Thank you, Wired Productions, for providing us with a review code!

Before I start, there's something you should know. I hate Orks in the Warhammer 40K universe. I hate 'em. I hate the look, I hate the annoying, exaggerated Cockney accent they speak with, and I just...hate orks. And yet... This is the most fun I've had playing a 40k-related game in a long, long time.

Speed Freeks is the kind of game where the less seriously you take it, the more fun it is. Orks driving around, ostensibly in a race but really just out to 'krump' each other, is one of those racing games with guns. Chaotic, fast-paced, and silly, if you're in need of some quick fun or just feel like you have some steam to blow off, load it up. Immerse yourself in the glorious lunacy that takes place in this game.

It actually makes me stop hating orks while I'm playing.

There's no story. No plot to follow. The thing you need to understand about Orks is that they're the comedy relief of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. They love battle, not because they're angry, vengeful, or power-hungry. They love battle because it's fun, and that energy works perfectly in this game. It's no doubt inspired by a rule in some editions of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame that says if you paint your Ork vehicles red, they go faster on the tabletop. Orks like reckless speed, violence, and insanity. This game captures it all perfectly.

You choose your vehicle (which you can upgrade) and go into a race, where the racers are divided into two teams. The teams race to a fixed point on the map, not following a race track of any kind, fight a while, race to another point, fight some more, then race to the finish line. Oh, did I mention the fighting? To be honest, I didn't really make much of an effort to win the races. I was enjoying 'krumping' opponents' vehicles. ('Krump' is what you call it when you blow up an opponent's vehicle.) No need to feel bad if you get krumped. You get a screen that shows who krumped you, with stats on how many times that player has krumped you and how many times you've krumped them (good for fueling rivalries). Then you can watch from that player's point of view. All of this is skippable, and you can respawn almost immediately and get back into the insanity. There are no consequences for getting krumped, other than missing out on a few seconds of the action, which is plenty painful enough!

Between matches, you can use the scrap you've accumulated to buy upgrades to the vehicles in your inventory, which are earned through in-match achievements.

This game is stupid in the most endearing way I can possibly mean it, and I'm still not over how surprised I am to have liked it. It's got a little something for almost any player. Do you like high-speed racing action? Covered. Do you like to shoot at opponents and blow them to pieces? Covered. Do you like a tactical approach that makes the most of your abilities and resources? Have at it! Do you like to basically drive around, mash buttons, and watch things explode? They've got you covered there, too.

Your vehicle's health is measured in a health bar, and it regenerates slowly as you play. Your vehicle's performance isn't affected by damage, so you're 100% effective until you're krumped.

Gameplay on the PC is pretty simple. WASD keys to drive around, with the E and F keys to use special abilities that come with your chosen vehicle, like a smokescreen or boost. The mouse is used to aim, and you can fire the main gun with the left button and the secondary weapon with the right. The controls on a game controller are similarly intuitive, clearly meant to allow a player to jump right in without having to memorize a control map. As mentioned, there are only driving controls and the two weapons that come with each vehicle. For example, the buggy you start the game with has a rotary autocannon as its main, and the secondary is an Ork leaning out the side, throwing Molotov cocktails.

There is a targeting reticle, but things are so fast that it's really more of a guideline than a precision aiming tool. Who has time to aim when 'der'z gits to be krumped?

Multiplayer is your only game mode unless you like to repeat the tutorial. There are no bots as far as I can tell; they just throw you right in against real players. Finding a match was automatic, with no delay at all. Dis ain't a campaign game. Wot you gonna krump when yer alone?

The graphics are great, which is what you would expect. The landscape and settings look great. Giant junkyards tend to seem drab and boring, but the various ramps and obstacles are still easy to see. The vehicles are cool in a very Mad Max, slapped together sort of way, and the goblins in the vehicles helping out the Orks look great. All of this is very consistent with the visual language of Warhammer 40,000, the Ork faction in particular. Lots of reds, yellows, and an industrial look.

The sound effects and voiceovers are on par with what one would expect, with your Ork vehicle crew commenting on the action.

This game is heavy on the system requirements. One of the minimum requirements is a solid-state drive (SSD), and they're not kidding about that. An SSD is an absolute requirement, and the game won't run without one. Believe me, I tried, just to see what would happen if I installed and ran it on a regular hard drive. It wouldn't play. Also, you'll want to have 16GB of RAM and a graphics card and processor to match. I haven't had any issues running it on a Windows 10 system with a Ryzen 5, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, and 16 GB of RAM.

This is a game set in the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40,000, and yet even though it's got plenty of action violence, it isn't nearly as bad as other 40K offerings. There's no graphic bloodshed or visceral kills. Things blow up. That's it. No blood spray or ichor all over the place. Orks are aliens, but that's about as occult as it gets. The scope of the game is limited to a bunch of Orks in a junkyard. There aren't any of the spiritual concerns often found in games set in that universe. The orkish use of the language is, as mentioned, an exaggerated Cockney accent (described as a form of Low Gothic in-universe), but if there's any profanity, it's none I'm familiar with. Honestly, the biggest danger here is that your kids might start talking like orks, and I can't imagine anything more annoying.

This is a ridiculously fun game that takes itself exactly as seriously as it needs to...which is to say hardly at all. The initial tutorial is challenging because it throws a lot of information at you very fast, but you can learn by doing pretty quickly. The game isn't complex or difficult. It is exactly what it sets out to be: mindless fun in the 40K universe.

I still hate orks, but I really liked this game.