Recent reviews by HuskyDynamics

It's banger racing with no holds barred. It's Forza with wreckage. It's Hot Wheels with dirt and violence. It's Thunder Hollow with less talking. It's the Copper Key race without the pop culture references. Welcome, one and all, to Wreckfest.

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That's really all I have to say, actually. Honestly, the only complaint I have is that the ping indicator in the multiplayer server list doesn't work, and that's a very minor thing. The game is fun, there's a lot of content and tons of different vehicles and ways to tune them (even more with DLC!), and it's always a blast to play. Looks great, plays great, cars handle and feel great, runs pretty great on my hardware all things considered - really, what else is there to say?

A classic of American racing, the Raven drives pretty similarly to the other American muscle cars in the game. It's got a few quirks, but otherwise it's about what you'd expect: plenty of power and happy to slide. Right at home on an oval, the Raven performs well on less-technical tracks, though it can get bogged down in sharp turns. Some flashy NASCAR-style paint options make for good customization, too. A solid addition to the muscle coupe roster.

One of the better front-wheel-drive cars in the game, even if only because it's nimbler than the Firefly. The Speedie is tricky to master, but once you get a feel for it you'll be weaving between other cars left and right. It turns differently than most cars by nature of being front wheel drive, but the short wheelbase make this less of a problem than the other FWD options available, though it also makes it a lot easier to lose control and spin out. It's got some good customization, too. All in all, another decent addition.

The store page describes the Stellar as a missile, and it's right. Lighter and with somewhat lower torque than you might expect, the Stellar needs to be driven with more precision than most cars in the game; it's a constant balancing act of getting sideways enough to make the corners while staying straight enough to keep traction through them. Master it, though, and the Stellar is one of the most enjoyable cars in the game to drive. A great selection of paint schemes - honestly some of the best in the entire vehicle roster - wraps up this rally legend as a fantastic choice.

A very light, extremely competitive car that tends to dominate the top of the leaderboard regardless of class. Great traction, good power, and a short wheelbase let the Raiden rip around corners that larger cars have to slide through, but the performance comes at the expense of durability. I like to refer to this car as a paper airplane; it's fast, nimble, and hard to catch, but it can only take one or two good hits before giving out.

This car's strength isn't in its performance - which, to be frank, is pretty much the same as most of the other heavy American muscle cars in the game - but in its customizability. You can make the RebelRat look like anything from a quite respectable race car to the rustiest piece of junk in the scrapyard. It comes with a hilariously large wing installed by default, but if that isn't enough for you, there's an even bigger one that you can replace it with.

The Vandal performs surprisingly well for its size. It's quite similar to the MudDigger, but about a thousand pounds heavier. It pairs pretty well with the Steel & Wheels DLC armor, but otherwise the customization options are rather limited (especially in terms of paint). The Vandal is definitely the least desirable of the three vehicles in this DLC (unless you love to do derbies or just really want to race as a van), but it's still pretty good.

It's really, really difficult to review Outer Wilds because the extreme enthusiasm with which I recommend it is paralleled only by the sheer magnitude of the importance that you know absolutely nothing about it before playing.

Don't read a review that describes the game in detail. Don't look up guides. Don't scroll through the Steam discussions. Definitely don't watch videos about the game. Don't even listen to the soundtrack ahead of time.

Seriously, I'm not kidding. I guarantee it's worth the price, but Outer Wilds is one of a very, very small number of games that you can truly only experience once (even more so than something like OneShot, for example, where the entire premise is that you only get one real go at it), and that experience is best had within the game itself.

I'm not talking about the "oh no, I found out the ending ahead of time" kind of spoilers. If you read up on Outer Wilds before playing it, there's literally no point in even starting the game because you've basically already completed it. Everything that makes Outer Wilds the experience that it is relies on the fact that you - as a player, not as the in-game character - are starting from a blank slate and learning about the game's world one piece at a time. EVERYTHING. This is not an exaggeration (if anything, it's an understatement).

