As someone who much prefers the realistic simulation racing titles, the destruction racing genre is possibly one of the most untouched genres in my entire collection.
I've never really looked any further beyond the Motorstorm series, and even then, the most recent Platinum trophy I have for that was from the latest instalment in Motorstorm : Apocalypse, as far back as late 2012.
I do also have the Burnout Paradise Platinum from my very early days of trophy hunting at Platinum #2, but aside from that, this is a scarcely featured genre.
Wreckfest is a demolition derby style game with huge variety in vehicular racing. It has the mixed vibes of the original Destruction Derby games on the Playstation 1/2 with it's track-based banger racing elements, and Motorstorm with the vehicle variety that will see you racing stock cars, campervans, buses and even lawnmowers.
Despite there being some nice attention to detail to the simulation aspect of racing, including tuning, upgradable components and other customisation options, this is still a destruction racer at heart, and those elements are quickly forgotten about through some excellently realistic damage modelling that impacts the performance of the vehicles and also looks the part visually when things quickly descend into chaos, which, after all, is ultimately the most important selling point of a destruction racing title.
The trophy list is small in size, with just 21 trophies including the Platinum, and is almost an entirely Single Player experience, barring a solitary Multiplayer trophy.
Truth be told, it's a pretty disappointing trophy experience, and it's entirely down to the fact that the trophy list doesn't really encourage you to go any further within the Single Player Career than the absolute bare minimum required to reach the end goal.
Despite the destruction racing genre being relatively untapped, I do have alot of experience with simulation racing titles, and most of them follow relatively universal patterns, where the Platinum trophy will require you to win races and events consistently, reaching more prestigious events to then go on to win further championships, usually culminating in you having pushed yourself to the very top and beaten everything. Need for Speed follows this blueprint, as does Grid, as does Dirt, and they've all been rated in difficulty accordingly, but Wreckfest is different, and also the reason this ends up rating much lower on the scale.
The "World Masters Champion" trophy, awarded for Completing World Masters Championship, is the climax of the Career mode, and will be awarded as you progress through 5 different Championships, ranked in order from Regional Juniors right through to World Masters, with progression based trophies awarded for passing each Championship with enough points in order to unlock the next.
Each Championship contains a series of events, with a specific number of points allocated to each event. The points correspond to your placement within each event, whether this be an individual event or a series of events, and the number of points awarded will depend on your overall position, with more points naturally awarded for higher placed finishes. Once you've accumulated enough points collectively, you'll progress and be promoted into the next Championship, to then repeat the process with a fresh set of events until you reach the end.
Whilst this gives you the freedom to be able to cherry pick which events you play, and the full flexibility to be able to leave some behind entirely and ignore them, this makes it a fairly easy journey to the top. The points threshold in order to advance to the next Championship is not set particularly high, and whilst winning events will give you back more points, you don't necessarily need to win them in order to promote yourself into the next Championship, which is where I mostly feel like this list wasn't maximised to it's full potential. Racing should have an emphasis on winning, but maybe that's just the standard I'm used to based on other games I've played across the racing genre.
As a consequence of this more relaxed progression approach, it's a very straight-forward Career mode. You can alter the AI difficulty if you want to increase the challenge, along with settings for vehicle damage which can add extra dimensions to the challenge, with "realistic" damage impacting vehicle performance and handling, as well as durability.
Even choosing the "hard" difficulty, I was seldom challenged, and whilst I didn't win many events, the lack of necessity to do so meant the difficulty level didn't really make much of a difference. I'm going to assume it was harder to win because of the tougher AI, but without any reasons to go back over the events to actually try to win them, that will remain speculation.
You can grab 5 trophies, which is exactly a quarter of this list, on your way to achieving this one, as you progress through each of the 5 different Championships, with other trophies being unlocked along the way as you play through events. These also include 3 level-based trophies for hitting milestones at level 10, 25 and 50 respectively, as well as other naturally achievable trophies for expanding your car collection and earning race winnings.
