Wreckfest's latest update adds Carmageddon tracks and zombies
Exactly what it was missing
Wreckfest is a racing game that's as much about slamming into scenery as careful cornering, so today's tie-in with Carmageddon is a perfect match. It's a free update which adds two new tracks, Bleak City and Devil's Canyon, from the original zombie-smashing racing game, as well as the Eagle-R car and swarms of pixellated zombies to burst.
Here's a brief trailer of it in action:
I played a bunch of Carmageddon back when it was first released, or at least its demo. I liked it at the time not for the ability to make zombies (or robots) go pop, but for Bleak City, which felt as close to an open 3D world to drive around as I'd seen at that point. It wasn't the first 3D racing game I'd played - that was probably Screamer - but it was the first where you could do more than just drive a fixed way around a loop.
I'm glad that the update keeps the zombies as pixellated sprites, rather than modernising them into 3D. I don't actually want to kill a bunch of things in Wreckfest, and the retro zombies makes the killing cute while ticking the nostalgia box.
I've also played a bunch of Wreckfest, early during its early access journey. It doesn't go as far as BeamNG.drive with its soft body simulation, but it's a more accessible and arcadey way to make car metal crumple. THQ Nordic bought Wreckfest's developers Bugbear in November 2018, and acquired Carmageddon the following month, making this update a match made in the boardroom. Want to place bets on Bugbear's next game being a full Carmageddon reboot?
As well as the Carmageddon content, the Wreckfest update also includes some fixes, although the remaining list of known issues included in the update post is much larger.