Playing Wreckfest while learning to drive was incredibly rewarding.

At the age of 9, I quickly learned that “automatic” is better than “manual” in the plastic seats of the Sega Rally arcade machine without understanding why. And now I know: shifting gears is hard work. This year, in my mid-thirties, I finally learned to drive. And surprisingly, a racing game about destroying clapped out old bangers helped me along. Thank you DestructionYou let me release all the bottled up road rage.

When I say “understood,” I don’t mean that this brutal racing game taught me how to safely reverse around a corner or smoothly navigate a roundabout. Recfest has been a great outlet for the restlessness that envelops me after any driving lesson. Driving – if you’ve been doing it for years and have developed a thick layer of contempt – is very stressful. Wreckfest, although it’s pretty old now in terms of gameplay. Continued in the workTo understand the serious risks associated with using 1.5 tons of quick iron, it still says: No! Not here.

You can slide down circular dirt tracks in a beat up station wagon. You can fight with twenty combiners. You can drive a “battle bus” with a large metal cow hunter mounted on the front and drive the wrong way in online multiplayer, destroying the roads of the leaders and going to the 24th level of public transport to avoid your revenge. Even though it was released in 2018, it has become one of my favorite games this year.

John called him one. “The antidote to head-on racing sims.” When released. But I found out when I was writing our list. The best racing games. Now that I’ve finally been told about the button that activates the hazard lights, I’m content to enter this list. I downloaded Wreckfest as a happy exploration and immediately enjoyed the hellish thrill of running into a rival in a corner. Week after week I realized that I had to do the opposite of everything I was being taught slowly and dearly.

The secret to learning how to drive someone on the internet is to forget that what you’re doing is incredibly dangerous. You need to know deep down that you are plowing the asphalt with a machine that kills and injures thousands of people every year. But you have to put that knowledge aside and be fair Do it.Trusting everyone around you to drive as an ally, they seem unconcerned when they’re unknowingly told about their weak bones. Over and over again, driving down the highway, I still think: My God, what are we doing!? In many ways, mass driving is a perfect metaphor for the willful ignorance of mortality that accompanies everyone every day. La la la, we sing to ourselves when we forget death again, dum-dee-dum. There’s a reason people develop amaxophobia, the fear of driving, and it’s a more rational phobia than most of us would like to admit.

Games like Wreckfest (and the Burnout series, lest we forget) are perfect stress relief for a life limited by fear, not road rules. Some thalassophobes are playing. Subnautica He realizes that diving into the deep underwater terror provides a form of release. Likewise, the obnoxious driver yells, “Fuckfest! All cars allowed! No rules!” It’s not (just) throwing the normal driving rule in the trash. The deadliest way is to get rid of your fear of failure. Helmet-wearing Wreckfest drivers can be squashed and squeezed into comical shapes as the vehicle crashes impossibly around them, or comically skyrocketed as they are ejected from their lawnmowers. But pressing the ‘reset’ button for more than 3 seconds is too short to get back on track. You have a health counter, but nothing can hurt you here. Ah, video games.

Northern Ireland, where I learned to drive, has a bad history of race car racers causing fatal accidents in search of a bit of fun. Dangerous driving IRL is not something to be commended for. I almost fell twice because of the quick stabs, and neither time did I think: “Haha, cool”. However, while it may seem unwise to fly across asphalt at 100 mph on roads that look like they were built by the Joker from Batman, I understand that someone like Sonic wants to go fast, feel the rush of speed, and forget about it. Forget the rules, fear. In Wreckfest there are no rules for joining a server (or maybe Night-runnersChanneling game Japan’s illegal night race). After years of mildly enjoying racing games, enjoying them a little more like a mumbling pedestrian, I now understand them a little better.

Wreckfest and its arcade racing – a place where the stress of excessive safety precautions, the possibility of injury or death is completely forgotten about, like a cat skidding across the kitchen floor and rolling around in a smoky corner. When you’re driving by when you witness a horrible pile up and think not “oh my god” but “lol cya suckersssss”. Yes, I’m late to the party. I’m late for driving and I’m late for Wreckfest and probably late for any appointment because I’m still driving cautiously on country roads and tripping over a jackass who hovers three inches behind me. But it’s better to arrive late and safe than late and never.