From miniature tabletop to videogame, Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks adapts the racin’ and fightin’ wargame into fast and frenzied vehicular combat. Speed Freeks distills Orkish auto duels into team-based anarchy spread across two modes: Deff Rally (capture the point) and Kill Konvoy (deliver the bomb). By refocusing car combat around the tropes of modern class-based hero shooters, the end product ends up being a disjointed hodgepodge of genre concepts that do not firmly fit together but still provide a bit of frantic fun.
The way Speed Freeks embodies its world of Orks in ramshackle killing (ahem, “krumpin’”) machines, is through Ork jargon for basically every conceivable bit of flavor text. Everything in the game is written in Da Ork Language — phonetically brash and brazenly violent descriptors for any little thing. So, as we name some of the game components, take a deep breath, because it’s weird by design.
The vehicle classes fall into essentially four distinct categories — buggies, bikes, battlewagons, and Trukks — and each has its own distinct weapon types and special abilities. There’s the (deep breath again) Boomdakka Snazzwagon, Kustom Boosta Blasta, Rukkatruk Squigbuggy, Deffkilla Wartrike, Looted Wagon, Shokkjumpa Dragsta, Grot Mega Tank, Megatrakk Scrapjet, and umm, the Trukk. We suspect this list tells you both absolutely nothing but also maybe everything about the game.
Much like the spin-off miniature wargame it’s adapted from, Speed Freeks is about wild spin-outs and chaotic movement. Rather than basing it all on dice roles, though, the game embodies the style of the Twisted Metal series, to varying effect. What’s special about the game, versus any other car combat game, is the omnidirectional maneuverability of the vehicles. You can be going any direction and with the tap of a boost, can jet off in any direction. There are tools to engage in battles but also deflect and confuse opponent players.
Having just left Early Access, the game still does not feel like a perfect 1.0 release — it’s buggy and its systems still feel tied to the original free-to-play design — although just before release, the payment model shifted to premium, which is a laudable move. What’s under the frame is still a series of unlockable Kustomization. Like tabletop figurines, you can paint your vehicle and its Orkish pitt boss in all manner of colors with cute Warhammery names — Naggaroth Night or Stegadon Scale Green, anyone? Then, you can Kustomize their tires, outer plating, etc., etc., which reveals an old structure of cosmetic payment, which is now replaced by the progression of scrapping “loot” from battles.
New to the full release, player-hosted matches now fill the lobby. Games can have 16 players (so, 8-on-8), which is a good number, but a lobby full of human players reveals the weaknesses in netcode. In a full match, it’s extremely hard to follow your gunfire or time anything properly. In a room of mostly bots, for better or mostly worse, the game basically functions properly. The player hosting concept mostly is fine and allows choice, but if the host leaves, games abruptly spit us back to the menu, or crash out the whole game.
While the focus on objective-based modes are nice, it also feels like an admission that it’s all pretty badly balanced. It makes more sense to play towards objectives, even though kills (sorry again, “krumps”) will net you points. There are a few vehicles where a kill-focused playstyle are valid, like more defensive and slow-moving units, but probably you’ll collect more points in one of the faster war rigs. The fastest vehicles, the wartrike and drag buggy, end up feeling pretty overpowered and like the two vehicles most valid for completing objectives. Meanwhile, some other vehicles hardly feel valid at all, certainly not out on your own. Which is what really differentiates Speed Freeks: the only valid strategy to really uplift your team, is to travel in packs. Certain vehicles also play better in either Deff Rally or Kill Konvoy, and while there are in-game progression systems for each vehicle and some need to be unlocked, you’ll find out quickly which one is useful in which situation.
Speed Freeks captures a very specific slice of the Warhammer mythos, centering around the planet Vigilus, which is all craggy rocks and scorched desert terrain. The environments, while modestly built for the gameplay, have few interesting features, and every space basically ends up feeling the same, with a few vaguely different choke points in each level. Additionally, if you want to party up with friends, you can play levels in “free play,” and design your own rally points for races, which further reveals just how generic the spaces really feel.
While moving car combat into modern multiplayer modes does not reinvent the wheel, it does give just enough variety, so that the game does not feel like rehashed Twisted Metal. Speed Freeks is mostly a diversion, but when you’re locked in and find your right vehicle, there’s plenty of fun to be had, and the Orkish flavoring is both charming and over-done, resulting in a game that feels true in spirit, but not all that compelling under all the layers of references.
5/10
Reviewed on Steam Deck