Wreckfest will finally be seeing a native release on PlayStation 5 in the coming months where the demolition derby-themed racing game intends to take full advantage of the new hardware.
Speaking with SegmentNext in a recent interview, developer Bugbear Entertainment confirmed that Wreckfest will be running in 60 frames per second at 4K resolution on PS5 “with all the bells and whistles and no holds barred.”
The new DualSense features will be supported which Bugbear Entertainment stated is something “racing games can greatly benefit from.” Wreckfest will hence take advantage of both the new haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to simulate the feel of driving a real car and improve immersion.
The game will deliver “not only the typical rumbles when crashing and so forth, but also provide feedback on what the car is doing, whether you are sliding and things like that.” The adaptive triggers on the other hand will “enable more fine-grained throttle and brake application, giving experienced drivers the tools to become even faster on the track,” said the developer.
Bugbear Entertainment furthermore confirmed that the new lightning-fast solid-state drive of PS5 will cut down loading times for Wreckfest by “a quarter or less” compared to the previous-generation version.
While on the SSD subject, the developer interestingly added that the main advantage of the PS5 SSD over the regular PC SSDs available in the market lies in “certain nifty features such as hardware compression that not only yields further improvement in loading times and also frees up the CPU to focus on other tasks.” Such advantages are not readily available on PC since the current-generation consoles “have been developed and optimized with the complete whole in mind, hardware and software working in tandem to offer best possible performance and experience.” Hence, PS5 does have an edge over PC in terms of SSD technology.
Bugbear Entertainment also noted that players can expect to see cross-play support since “many PS4 players will migrate to PS5 and they will probably want to play with their friends on PS4.” It however was not clarified if cross-play will be there from the start or will be added down the road with a post-release update.
In terms of visual enhancements, the PS5 version of Wreckfest will feature “next-generation bloom and sun shafts, parallax occlusion mapped decals, improved ambient lighting with spherical harmonic probes, not to mention increased texture resolution and higher density foliage.” The next-generation PS5 release however will cost players $10 to upgrade which the developer stated “does not seem like too much” after considering all of the improvements.
Wreckfest was recently updated on Xbox One to be made eligible for a free upgrade on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. That should not be confused with a native release though. Bugbear Entertainment confirmed that a native Xbox Series version of the game will be releasing “later” owing to its “small [studio] outfit” and how “doing these things properly takes time.” Hence, while the game continues to be a free Xbox upgrade, there will be a similar cost attached for the native Xbox release incoming down the road.
Wreckfest was released on PS4 and Xbox One in late 2019 after multiple delays. The racing game, described as a spiritual successor to the FlatOut franchise, landed on PC back in 2018 and where it continues to enjoy positive scores. The PS5 version arrives on June 1, 2021.
