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Playing Wreckfest while learning to drive was surprisingly helpfulCrash course
Crash course
Image credit:THQ Nordic
Image credit:THQ Nordic
At 9 years old, in the plastic seats of a Sega Rally arcade machine, I quickly learned that “automatic” is better than “manual” without understanding why. And now I know: changing gears is a fucking chore. This year, in my mid-thirties, I finally learned to drive. And weirdly, a racing game about destroying clapped-out old bangers helped me along. Thank youWreckfest, for all the bottled road rage you allowed me to unleash.
When I say “helped” I don’t mean that this aggressive racing game taught me how to reverse safely around a corner or calmly navigate a roundabout. Wreckfest has been helpful as an outlet for the anti-calm that would envelope me after any given driving lesson. Driving - in case you have been doing it for years and have grown a thick layer of contempt - is massively stressful. Wreckfest, although it’s now old enough in gaming terms to havea sequel in the works, remains a perfect method of letting loose, of understanding the overwhelming concern that comes with manipulating 1.5 tons of fast metal, yet being able to say: nope! Not here.
Wreckfest - Official PC Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Wreckfest - Official PC Launch Trailer
John called it an"antidote to po-faced racing sims"when it was released. But I only discovered it while writing our list of thebest racing games. Now that I was finally informed about the button that operates hazard lights, I was content to take on this list. I downloaded Wreckfest as happy research and immediately relished the hellish joy of ramming into a rival on a corner. I recognised the happy transgression in doing the exact opposite of everything I was being slowly and expensively taught, week after week.
Image credit:THQ Nordic
The secret to learning how to drive, someone on the internet said, is to forget that what you are doing is incredibly dangerous. You have to know it at a deep level, that you are ploughing the tarmac with a machine that kills and injures thousands upon thousands of people every year. But you also have to put that knowledge aside and justdo it, while trusting everyone else around you to drive as a fellow danger denier, unconsciously informed of their fragile bones but seemingly unbothered. Every now and again, while driving on the motorway, I still think: my god, what are we DOING!? In many ways, mass driving is the perfect metaphor for the wilful ignorance of mortality that accompanies all humans day to day. La la la, we sing to ourselves as we forget about death again, dum-dee-dum. There’s a reason people develop amaxophobia, the fear of driving, and it is a more rational phobia than many of us care to admit.
Image credit:THQ Nordic
Wreckfest and its crashy arcade racer ilk - they’re a place where the stress of overwhelming safety precautions, the risk of hurt or death, can be completely forgotten in favour of smokily drifting around a corner like a scrambling cat skidding on kitchen floor tiles. A smashily safe simulation where you can witness a terrible pile-up and think not “my god” but “lol cya suckersss” as you drive past. Yes, I am late to the party. I am late to driving and late to Wreckfest and probably late to any appointment I make because I still drive cautiously on country roads and frustrate the jackass hovering three inches behind me. But arriving late and safe is better than fast and not at all.
