I've been kicking around the idea of buying Next Car Game: Wreckfest for a little while, but at forty-three dollars, I'm not quite ready to jump in yet. Part of that has to do with the fact that I can't determine much of the information I'd like to know. I can't even find a list of cars and tracks currently in-game, or any sign of plans for the future. I don't know when they plan to move out of early access (admittedly, I don't know this either for Beamng, but the fact that Wreckfest's website advertises a release date in early 2017 gives me a lot more pause than just not having the information) Heck, I don't even know if this Swedish brick they showed in a recent blog post is in-game or not. I heard someone mention something about trucks in the game files too, but I've never personally seen any evidence to confirm it. There are a few other things that I'm curious about too: Wasn't there some sort of trouble in the development process a while back that worried a lot of players? Something between Bugbear and THQ Nordic? Are they planning to fix the way cars have (or at least used to) become twisted into pretzels while still managing to put power down? Has their career mode been implemented yet? If not, will it be playable offline? Heck, is any part of the game playable offline?
It's USD$40? I paid less than a third of that for it years ago when it was in alpha. I don't recommend it, it doesn't have much to do and the updates take forever to add features. Workshop is a little lean too since it doesn't have that many mods that work in the new versions. It's also more hardware intensive than what the requirements say. You can play off-line if you want to (as I recall), cars drive the same if they are in perfect condition or smashed into a paper ball and there is a money system for you to buy and upgrade cars.
I enjoy it. I only have about 14 hours on it currently though, there just currently isn't much to do. It takes maybe two or three days of casual play to do everything currently in it (unlocking every car right now is a bit of a grind. There are a number of fun tracks, many of which are WIP but playable. Crash alley is back, speed bowl is on the steam workshop as some random guy's port.) I'm glad I got it, but if I had to buy it again in its current state I wouldn't even begin to consider it until the $25 range, preferably $10-15 range. A lot is supposed to be added in an upcoming update, so that should add value. Current release date is December 2017/January 2018 for PC and maybe a year after that for console. They admit that they aren't good with updating the community and have made recent attempts to fix that, such as the dev blog earlier this week and another one scheduled to be published soon. Still not great with the communication though. I have a feeling it won't feel as complete as it should though, kinda like how Spintires felt like a big techdemo rather than a game. It will basically be Flatout 1 2017. The rag doll physics from that series is their "upcoming" game Stuntfest. There are a number of trucks and a Saab 96 hidden in the game files; those all appear to have been canceled or in 4 year long development limbo. Several cars should be released sometime in December (the station wagon is the only one of those which the community knows about). Currently 2 cars have visual customization, all should by the games full release. All have performance customization. There's currently 9 unique vehicles total (the ones without customization have separate variants which should be removed when those cars receive customization options). The deformation was turned way down. It's still a bit silly, but no where near the extent of the original tech demo. I don't know about the publisher issues you are referring to; the only thing I can think of is there was a couple of long gaps in development which led to a lose of a lot of their following. Important note, it does not run particularly well. i7 4500U, GT745M, I can only play less than half a field of opponent cars.
Don't. The developers have abandoned it, they only throw out updates for bug fixes I believe? And that's probably only once every 6 months, or year. Haven't seen any progress since last year
It's not abandoned. They are giving a total of $12k in prizes for contributions to their sound track and there was a major update in February and April and June and one scheduled for this month. That means if they keep there schedule that's 4 major updates in 2017 to BeamNG's 3.
I've been in the habit of making a post in the general off topic discussion thread whenever there is Wreckfest news, but this thread is relevant and recent enough that I guess I'll just post this here. Some stuff that @YellowRusty will appreciate. Yesterday, BugBear announced that the next update will be before Christmas and include a lot of new cars and a preview of career mode. A dev said on the forum that "considering the number of cars currently in game, the (number of cars to be introduced in the next update) is significant" and they hope that every track currently in game will be polished and have new routes in time for this update. There will be FWD "cars", plural. The image on the post was the silhouettes of 8 vehicles, including the estate car, a Ford Ranchero look-alike, a Datsun 240z look-alike, and something that resembles the Saab 96 that's been in development limbo for the past 4 years. Announced changes include improved vehicle damage (a dev said it is WIP but in releasable state), improved physics, nicer looking tracks with more variants, and improved AI. Glad to see they won't be rushing the full release (at one point this update was supposed to be full release) but still getting a nice update out. Currently, full release is scheduled for early 2018. This is maybe the third reschedule for full release, so I wouldn't take the date for the full release as much of note. It's currently $20 on steam, which I think is a fair price.
THQ Nordic teamed up with bugbear if i remember correctly. ive noticed a lot more progress on the game since that. before that there was some bankruptcy problems but now thats obviously not a problem. at least i hope so. tbh id wait and see if there is a special for christmas gather a little more money if you can and you could probably bundle wreckfest with something else you want but honestly it looks promising now that THQ Nordic is involved.
Trying to keep this as neutral as possible, since I own both games. I don't think you can judge a games development by how many updates it pushes. If that was it, one could have posted an update every 2 weeks with nothing major with it and call it winner, because it's simply more updates? It's no news that BeamNG.drive's updates are not exactly small. Either content-wise or feature-wise, the changelogs pretty much speaks for themselves. Said that, I also wish Wreckfest the best for their game, since it has great potential and fun. They also posted something about their next update as well on their Twitter.
I think we all should support Wreckfest. I'll speak for myself when I say that if BeamNG had never been created Wreckfest would probably be the eighth wonder of the world in realistic car wrecking goodness. Competition is good and we are all a brotherhood of unique fanatics that is special in the world.
i was turned away from Wreckfest due to the length between updates and me wanting a proper FlatOut 2 successor not being filled.
The new update is pretty good. It feels like the unholy offspring of forza and flatout with the new menu and UI being forza-ish and the damage an evolution of flatout. The cars are well done but there still isn't a lot of customization for most cars though and I also recommend clearing your mods and game save
So, following the update, has anybody found a list of cars or tracks available? I heard a few people comment on physics improvements - is the difference dramatic?
