I will be honest with you: as much as I was immediately enamored with the concept of playing a Mad Max-inspired vehicular combat game themed after Warhammer 40,000, and as awesome as it was to see a publisher deciding to remove microtransactions altogether prior to launching the game out of Early Access, I was ready to give Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks a woeful score at first. For nearly a week, it was literally (and I do mean LITERALLY) impossible to find a single match, or connect to any of the very few I’d find after refreshing the matchmaking menu like crazy.

It’s Mad Max with Orks. And cockney accents.

I decided to be patient and wait for the outcome of 2025’s edition of Warhammer Skulls, a showcase of upcoming Warhammer titles that usually hype up the community. It worked. Speed Freeks servers finally started to become (moderately) populated, or at least populated enough for me to find matches at a regular basis. I was finally able to enjoy what’s admittedly a pretty interesting take on vehicular combat, though I have a few doubts regarding its lasting appeal and future.

So what is Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks? In essence, it’s the Warhammer take on vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8, but with an added element of actually acting like a racing game during its matches. Besides its more traditional arena-based modes, Speed Freeks‘ flagship mode is a team-based effort in which you need to run through checkpoints as quickly as possible, whilst ensuring your enemies won’t even make past them. The thing is that the game doesn’t expect that all team members will reach each checkpoint.

Tell your mates to protect you from harm if you’re focused on racing.

The reason is simple: this is a team-based game after all, and you can choose between a plethora of car classes, each one with strengths and weaknesses. Players driving fast-but-frail sports rides should be the ones focused on running through these checkpoints as quickly as possible, for instance. Other combat-oriented rides can also do the same job, but are better used as hunters, chasing down the competition, blasting them with machine gun fire and molotov cocktails. Some wholesome team players might even decide to get rid of speed altogether and play as tanks, which act as big brutes on the battlefield, as well as actual physical obstacles and support units.

It’s nothing as varied or overly complicated as Overwatch, but it gets the job done. It’s a very creative loop that appeals to all kinds of players. Everything is also coated in layers of hilarious cockney-infused Ork grunts, as well as an excellent performance. Speed Freeks might not look exactly like a current-gen game, but it’s still a visually interesting game that manages to run incredibly smoothly during online play. With that being said, I have two main issues with this game. Well, one is an issue, the other one is more of a series of questions regarding its lasting appeal.

Pick this car if you want to focus on actually winning races.

The main issue is the controls. Let me reiterate that I really like the gameplay loop, but for a game centered around driving cars, Speed Freeks decided to ditch the typical “press trigger to accelerate” formula, the thing we’ve been using since the Dreamcast era of gaming, opting for the Halo method of tilting the analog stick forward in order to both accelerate and steer. Had this game been solely about vehicular combat, I would have been able to accept it. But there’s racing involved, so this control scheme never feels 100% natural. It’s not like it’s unplayable, far from it, you can obviously get used to it after a while… it just feels weird, that’s it.

But my main point of concern lies on Speed Freeks‘ ability to maintain a healthy community after a while. As previously mentioned, the first few days felt like a barren desert, with the game rising to a couple hundred concurrent players only after a lot of marketing had been done during a Warhammer-themed conference. What’s next for Speed Freeks, then? What’s the roadmap, plans for keeping the community at a decent size? I really like what’s in here, but this current player base, while not terrible, represents what’s basically the peak player count for the foreseeable future. I don’t want for Speed Freeks to die soon, as there’s a lot of fun to be had playing its crazy matches.

Everything is written in Ork slang. Luvlee.

Speed Freeks will live or die based on its developer and publisher’s ability to maintain a sizeable player count for the foreseeable future. I really like the core gameplay loop, sense of humor, and presentation. It’s a totally dumb and over-the-top multiplayer funhouse, just the way I like it. If you’re even moderately into vehicular combat games, even if you don’t know a damn thing about Warhammer, Speed Freeks is an easy recommendation, despite its flaws and limitations. Make sure this game will last for a while, as it’s quite fun with the right mindset.

Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks was provided by the publisher.