I’ve been neck-deep in Warhammer games these past few years, bouncing between Darktide, Space Marine 2, and Rogue Trader like an Ogre Mawtribe at a buffet. The Warhammer crowd? We’re feasting. It’s gotten so wild, we’re pulling numbers that would make even Star Wars fans do a double-take.

With all these bangers dropping, you’d think I’d be riding high, but the first time I caught wind of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks, my hype train hit the brakes. Every time a franchise tries to shoehorn itself into a kart racer, I get flashbacks to those awkward crossovers nobody asked for.

Turns out, I was dead wrong. Speed Freeks isn’t some cutesy kart racer; it’s like Twisted Metal got hijacked by a mob of Orks on a sugar rush.

Within minutes of booting up the game, I was neck-deep in pure, unfiltered chaos. Orks were lighting up the battlefield with miniguns, rockets, charged electro-shots, and predator-like guided missiles. I was so incredibly wrong about this being a kart racer; it went up in smoke.

Look, I went into the preview for this game as a card-carrying Warhammer addict, but I barely skimmed the surface. So you can picture my jaw hitting the floor when I got dropped straight into an open world. Not a linear race track.

Here’s the deal: you control some sort of Ork vehicles, from normal four-wheeled Mad Max-looking psycho carriages to tanks and even helicopters. Each comes fitted with some sort of primary and secondary weapon, with some sort of boost or other ability that either mends friends, harms enemies, or allows you to stay alive a bit longer.

I started off with the basic vehicle, a nice grimmy Boomdakka Snazzwagon. This little open-top convertible splashes the enemy two-fold. Through primary fire of a Dakka minigun, and secondary fire with actual fire via a “burna bottle”. Can I just say I absolutely love the Ork language in Warhammer?

You’re locked from most other vehicles, but don’t worry, these all unlock rather quickly. Before I could even really figure out what one vehicle was decent at, I had another on my selectable list of vehicles taunting me to be tested. And test I did.

With these vehicles, players can pick from two standard game modes. One focuses on pushing a large Stompa across the world map, where each team attempts to get their Stompa to the end first. Teams can attempt to gather respawning bombs on the map that can be “hand-delivered” to the enemy's team Stompa to slow their progression. Kills also slow progression, but in much smaller increments than a bomb delivery.

Before I get to the second main game mode, I need a moment to pause. In an age where gamers are paying anywhere from $60 to $80 for new games, or even $100 if the people at Take-Two had their way, Caged Element and Wired Productions are out here doing the impossible.

For the same price as a double meal combo at McDonald's (actually, it’s way less), you can get Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks for $19.99. Not only is that an insane price in and of itself, but they didn’t even raise it to $25 like most would. Heck, it seems the standard pricing these days for smaller titles is now $30 to $40, but Wired Productions (the publisher) is out here dropping dimes on us for the price of two large lattes.

Second is the “Deff Rally” game mode, which puts two teams against one another in more of a race setting. Beacons will spawn on the map that each team can race to and claim first. From there, roughly 30 seconds later, a race will begin with a dozen or more checkpoints for players to reach.

The first player across the line scores a good amount of points for their team, with the top five players all obtaining points with values relative to the place they take. Again, killing enemy players also tallies the scoreboard for your team.

Both modes run on 8v8 chaos, which might sound tiny next to the online behemoths like Battlefield 6, but trust me, when it comes to vehicular carnage, 16 is the magic number. Any more and I’d probably just glue myself inside a tank and pray.

Each mode is different enough that I was having quite a lot of fun switching between the two before I noticed a full-blown community map creator that players can call up. I came across giant, physically-bending metal monstrocities, lore-accurate landscapes, and a recreation of the greatest Counter-Strike map ever created, Dust 2.

You can jump into all of these wild creations in public lobbies, most of which are straight-up rally races from start to finish. So yeah, I guess there’s a little kart racing DNA hiding in there after all. But even when you’ve finally played out of the main maps, there are still four free battle passes waiting to be conquered.

Yes, the game also comes with its own variation of free Battle Passes called Waaagh Path! Each has anywhere from 70 to 100 levels to complete, offering various cosmetics for your vehicles. Players earn levels for their selected Waaagh Path by earning scrap from completing both public and private matches.

Needless to say, for $20, I can't believe the amount of game that comes packed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks. I think I just found my Saturday night buddy game for the next month.

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Michael has been gaming since he was five when his mother first bought a Super Nintendo from Blockbuster. Having written for a now-defunct website in the past, he's joined Windows Central as a contributor to spreading his 30+ years of love for gaming with everyone he can. His favorites include Red Dead Redemption, all the way to the controversial Dark Souls 2.