Wrecked: Revenge Revisited looks to bring simple controls and frantic action to racing fans later this year.
When it comes to vehicular-combat racers, often the best kinds are those that you can play against your friends in the same room. Wrecked: Revenge Revisited gives you the opportunity to race and battle against your friends in a number of different environments. Instead of this being a standard kart racer where power-ups help you race to victory, you need to use the environment and the various weapon upgrades to take out your opposition and score points.
So instead of requiring you to race as fast as possible, each scenario plays out in “heats.” When you’re playing against another racer, the character who gets eliminated first loses a point, while the survivor earns a point, and the one who reaches the required number of points first wins. As more competitors are involved, the point deductions and rewards will vary. When we played with three racers, the first to go lost a point, while the second didn’t lose any points, and the winner of that particular heat earned the point.
An interesting aspect about the person who gets eliminated first in each heat is that he or she can still be a factor and shoot at the remaining racers and help determine the outcome of the heat. This can be extremely helpful, since points earned based on placement determine the ultimate winner.
Eliminating your opposition isn’t the only way to win a particular heat. In-game, once a sizable lead is made, the car furthest back is booted off, so driving smart and fast, on top of avoiding weapons and the environment, is also very important. The levels as well offer a bit of a challenge and will require different strategies. In a level made entirely of ice, proper drifting techniques are extremely vital for your success; slip too much and don’t be surprised if you end up losing that particular race.
Although the levels experienced were quite enjoyable and some really cool scenarios took place, the races themselves felt a bit long on the game’s default setting. A one-versus-one race took so long to complete that at one point, in order to determine a winner, the game had to implement a sudden-death situation where no player lost points. If the competition is too close to call, the repetition factor might turn off some people. Thankfully, though, there are ways of adjusting the settings of each race so that really long races can be avoided.
Our time with Wrecked: Revenge Revisited was short, and we only had the opportunity to sample the game’s local multiplayer component. With the game expected to hit both PSN and XBLA later this fall, don’t be surprised if we see more of this game in action and learn about its other customizable features before then.