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The gameplay is just the right balance of challenging and fun, the world design is great, the vibes are stellar, the sound design is fantastic, and the experience is unforgettable. Just play the game. Once you do, you'll understand.

The one spoiler I'll give is that you can ignore the controller recommendation (both on the store page and in the game itself when you launch it). There is exactly one section where you actually need the precision of a controller, and that need can be avoided by either getting there at the right time or going a different, more difficult (but way more fun) way that's fully doable on a mouse and keyboard.

slate: oh hey you're back early

me: moon's haunted

slate: what?

me: *duct-taping a hatchet to the little scout and getting back in the ship* moon's haunted

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If you liked the base game, you'll probably like the Echoes expansion. It's got a different tone compared to the base game, but it's well worth playing. New mechanics make it a fresh adventure while still remaining true to the overall feel of the original, and it's the best way to get more of the Outer Wilds experience. The puzzles are a bit trickier and the vibe is notably less welcoming than most of the base game, but those certainly aren't detrimental elements and in fact enhance the allure of the whole thing (at least in my opinion). Overall, Echoes of the Eye is an impressive addition to an already fantastic game, and I'd highly recommend it.

It's a small meme car like the Lawn Mower and Sofa Car, but with the added bonus of exploding into a hundred pieces of splintered wood when it gets hit, so it's at least more entertaining to watch yourself get run over by normal cars. Otherwise, it's another decent addition to the small meme car category, lacking customization other than paint but adding some variety. Less top-heavy than you might expect because it's mostly hollow, but I can't say it drives well.

The Hornet is a good jack-of-all trades car; you can set it up for clean racing, derbies, or anything in between, and it'll do pretty well. It's outclassed by most of the cars you'll see in A-class, but is a real competitor in B- and C-class racing, and has some decent customization options too. Good handling, good performance, and a well-balanced power-to-weight ratio make the Hornet a viable pick for pretty much any track.

This one is kind of underwhelming. It's not especially strong, not especially nimble, and not especially customizable. It's got decent power and a higher top speed than might be expected, but struggles to effectively make use of that power due to its poor handling characteristics (top-heaviness and oversteer in particular). The six-speed transmission also means it spends a lot of time trying to shift instead of actually applying that power. It's a contender for the back of the pack, but don't expect to be running out in front.

It's funny, it's cheap, and it's usually quite detrimental to your racing because you lose the ability to see over the top of your own car. What's not to like?

I can't say all of them are good (a lot of them genuinely do get in the way too much to be usable, though the teddy bear actually works quite well on trucks because it sits in the bed instead of on the roof), but hey, it's a silly DLC anyway. If you want to put big goofy props on your cars, that's exactly what it does.

If you like customizing your vehicles, this is worth picking up. It gives you a ton of new wheel options, a few rather goofy exhaust pipes, a wing spoiler, and quite a few armor pieces that - while not stronger than the base game ones to keep things fair - look pretty mean and can do a lot for creating a certain visual look for your cars. Not all of the parts fit well on every car, but there's enough options that this isn't too much of an issue.

Overall, this DLC is very much a "what you see is what you get and no more" kind of thing. None of the cars in this DLC have customization other than paint and engine class, and they're all very eye-catching but not very good choices to race with. The Pocket Rocket is the best in terms of fun (seriously, it's the best small meme car), and the DragSlayer is appropriately fast in a straight line, but the other three all just kind of suck.

If you've done more than a few Tournament challenges, you've most likely driven the Bugzilla, and that will continue to be the only place you drive it. There's really no point in using it anywhere else because it just isn't good. It looks like a monster truck but it's still a Buggy, just with big tires. It's got a short wheelbase, likes to roll over if you get hit wrong, and isn't all that much more durable than the regular Buggy either. Neat vibe but not great to drive unless it's against a bunch of other Special-class vehicles, and even then it's iffy.

One of the two vehicles in this DLC that are actually worth getting. It's a RoadSlayer derivative, so you're already starting from a decent performance baseline. The handling isn't super great so you have to slide it through basically every corner regardless of how shallow it is, which ends up costing most of your speed. That being said, it's got the acceleration to mostly make up for it, so the DragSlayer can be a pretty solid competitor on certain tracks once you get a feel for it. It's a shame it doesn't have any customization other than paint, though, because I feel like there could have been some real potential here.

