Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Games
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Hardware
  • Video
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Deals
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
Subscribe now
Trending
  • Hollow Knight Silksong
  • Dying Light: The Beast
  • Battlefield 6
  • New Games for 2025
Don't miss these
Forza Horizon 5 herding cats series 3 photography challenge
Racing Games Best racing games to put you in pole position
How to enter GTA 5 cheats
Grand Theft Auto "This dude’s gonna single-handedly delay GTA 6 for several years": Bold truth seeker asks if GTA 5 street signs are actually legal, commissions a mod that corrects Rockstar's many mistakes
Lies of P Fable Arts
RPGs 11 Lies of P tips and tricks to give you a nose for danger
Taking a corner at speed with blue skies overhead, skidding, in Driver for PS1, from the PLAY Magazine retrospective - cropped in for a header image
Open World Games I still wake up sweating because of Driver's parking garage, but there's no denying this PS1 classic changed open world gaming forever
Need For Speed Underground 2
Need For Speed I've been playing Need for Speed Underground 2 and Midnight Club 3 – 20 years later, they're still awesome
Sonic Racing Crossworlds
Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn't, and I'm as shocked by that as anyone
The main characters bombs along on their bicycle in the Wheel World key art, the biking spirit floating just ahead of the handlebars
Open World Games Wheel World review: "By merging Burnout Paradise and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with pedal power, Wheel World arrives somewhere unusual and worth visiting"
Mario Kart World screenshot showing Yoshi leaping off of his bike in celebration
Super Mario Mario Kart World's staff would "go skateboarding or ride their bikes" during lunch breaks, which explains the wild movement in the Switch 2 racer
Rosalina riding the Stellar Sled kart across the snow in Mario Kart World
Super Mario Mario Kart World player discovers you can defy the laws of gravity in Free Roam with a bug that allows you to float across the map: "I think I broke the game"
Trackmania player Wirtual
Racing Games "I can't move my hands": After 92 hours, 264 attempts, and 12 days of grinding, Trackmania player beats 4-hour ice gauntlet after his opponent in the $3,800 race had finally gone to sleep
Mario Kart World screenshot for Switch 2 showing Wario blasting ahead with a host of characters right behind him in a desert biome
Super Mario Mario Kart World tricksters are getting so advanced, they're breaking the damn game: "I could explore underneath basically the whole track"
GTA Online screenshot showing a woman with pink hair and a green coat holding a gun in front of an expensive red car
Grand Theft Auto Today's GTA Online is a compulsive loop of long and mostly uneventful drives, but I'm into it
Star Overdrive screenshot showing protagonist Bios who has wide hair surfing across a desert plain as a sandworm peruses him - the Indie Spotlight logo is at the top right corner
Open World Games I've been hunting sandworms while doing hoverboard kickflips and keytar solos in this hypnotizing mashup of Breath of the Wild and Hi-Fi Rush
Mario Kart World screenshot on Switch 2 showing King Boo on a bike
Super Mario Mario Kart World's new Rewind feature can be used in Time Trials to set wild records, like this 13-second lap
Bee Wario pops a trick off Crown City Bridge in Mario Kart World
Racing Games Nintendo has made my biggest problem with Mario Kart World even worse
  1. Games
  2. Racing

10 lies video games tell us about racing

Features
By Andrew Groen published 7 November 2012

Ramp off a building while on fire in our latest feature on the lies games tell us

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Start your engines

Start your engines

Last week we dug our brains into the fictional representation of outer space in video gaming, and this week we're bringing things back down to terra firma with a look at how video games stretch the truth about cars and racing.

As is usually the case, these aren't necessarily bad things. Game designers love to "correct" reality in order to make it fun. We're just trying to set the record straight. Like a road. A straight road.

Page 1 of 12
Page 1 of 12
Friction doesnt matter that much

Friction doesnt matter that much

Friction is the age-old enemy of the racing game designer. Not only does the real life version of friction prevent ridiculous spontaneous drifting, but it also puts the kaibosh on a few other staples of racing gaming. Mostly grinding up on walls when you make turns: the bread and butter of sucking at racing games.

It shows up most in games like Burnout where you can grind against walls or the median without much penalty to your speed. In fact, the steel-on-concrete friction doesn't seem to slow you down at all if you're using nitrous boosters. They also love to let you grind up against your opponents as an act of aggression, while ignoring the real world bummer of gashed tires. We'd like to see more games where your tires can be sliced open by opposing racers, leaving you to wait around for AAA for six hours.

