Playing Wreckfest while learning to drive was surprisingly helpful

At age 9, sitting in the plastic seats of a Sega Rally arcade machine, I quickly learned that an automatic machine was better than a manual one, without understanding why. And now I know: changing gears is a damn chore. This year, when I was in my thirties, I finally learned to drive. And, oddly enough, a racing game about destroying old old fireworks helped me. Thank you Festival of the Crashdespite all the pent-up road rage you’ve allowed me to unleash.

When I say “helped,” I don’t mean that this aggressive racing game taught me how to reverse safely or how to navigate a roundabout calmly. Wreckfest helped me get rid of the anti-peace that came over me after any driving lesson. Driving (if you’ve been doing it for years and have built up a thick layer of contempt) is incredibly stressful. Wreckfest, although game-wise it’s old enough to have continuation of workremains the perfect way to relax, understand the overwhelming anxiety associated with juggling 1.5 tons of fast metal, and at the same time be able to say: no! Not here.

You can cruise the dirt roads in a beat-up station wagon. You can enter battle with twenty combines. You can drive a “battle bus” with a large metal cow catcher mounted on the front and sneak into the 24th spot by driving the wrong way in online multiplayer, aiming to run the leaders off the road as they swerve to avoid your vindictive actions . public transport. This year it became one of my favorite games, despite the fact that it came out in 2018.

John called it “An antidote to pompous-faced racing simulators” when it was released. But I only discovered this while writing our list best racing games. Now that I was finally informed about the button that controls the hazard lights, I was excited to tackle this list. I downloaded Wreckfest as a serendipitous exploration and immediately felt the hellish joy of crashing into my opponent on the corner. I realized the happy misdeed of doing the exact opposite of everything I had been slowly and dearly taught, week after week.

Someone on the Internet said that the secret to learning to drive is to forget that what you are doing is incredibly dangerous. You must know on a deep level that you are plowing asphalt with a machine that kills and maims thousands upon thousands of people every year. But you will also have to put this knowledge aside and just do itwhile at the same time trusting everyone else around you, driving like a comrade in denial of danger, unconsciously aware of your fragile bones but seemingly unfazed. From time to time, driving along the highway, I still think: oh my God, what are we DOING!? In many ways, mass driving is a perfect metaphor for the willful ignorance of mortality that accompanies all people day in and day out. La-la-la, we sing to ourselves, forgetting about death again, dum-di-dum. There’s a reason people develop amaxophobia, the fear of driving, and it’s a more rational phobia than many of us are willing to admit.

Games like Wreckfest (and the Burnout series, lest we forget) are the perfect stress reliever for a life limited not by traffic rules, but by fear. Some thalassophobes are playing subnautica will find that plunging into the bottomless watery horror provides a kind of liberation. Likewise, a stressed driver gets relief by joining a multiplayer server called: “Fuckfest! All cars are allowed! There are no rules! This isn’t (just) about throwing normal driving rules into the bin. It’s about letting go of your deadliest fear of messing up. Drivers wearing Wreckfest helmets can be crushed and compressed into funny shapes as the car crumples incredibly around them, or they can be comically launched into the sky as they are forced out of lawnmowers. But you’ll rarely need to press the reset button for more than 3 seconds to get back on track. You have a health meter, but nothing here can harm you. Ah, video games.

Northern Ireland, where I learned to drive, has a bad history of boy racers causing fatal crashes in search of mild thrills. Dangerous driving in real life is not something to be praised. I’ve already almost crashed twice because of fast assholes, and not once did I think, “haha, cool.” However, while I obviously think it’s unwise to fly across the pavement at 160 mph on roads seemingly built by Batman’s Joker, I understand that Sonic-like desire to go fast, feel the pressure of inertia and forget the rules, forget fear. Again, this is what you need to join a no rules server in Wreckfest (or maybe Night runnersa game that transmits channels illegal night racing in Japan). After years of naively enjoying racing games as a babbling pedestrian having a bit of fun, I now understand them a little better.

Wreckfest and similar aggressive arcade racing games are a place where you can completely forget about the stress of taking extreme precautions and the risk of injury or death in favor of smoky drift around the corner like a climbing cat sliding across kitchen tiles. An extremely safe simulator where you can witness a terrible crowd of people and, as you drive by, think not “oh my god”, but “lol, suckers.” Yes, I’m late to the party. I’m late for driving, I’m late for Wreckfest, and I’m probably late for any meeting I make because I’m still driving carefully on back roads and upsetting the jerk hovering three inches behind me. But arriving late and safely is better than arriving quickly and not arriving at all.