Edit: After downgrading it to B-class, I'm having a much better time with the DragSlayer. The acceleration is still fantastic compared to anything else in the class, and the corner handling is less of a concern because the car has less inertia at the lower speeds that B-class runs at. I wouldn't call it competitive (the regular RoadSlayer is still just a better all-rounder option), but it's definitely more usable. The lack of customization is still disappointing, though.

The KillerPig takes everything that the KillerBee is good at and does absolutely none of it. It's fat, it's slow, it's ugly, and it's top-heavy. I cannot think of a single scenario where it would be a sensible choice. It isn't even a good derby car because it's still based on a KillerBee, so it only has a strength of 2.2 (which can't be improved because none of the cars in this DLC have armor customization). It's just awful, and not in an affectionate way.

Oddly enough, this shrunk-down Speedemon might be the best thing in the DLC. It has an extremely low center of gravity, meaning that it almost feels glued to the ground and (unlike the other small meme cars) you aren't just fighting to stay upright half the time. The engine placement makes it rather nose-heavy which improves handling and control, but makes it prone to understeer at higher speeds. However, the weight distribution also means that you can fully unlock the differential and it will drive almost like a FWD car, but...in a good way? In short, it's actually a lot of fun!
The lack of customization doesn't even count against it because none of the other small meme cars have anything other than paint choices either. It's weird for a small meme car to be the best car in this pack, but honestly it is.

The WarDigger is a sidegrade to the MudDigger at best. It's a little faster and a little stronger, but weighs a lot more and handles far worse. This, combined with the fact that it's almost literally built like a tank, means that its only real use is what you see everyone who uses it in multiplayer doing: corner bombing and generally trying to ruin everyone else's day. It's a shame, because it does look really cool. Otherwise, though, it's basically just the MudDigger but slightly more brick-like in pretty much every way. It'd be better off as an extra armor set for the MudDigger instead of a standalone vehicle.

It's a small meme car like the Lawn Mower and Sofa Car, and as such is really only usable against other small meme cars because... well, it's pretty obvious why. It's there for a laugh but you can't really use it in anything other than custom events because you pretty much just die when racing against normal-sized cars. Worth noting, however, is that the Bumper Car has better weight distribution and a much lower center of gravity than all of the other meme cars (the Pocket Rocket comes close, but is rather nose-heavy), meaning that it actually handles pretty well even on dirt. The big rubber ring around the bottom does make it rather unpredictable when landing a jump though, so be careful. It's got decent paint customization, but no further upgrades aside from the engine to change classes.

Pretty similar to the Killerbee S, but a little weaker and with the engine in the rear so it likes to go a bit more sideways. Otherwise, kind of unremarkable. It's fun to pull off some inside overtakes with, since it can pretty much zip through almost any gap there is, but in dirtier races you'll probably die pretty quickly. It looks decent and handles well (arguably better than the Killerbee S since the weight distribution makes it more predictable), but there are other cars that just offer more performance regardless of which class you put it in. The Buggy adds some nice flavor and is a good alternative to the two Killerbees if you don't like how they drive, but otherwise there's not a whole lot of reasons to use it. Kind of like the Rocket you start with, actually. There's nothing wrong with it or anything, but it's just kind of average and there are better choices available if you want to run at the front of the pack.

This is what you should be buying the DLC for. It's stylish, classy, sounds great, and drives a lot better than you'd expect when given enough power (I recommend A- or B-class; in C-class it's pretty underpowered - and please set the gear ratio to 4, because the default setting is just sad). It won't be a competitor in squeaky-clean racing because it's still kind of a boat, but in less-clean servers it can hold its own on longer tracks. It carries speed surprisingly well through corners as long as they aren't too sharp, accelerates quite decently, and is overall just plain fun to drive (even though you probably won't be at the front most of the time).