player. That’s another reason we added the Run Up Objective in order to add more strategy, tactics and depth.

Burnout is a title that is always associated with your work. Do you see this as an advantage, or does it bring too much pressure from fans of that game?

We are proud of the work on Burnout, the games we produced provided a lot of people with stable employment over 10 years and we also picked up a lot of fans along the way. To us we are right back at the beginning with a small team, this is like our Burnout 2 really.

What made you decide to make a sequel?

We see every game we make as a stepping stone, so each one builds on the last but takes it further and that in itself leads to the one after. So Danger Zone led naturally to Danger Zone 2 and that will lead to Dangerous Driving.

Will you be able to confirm the resolutions and frame rates of PS4 PRO, Xbox One X versions?

Xbox One X runs at native 4k resolution at 30 fps. Players can also opt to choose to play at 1080p 60 fps. On the PlayStation 4 Pro the game runs at 30 fps. Furthermore it runs at Temporal Checkerboard 4k rendering for players with 4k displays. 1080p TV users will have 150% super sampling.

"The challenge is always getting the game to a point where you are happy enough with it to release it"

And for the base versions i.e. the PS4 and Xbox One as well?

Xbox One version runs at 30 fps and 900p resolution. The PS4 version runs at 30fps and 1080p resolution.

Is there a specific reason why you are not launching on the Switch?

Time and budget. It’s something we would love to and we even had a dev kit and assessed how long it might take but we just have not been able to carve out the time.

Were there any particular challenges you faced when developing this game?

The challenge is always getting the game to a point where you are happy enough with it to release it. We would always like more time!

Is there anything more you’d like to tell our readers about the game?

Yes we included some player requested features such as an almost instant restart where with one button press you can be back in the game. We also included bumper cam as people were asking for it.

The steady decline of the car combat genre has to be one of the saddest things in our industry over the last few years. Onrush may have scratched that itch for many people, but it’s heart-breaking that the likes of Twisted Metal and Burnout are a thing of the past now.

Speaking of Burnout, though, Three Fields Entertainment – which is comprised mostly of employees from former Burnout developers Criterion – have been working on a new car combat title, called Danger Zone 2, which looks pretty good. But not only does it look good, it looks good.

We recently interviewed the team at Three Fields, and they fielded several questions, some of which were related to how the game will perform technically on consoles. The answers we got were quite impressive. On the Xbox One X, Danger Zone 2 will come with two modes, one which will prioritize performance at 60 FPS and render a 1080p resolution, while another mode will also be available that will support native 4K resolutions, but with a 30 FPS frame-rate.

On the PS4 Pro, meanwhile, the game will only run at 30 FPS, while a native 4K resolution will also not be supported. Instead, it will make use of temporal checkerboarding, and achieve 4K resolutions that way- for screens that support 4K resolutions, that is. If your screen doesn’t do that, the game will be rendered at 1080p, with a 15% supersampling boost.

But what about the base consoles? Well, the answer there is much simpler, and more aligned with standard expectations. On both the PS4 and the Xbox One, the game will run at a frame rate of 30 FPS. The PS4 version will sport a resolution of 1080p, while the Xbox One version will output at a 900p resolution.

Admittedly, it is a bit disappointing that the PS4 Pro version of the game does not support 60 FPS whatsoever, but it has to be said that the Xbox One X version of the game is looking impressive, at least based on those specs. Danger Zone 2’s launch is almost upon us- it launches tomorrow.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

The founders of Three Fields Entertainment, Fiona Sperry and Alex Ward, were also the founders and lead developers at Criterion Games. While with that firm, the two were part of a team that did work on both the Burnout and Need for Speed franchises. Sperry has said she always knew the most popular modes in these games were the Crash modes and the mini-game Burnout Crash! The point of these modes was to go into certain areas and cause as much wanton destruction as possible.

Sperry and Ward left Criterion after the studio was purchased by Electronic Arts, and the company started moving away from the games these developers loved. When the two started their new company, they had the stated goal of making what they were calling a spiritual successor to the Burnout series, though with the new studio’s own personal touches. Despite that game being their long term goal, both developers knew they would likely make another game before they could make another addition to this racing series.

When the company announced Dangerous Golf in January of 2016, the company said the game was a kind of bridge that led towards their next version of Burnout. Three Fields has said they arrived on this title in part because they wanted to make a short and fun game that still had aspects of the crash mode they found so popular in their other series.

The idea of making this kind of an arcade like golf game apparently came after the development team sat down and watch a number of videos that had people hitting ridiculous trick shots with golf clubs. Three Fields says it realized that a miniature golf game that centered around trick shots as well as wanton destruction was the concept of the game they wanted to work on, while at the same time the team called the idea “ridiculous. “ The team says it was the same kind of stupid and ridiculous that was around the Burnout racing game. The concept was “stupid” and “ridiculous” for a golf game in the same manner that Burnout had been in regards to the racing genre.