Page 2 of 12
Page 2 of 12
SUVs can do hairpin turns at 100mph

SUVs can do hairpin turns at 100mph

Game developers just love including SUVs as unlockable classes in their racing games because they think it represents a nice change of pace from the dainty speedsters that dominate most games. And they're sort of right, in gameplay terms.

That said, there's a reason you don't often see SUVs racing on ESPN: It'd be really stupid. If you've ever driven an actual SUV you've probably noticed that they tend to feel like they're going to tip over when you round a corner at a blazing 35 miles per hour. Yet in racing games we see them pulling 180 degree turns at full speed. Thats simply not how things work. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that offer a good glimpse at what happens when you try to turn your SUV too suddenly.

Page 3 of 12
Page 3 of 12
Ramming opponents is a good strategy

Ramming opponents is a good strategy

When we play racing games we're usually pretty clear on the fact that we're horrible at racing games. That doesn't mean we can't win though. Generally, we like to employ a strategy called, "Operation: Drag Everyone Else Down." The idea is to screw up everyone else's race so badly that we can come in at a decent rank.

This works great in Burnout and Need for Speed, but not so much in Gran Turismo. The biggest reason is that you just can't go around ramming seven other cars on the tarmac and hope your car stays together. You might mess up some of their cars, but you'll get equal punishment. If you hit seven cars, you officially have seven times more collision damage than everyone else. Good strat, dude.

Page 4 of 12
Page 4 of 12
Cars were meant to be jumped

Cars were meant to be jumped

We've been playing a lot of Need for Speed: Most Wanted this week, and like Burnout Paradise before it, one of the main messages seems to be: "Gravity? Don't worry about gravity." That means any time we see a ramp we go for it, because that's the best thing you can do in a car, right? Not exactly.

Game devs love to disregard the simple fact that if you ramped off a seven story building and landed your car on flat, solid ground, it's pretty likely that bad things would happen. Like having your lungs wind up somewhere inside your colon as your internal organs smash toward the ground, thanks to all the additional mass strapped to you. Oh, and the car would likely be destroyed, since rubber tires aren't that shock absorbent.

Page 5 of 12
Page 5 of 12
Drifting is always the best decision

Drifting is always the best decision

Thanks to games like Mario Kart, OutRun, Burnout, and Need For Speed, lots of people seem to be under the impression that drifting is a really good strategy for racing. And that's sort of true--but only if you're actually in a drift race.

If you're in a normal car, you're not just going to drift around the corner of Main St. and Oak Ave. Cars generally have tires designed specifically to prevent drifting. Even in professional races, you don't see people drifting around corners. The far wiser strategy is to find the perfect angle to slice through the turn without losing momentum. Drifting is quite poor at conserving momentum by comparison.

Page 6 of 12
Page 6 of 12
Nitrous = rocket booster

Nitrous = rocket booster

As we dig deeper and deeper into this list we're starting to realize that Burnout is the root of all evil (or, at least, the root of all bad science). Ever since arcade racing games discovered that there's a real thing called nitrous oxide boosters which can make your car go faster they've come up with ever more fantastical visions of how that works.

At this point, nitrous boosters are essentially sci-fi rockets strapped to the tush of a race car. The good news: yes nitrous makes your car go faster. The bad news: it's a bit more mundane than that. The long and short of it is that the introduction of Nitrous Oxide into the engine pumps more oxygen into the system allowing you to burn more fuel, more quickly.

Page 7 of 12
Page 7 of 12
Fire hyrdrants can be run over

Fire hyrdrants can be run over

This myth falls firmly in the category of "totally fake," but we understand why many games fudged this one. Open-world racing games would be an absolute mess if every street corner had a little iron tank that was bolted to the ground.

In arcade racing games, fire hydrants aren't a problem. They pop off like champagne corks, sending a satisfying geyser of water shooting into the air. That's not actually what happens when you hit one of those though. Cars are fragile; steel plumbing is not. The picture above is a more accurate representation of what racing games would look like if they were more realistic.

Page 8 of 12
Page 8 of 12
Landing on your wheels solves everything

Landing on your wheels solves everything

Remember that SUV that flipped over in the gas station a few slides ago? What? You didn't click on on the YouTube link? Well, don't worry--he was totally fine because his car landed on its wheels... or at least he would be if this was a video game.

Games have a tendency to only declare a crash has occurred if certain conditions have been met. Have you been hit with sufficient force in the hood? Crash. Hit a guard rail too hard? Crash. Land on your wheels after taking a turn too quickly and flipping the car 13 times, crushing every conceivable piece of the vehicle while sending parts flying into the air? Rub some dirt on it, you'll be fine.

