Warhammer 40K: Speed Freeks is the perfect expression of the speedy, vicious Orks that star in its chaotic combat racing. Like the greenskins themselves, it’s loud, chaotic, crass, crude and built from scrap barely held together. If you can forgive its rough edges—and the funny smell—there’s plenty of fun to be had partying with the boyz. Just don’t get too attached: Orks aren’t known for sticking around, and you might soon find yourself alone on the starting line, wondering where the WAAAAAAGH! went.
Available On: PC
Reviewed On: PC
Developed By: Caged Element Inc
Published By: Wired ProductionsReview key provided by the publisher.
The game went through a bit of a transformation. It slid into Early Access 9 months ago as a free-to-play game, but fan feedback caused the developers to head into the pits and swap out for a traditional paid model. Now, you just pay £15 and jump into the action across 2 modes, 8 vehicles and a handful of maps. And to the developer’s credit, anyone who “bought” the game when it was free was given access to the new, paid version, a smart choice to help give the game the biggest player base possible when it launched into 1.0.
Basically, what we’re talking about here is Twisted Metal and a bit of Rocket League with Orks. These violence-loving monsters really are the best choice for the stars of Speed Freeks – as part of the Warhammer 40K universe they serve as the comedy faction in many ways. Who better to pilot a death-machine that a green nutjob who loves to blow shit up and firmly believes that painting something red makes it faster?
Orks are good at smashing stuff together to make other, crazier, faster stuff. The machines they’ve crafted could probably only be classified as cars if you squint hard, but when it comes to destructive fun they’re unmatched. There’s a good mix of vehicles and abilities on offer – the Trike, for example, favours hit and run tactics, using a grappling hook to close in on enemies before employing a slicing melee attack. Or you can opt for a heavily armoured tank, complete with a ram that can be used to flip enemies into the air. There are even support options, like a truck that hurls bombs and can heal allied Orks, even though healing other Orks feels very un-Orky to me. Those gitz can look after themselves.
These scrap-heaps handle surprisingly well, provided you ain’t expectin’ a Ferrari. More like a rocket-powered wheelbarrow with anger issues. The control method of choice counts for a lot, too. On a controller, turning, accelerating and braking are mapped to the left stick, freeing up the other stick for aiming. It’s fine, but I did find myself struggling in heated moments to spin around or quickly change direction without accidentally going into reverse or losing my momentum.
Playing with mouse and keyboard works well, too, because while you might not have the same level of fine control that a stick offers for turning, you get the much faster and precise aiming and firing that a mouse offers. In fact, and I’m shocked I’m saying this, I think mouse and keyboard are superior for this kind of vehicular warfare.
All the vehicles can access a refillable boost bar, and the light class machines also get the handy dash button to send your machine flying in just about any direction. Using this at every available opportunity is key to doing well, because not only does it let you pull off huge changes of direction, but it also lets you boost your speed. The only downside is that without using boost and dash to get up to speed, even the fastest cars feel slow. Getting stuck at base speed for even a second feels like a death sentence. Which is also why it’s frustrating how easy it is to get stuck in scenery, Every couple of matches, I found myself having to hit the respawn button to get out of somewhere. The physics can sometimes throw a wobbler that an Ork would be proud of, too, sending your car spinning in a weird direction or suddenly facing backwards. If you can embrace this as part of the chaos, it’s fine, but if you’re super-competitive, these moments might cause some frustrations.
Balancing these vehicular masterpieces of mayhem and madness is something that needs more work. The trike and the drill car are both machines that rely heavily on their gimmicks, leaving their main weapons feel kind of useless, for example.
Deff Rally takes place on one of six large, open maps and has both teams duking it out to score the most points. Each round kicks off with both teams racing toward a single capture point. The first Ork to get there nabs big points for their side—along with the dubious honour of standing alone as the entire enemy mob barrels toward them. After a while, checkpoints around the main area will start popping up and racing through them scores more points, too, with the speediest Orks netting the biggest points. Then it’s off to a new location—cue another wild charge across the wasteland like a Warhammer-flavoured Mad Max scene. Rinse and repeat until the final stretch: a full-speed, all-Ork dash for the finish line. This process gets repeated until it’s time to make a mad dash for the finish line, with bonus points being awarded to whoever makes it there in time and in what order.