The "Highballer" trophy, awarded for Completing all Career Challenges, needs to be mentioned purely for reasons based around making sure you don't make the same error as I did.
This trophy is awarded for beating the 23 events that are labelled as "Challenges" within the event card display graphic, which I had naturally beaten all but 2 of throughout the Career. However, every single event/race has a secondary objective, which is exactly what I thought this trophy related to, meaning I fulfilled the requirement of every single objective in the Career for every race - An incredibly grindy and tedious journey.
Of course, it's my fault for misunderstanding the trophy requirements, though I do believe it could have been signposted better, especially after reading up and finding out it wasn't just myself that had misunderstood this task, and is also specifically referenced within certain trophy guides not to get the secondary challenges mixed up with the Career challenges.
It actually ended up slightly changing my overall difficulty rating, as these secondary race objectives were more akin to the challenge I had been looking for, throughout this experience, because they require you in some instances to win the race, or win it by a certain distance, for example, and playing on "Hard" difficulty tested my capabilities to win races in conjunction with these secondary tasks.
However, it turns out you just need to beat the 23 special challenge events, which merely require you to fulfil a specific goal to beat the event, whether this be a winning a 1 v 1 race, wrecking an entire grid before the reaching the finish line or wrecking a certain number of opponents before being wrecked yourself. They're all much easier than the secondary objectives, so I won't list this trophy at notable, though I feel like it was important to share this particular experience because I felt like it was a part of the journey, albeit an unnecessary one.
The "Human Lover" trophy, awarded for Winning 20 Events in Multiplayer, is where the challenge from this list will mostly stem from, as you venture online to take on the Wreckfest community and win 20 times against them.
The rules for online racing communities are relatively universal, regardless of whether destructive racing is encouraged or not, and this will always be your biggest challenge when it comes to any racing title that includes online trophies. Clean racing is often disregarded anyway, but at least it's more befitting of the environment here.
You can choose to earn the 20 wins through whichever game mode you're most comfortable in, whether than be a banger race or destruction derby and you can even filter out lobbies specifically by car class or tracks so you can race with vehicles you're most comfortable with on the courses you're most comfortable with, so the added customisation flexibility is something you should look to take advantage of.
I managed to get 20 wins within 92 races, which isn't a terrible return, but is still the biggest challenge within this entire trophy list. I found it easiest to approach each race with a survival mindset, and also avoided destruction derby events for this reason too. Being able to be cautious and steady, rather than fast and reckless allowed me to at least finish races in most instances, as I watched others crash out and bail out of the race. It sort of goes against the nature of the game, but it's going to yield the best results.
You will have to be aware for common online racing perils, such as other players deliberately intent on wrecking you to the point where they'll drive around the track backwards, or sit at cross junctions lying in wait for you, but there's not much you can really do other than try to avoid them as best as possible. These hazards do contribute to making this the only difficult trophy in the entire list.
Given how small the trophy list is, there isn't really much else mention. The remaining trophies are very random and involve tasks you can easily fulfil within any mode.
I think it summarises this list well that the most challenging element of this game I faced ended up coming from my own misunderstanding of the trophy requirements, which meant I ploughed alot more time into this list than what was necessary. Some of those secondary objectives within the individual race events were the most challenging aspect of the game, but ultimately not required for the Platinum trophy, and therefore not factored into the final difficulty rating. I think the fact I practically had to accidentally create my own challenge nicely summarises the justification for what is a very low score.
All you'll need to focus on is the accumulation of 20 wins online, and you're practically free to enjoy a very leisurely Career mode within Single Player that doesn't demand much from the player at all. Just make sure you understand the trophies and their descriptions.
Notable Trophies -
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| World Masters Champion - Complete World Masters Championship. Human Lover - Win 20 Events In Multiplayer. |
Hardest Trophy -
Win 20 Events In Multiplayer
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