Bugbear Entertainment’s Wreckfest tore up last-gen consoles with glorious destruction turning every race into a junkyard of smoldering steel. A nicely enhanced version of the game is readily available on Xbox Series X, giving the racing a boost in resolution and fidelity, but an even more tricked out version is coming to PlayStation 5 on June 1. If you already own the PlayStation 4 version, the PlayStation 5 upgrade will cost you $9.99.
Now to complicate matters with a free option: PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to download Wreckfest on PlayStation 5 for free on May 4, one month before the enhanced version’s update hits the store. That’s right, you won’t have to fork out $9.99, and you get it early.
This update offers a number of significant tweaks, including improved shadows, particles, and environmental lighting. You’ll also see more foliage, more dynamic dirt on the vehicles, and more realistic skid marks. Like most enhanced new-gen titles, Wreckfest will offer faster load times, higher-resolution textures, and new DualSense haptic effects.
I played the living hell out of Wreckfest on PlayStation 4, and absolutely adored just how chaotic it can get, especially in the demolition derbies. I gave this racer a review score of 8.5 out of 10, and said “The video game market is filled with racing simulations, and it’s nice to see oddities like Wreckfest that deliver the exact opposite. Why race a clean path when you can race dirty? If that proposition sounds fun to you, you can’t go wrong with this aggressive racing experience.”
Developer Bugbear has a long history of making racing games. From the FlatOut series to Ridge Racer Unbounded, the studio has shown it knows how to making edge-of-your seat competitions, and Wreckfest is easily the best of its efforts, dazzling with its visuals, racing feel, variety, and awesome destruction models.