"It's win it or bin it stuff": Top Gear's first play of Wreckreation 2

Far away from the nu-school sim racing headspace where racers tweak their load cell brakes and read reddit threads about the best gloves to use with Alcantara racing wheels, there’s the gleeful arcade abandon of Wreckreation. Released in late 2025 by Three Fields Entertainment, it was the passion project of several Criterion veterans who brought Burnout to the world in the heady Noughties, and who evidently – correctly – thought we could do with some more of that high-octane bashing and barging in the austere 2020s. 

Thing is, it was a bit rough. This is a small team doing a big thing, capturing the lightning in a bottle that made Burnout such a success, while also modernising it and adding a very ambitious on-the-fly track customisation element to its open world. Critical sentiment, including our own, was tempered by those rough edges. 

So they’ve gone and made a sequel. Wreckreation 2 is in its early stages of development but nevertheless we’ve signed the waivers, accepted that the build might catch fire at any moment, and taken to the streets in a Dearborn & Schaeffer Nightranger.

Vehicles are unlicensed and fictional, obviously, like those proudly ‘100% UNOFFICIAL!’ biographies of celebs. That allows Wreckreation 2 free reign to absolutely dismantle its roster of machinery at the slightest provocation, and as the keen-eyed will have deducted from the game name, that’s very much the point here. 

As before, wrecking other cars or performing dangerous feats like near misses, jumps, shunts and driving into oncoming traffic generates boost. Boost makes you go faster. Going faster is better. 

Right, that’s the gameplay mechanics covered. No, but really, simplicity is a big one here too. As much as we love them, this game feels like the antidote to experiences like Le Mans Ultimate that have you worrying about your brake disc temperature and googling the best toe-in angles, per car. There’s no setup tinkering to worry about here, no long stints of careful tyre management. Just checkpoint races, 1v1 duels, and combative Road Rage and Wreckoning events. 

What’s different this time? Well, the city is, for one. The original Wreckreation’s giant world map felt curiously out in the sticks for a spiritual sequel to an urban arcade racer, so there’s something inherently right about being downtown, flanked by skyscrapers, ensconced in concrete, this time.

This early build shows a small area of the city, but the full release features an airport, distinct urban districts, dockyards and highways. That already feels like more fertile ground for this kind of bombastic racing. An early misadventure we had tearing inadvertently into a multi-storey car park and tumbling back out of it several storeys higher is testament to that. 

The handling’s still a bit… unusual. It’s twitchy and heightened, clearly designed more for flooring the throttle and finding out how long you dare to keep it floored in a roughly straight line than for threading the needle between low-speed turns. Braking distances are non-existent. We suspect this is an early build thing too, and that there’ll be a greater feeling of flow and momentum by the retail release. 

25 cars will make up the final roster, all with their own upgrade paths, while Blackspots, Eliminator, Marked Man and Pursuit modes will bolster up the checkpoint races. That ambitious Live Mix track editor tool’s coming back too, with more powerful options promised. 

There’s obviously some work to be done on the UI, physics and handling feel before then, but we’re already encouraged by the close, frenetic racing this build produces. It’s win it or bin it stuff – either you nudge a rival into wrecking themselves and earn a huge boost, or you get yourself wrecked while trying. That jostle between cars feels sharper and more satisfying in this sequel, and that’s a great foundation for what’s to come. 

We don’t have firm details yet on release dates and platforms, but we’ll keep you updated when we hear more.