The team has said that the game was also a kind of test case, as the massive amount of destruction was a way for them to see how current technologies could handle this kind of game. They put the title on the Unreal Engine 4 in order to have as realistic physics and graphics as possible.

Three Fields has said they started prototyping Dangerous Golf by setting the scene in the palace level. In this particular palace, the developers had put a ton of different pieces of fine china in order to see just how much breakage and destruction they could come up with. The developers said they took the idea of one of the levels from the movie Clerks, where the idea for a convenience store level also came from.

Dangerous Golf was originally slated for a May, 2016 release but the company pushed the date back a month. Now Dangerous Golf is slated for release on the PS4, Xbox One and PC in June of 2016.

Story

Dangerous Golf does not have an actual story surrounding the game. The concept is that of trying to cause as much destruction as possible while playing through a rather interesting miniature golf course. The game doesn’t have characters so much as it just has players that go through the course.

Gameplay

Dangerous Golf has more than 100 different miniature golf holes that are all placed in different areas that come equipped with a ton of destructible items. While getting the ball in the hole on the course is one of the goals, the other part of the game is knocking around as many of these items as possible. Players earn points by crashing through the different pieces of scenery and these destruction scores are included in the score that is earned by actually playing out the hole.

Among the holes that are included in the massive miniature golf course is a china shop, a kitchen, a bathroom, a gas station, and a regal palace. The game has a single player mode, as well as multiplayer game modes. The multiplayer functions allow for both online and offline games. When playing in the multiplayer mode, players take turns not only trying to cause destruction and get the ball in the hole, but also make a number of trick shots. Each of these tricks will give the player a higher score and some of the holes are more difficult than others.

The final piece of the game allows for players to turn their golf ball into something called a “SmashBreaker”. This means the ball turns into a miniature bomb that is capable of causing even more damage. The way to turn the golf ball into this SmashBreaker is if the player is able to score enough points on a number of given shots. In this regard, Dangerous Golf emulates NBA Jam. Some of the courses have obstacles that include multiple rooms as well as teleporters. Some of these more difficult rooms have objectives outside of hitting the hole that have score multipliers. In addition to the offline multiplayer, Dangerous Golf allows for a party mode that includes up to eight online players.

Characters

There aren’t actual characters in Dangerous Golf. The players never appear onscreen, but the game is played in a first person point of view with no named characters.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game

The PlayStation 4 has only just now started to hit its stride, but in this industry, one always looks forward tot he next big thing- that is the reason that Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all begin work on their next systems as soon as their current ones at the time are released, and why we always have some exciting new technology, like the Kinect and 3D, to look forward to.

This year looks particularly interesting for fans of the hobby- with the impending rise of consumer grade VR solutions, as well as the launch of Nintendo’s enigmatic NX console, which presumably kicks off the ninth generation of gaming, we have a lot of exciting developments to look forward to. But all of this is a known quantity to developers, who have presumably have had their hands on development kits for a while now. Instead, these developers seem to be looking even further out- such as to the PS4 and Xbox One successors.

Take, for instance, Paul Ross. Ross used to work with Criterion, the guys who made the incredibly popular Renderware engine back in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era, and who also gave us the enduring Burnout franchise. He left Criterion a while back (when EA nerfed and downsized it beyond recognition), and currently works with his own studio, Three Fields Entertainment. Speaking about his upcoming game, Dangerous Golf, to EDGE, he managed to veer the conversation off to what he believes the next generation of consoles may be like.

“[So I am] sitting here thinking, ‘OK, what does a PlayStation 5 game look like? What does an Xbox Two game look like? And how can we start to build for that future now?'” Ross said. 

He continued: “Physics engines haven’t changed since I did the physics on [Dreamcast game] TrickStyle. They’re all about rigid bodies, solid objects. This is a real paradigm shift because it’s about simulating physics at a molecular level. It’s been a really hard problem to solve for quite a while.

“So what does a PS5 game look like? With PS4 we’ve seen some fidelity put into the worlds, but PS5’s going to be about more dynamic worlds, far more interactive worlds that are more believable in the way they behave.”

What does the next generation look like? We are due to get at least part of the answer to that question, once Nintendo unveils the Nintendo NX… whenever it is that they decide to unveil it, really. As for the PS4 and Xbox One, their successors are probably a while away- the two consoles are just two years old, and they have only just now begun to hit their stride. Still, contemplating future hardware is always fun, which is doubtless why Ross is doing it, too.