“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay,” Austrian journalist and Marxist Ernst Fischer wrote in The Necessity of Art. “And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” I can’t help but feel he’d very much appreciate Wreckfest 2’s fourth early access update, which has added in a tool you can use to brush detailed rust, dirt, and dents onto the canvas of your old banger. Said tool has been given a suitably glorious name: CRAP-IT.
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Yep, developers Bugbear have finally made the destructive racer’s car customisation more detailed than just picking a colour. CRAP-IT looks to work like your standard livery editor, but with a fitting focus on weathering effects that go beyond your usual set of stickers and paints. That said, you can still paste decals all over your ride and skimp on the rust if you’re allergic to driving anything that looks like it belongs in a scrapyard.
Personally, I’m just glad to see Wreckfest 2’s car customisation starting to take shape, as it’s been one element missing as Bugbear have assembled a fun racing chassis and begun to bolt more cars and tracks onto it.
On the topic of cars and tracks, this update adds in possibly the most important demo derby combatant of them all – the Volkswagen Beetle-esque Buggy. Ferdinand Porsche might be more well known for rear-engined sportscars, but damn could he and the likes of Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi design a car that’s fun to lob around like a concrete egg on wheels to the exetent you sort of forget its origin as a people’s car envisioned by the Nazis. To be fair, I think slamming it around a track like Crash Canyon 2.0 counts as giving the moustache bloke the middle finger, give fascism’s notorious disapproval of hairpins and head-on collisions that waste metal which could instead be used to prop up a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist state.
Beyond these additions, Bugbear have also revamped how the game simulates tyres, as well as suspension and how cars deform when bashed into things. You can read the full notes if you’re keen to know the full bug fix rundown.
I’m off to wonder how I’ve managed to shoehorn references to two political schools of thought into an article about cars going vroom vroom, then smash. Then I’ll go and spend three hours spelling out the word ‘boom’ in rusty dents.