Krumping (that’s killin’, to you humies) other Orks nets points as well, so Def Rallys are a messy mix of Orks blasting other Orks, and Orks racing around the checkpoints like someone has set fire to their arses, which, in fairness, they may of. It’s chaotic in all the right ways, a mosh-pit of green, burning rubber and bullets. While the map designs might not be visually exciting, the layouts offer a good mix of open areas, obstacles, ramps and chokepoints that skilled drivers can put to good use. There’s a reasonably high skill ceiling at play because you need to have good situational awareness, be able to maintain high speed and have precise aim while you’re zipping around. I’ve definitely noticed a big gap between the good players and everyone else in the points, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m one in the “everyone else” camp. That’s fine, though, because the less skilled of us can just enjoy the mayhem.
Kill Convoy throws two towering death-walkas into the fray, both grumpy enough to flatten an Ork just for lookin’ at ‘em funny. Each mech’s loaded with firepower and happy to unload it on any Ork that gets too close. To slow the enemy down, your team grabs bombs and rams them straight into the other side’s walking scrap pile. To slow these lumbering monsters down and win the race, each team has to fight each other to grab bombs and then drive straight into the other team’s mech. Just like, turning other Orks into roadkill does the job too.
There’s a progression system at play where you gather scrap which slowly unlocks new cosmetics for your vehicles, and new skins for your Orky drivers. Plus, each car comes with an alternate version of of its main weapons or ability that you can unlock by hitting certain milestones. It’s pretty lightweight stuff and the customisation is limited, so I wonder how the game was ever going to fare as a free-to-play title. Hopefully it means the developers have some content lined up for the future. I’d certainly love to see a few more weapons added for each vehicle. Hell, they could even go more thematic by having the color you pain your ride effect the game, just like how the Orks believe red things go faster, yellow things blow up harder and so on.
Probably the biggest issue the game is going to face is the same one that effects most multiplayer games, especially the smaller ones: can it retain enough players and for long enough? Even now, the player base isn’t huge despite it being just after launch. As I write this, Speed Freeks has typically been hitting a maximum concurrent player count of around 150 people per day for the last week. And as fun as it is, the gameplay does become repetitive fairly quickly, so how long will those players be willing to hang around? Of course, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as people refuse to buy the game because of a low player count. And will the developers be willing to throw more content at it if the players aren’t there?
The game does include AI bots to help populate matches with runtz what know how to press W, so at least it will remain playable even if you can’t find a match. Head’s up, though: it isn’t playable offline.
Bringing the boyz and their scrap-heaps to console would be the next step to help get the games playerbase scaled up. Hopefully, that’ll happen in the future so we can have some proper scraps.
Speaking of the players, there are a couple of gripes I have about how the game handles them. First, there’s no host migration, so if the Ork hosting the chaos decides to throw a tantrum and leave mid-match, everyone gets booted out and loses all of their scrap. A host migration system needs to be implemented. And second, in-game chat is limited to preset sentences that your character can yell out. Is it fun to spam them? Absolutely! But I’d love some proper communication so I can chat with my Ork brothers, even if it’s just text. Although, I do have to admit it’s kind of nice to play multiplayer and not have to worry about being told what my mum did this week.
There’s also a selection of bugs and problems. The developers are workin’ faster than a Mek on too much squig juice to squash ’em, releasing what seems like multiple patches a day. Some are funny, like explosions blasting you sky-high or across the map, while others, such as the car locking up on respawn if you’re holding the accelerator, are a bit more irritating.
In Conclusion…
WAAAAAAAAAAGH! What is it good for? Zoomin’, boomin’, and krumpin’ gitz who dare think their jalopy’s faster than yours!
Warhammer 40K: Speed Freeks is a gloriously unhinged banger-smashin’, nitro-blastin’ combat racer that nails the sheer madness of Ork culture. For £15, it’s a laugh—a green-fueled, scrap-hunting, boost-happy laugh that might just stick a dakka-shaped hole in your heart.
But while it’s loud, crude, and full of speed-freak charm, there’s a nagging worry that it might sputter out if not enough players keep revvin’ their engines. Still, even if da WAAAGH! doesn’t last forever, there’s fun to be had right now—especially if you’re the sort of git who paints everything red ‘cause you know that makes it faster.
It ain’t perfect. It’s buggy, it’s unbalanced, and it’s madder than a Goff on prom night—but that’s exactly what an Ork would call a good time.