Page 9 of 12
Page 9 of 12
Cars are easy to destroy

Cars are easy to destroy

The other side of the destruction story is that while cars are pretty quick to break in crashes, they're pretty impervious to blunt force trauma. Go watch a destruction derby sometime. You'll be treated to the glorious sight of some ridiculous people in ridiculous cars slowly trying to grind each other to death.

It can take forever. Granted, these are often reinforced vehicles, but the result is still far from the Burnout tradition of tapping an opponent gently then watching his vehicular corpse soar through the air in flames. So while yes, cars can die instantly when their vital parts take damage, those vital parts are usually pretty well-shielded from crashes with another car.

Page 10 of 12
Page 10 of 12
Driving off-road is a good idea

Driving off-road is a good idea

Video games love to pretend that driving off-road in your Maserati is a reasonable alternative to driving on smooth pavement. They are incorrect. They're especially incorrect when they depict off-road racers gunning it at 100mph through rough terrain, despite being outfitted for tarmac.

Let's paint a picture: Think about how much it sucks to hit a deep pothole while traveling at a meager 25 mph. It sort of feels like the whole wheel came off. Now mentally replace that pothole with a large 20 pound stone. Replace your stubborn old '99 Buick with a delicate Italian sportscar, and imagine it hitting that stone at 100mph. Complete and utter destruction.

Page 11 of 12
Page 11 of 12
The end of the road

The end of the road

We'd just like to reiterate that we don't think racing games are "wrong" for stretching the truth about reality. We love it when they do. It allows us to have different genres, and also to drift around corners at 130mph while dodging a crashing aircraft in Split/Second.

It's just that when you repeatedly stretch the truth, it starts to sink in when people don't know any better. So we try to bring things back to the light of truth once in a while.

And if you're looking for more SCIENCE, check out 10 lies video games tell us about outer space and the science of zombie games.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Page 12 of 12
Page 12 of 12
CATEGORIES
Android iPad iPhone PC Gaming Wii-u Nintendo PlayStation Xbox Platforms Mobile Gaming
PRODUCTS
Burnout Paradise Need For Speed: Most Wanted Burnout Paradise Gran Turismo Need For Speed Most Wanted
Andrew Groen
Andrew Groen
Social Links Navigation

Andrew is a freelance video game journalist, writing for sites like Wired and GamesRadar. Andrew has also written a book called EMPIRES OF EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online.

See more PC Gaming Features
Read more
Forza Horizon 5 herding cats series 3 photography challenge
Best racing games to put you in pole position
How to enter GTA 5 cheats
"This dude’s gonna single-handedly delay GTA 6 for several years": Bold truth seeker asks if GTA 5 street signs are actually legal, commissions a mod that corrects Rockstar's many mistakes
Lies of P Fable Arts
11 Lies of P tips and tricks to give you a nose for danger
Taking a corner at speed with blue skies overhead, skidding, in Driver for PS1, from the PLAY Magazine retrospective - cropped in for a header image
I still wake up sweating because of Driver's parking garage, but there's no denying this PS1 classic changed open world gaming forever
Need For Speed Underground 2
I've been playing Need for Speed Underground 2 and Midnight Club 3 – 20 years later, they're still awesome
Sonic Racing Crossworlds
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn't, and I'm as shocked by that as anyone
Latest in Racing
A blue car in Tokyo Xtreme Racer
Legendary Japanese racing game dev goes under the radar for 18 years, quietly emerges to drop the best-rated Steam racer of 2025, and gives fans 20 days to grab it at a hefty discount before the price jumps to $50
The Crew
After Ubisoft's shutdown of The Crew spawned the Stop Killing Games movement, a group of fans are finally ready to release a server emulator to keep the racer alive: "No one will ever be able to take this away from you now"
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 6's Japan open world seems likelier than ever as a car import company mistakenly sheds some light on the Xbox sequel
Umamusume: Pretty Derby horse girls racing
Fan of Steam's latest gacha craze Umamusume: Pretty Derby sacrifices brand new fridge to his sociopathic horse girl who's only winning third place: "She's a late bloomer"
The Mario Kart Wii version of Funky Kong in front of a blurred background
After 50 hours and over 3,000 attempts, Mario Kart speedrunner proves a "humanly impossible" trick is actually doable, and absolutely destroys a 2-year-old world record in the process
Umamusume: Pretty Derby horse girl Grass Wonder
Umamusume players hold a digital funeral for Grass Wonder, the real, 30-year-old racehorse behind one of the game's beloved anime horse girls: "May you eat dandelions in heaven"
Latest in Features
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater snake aiming pistol
If 20 years and a Metal Gear Solid Delta playthrough have taught me anything, it’s that Snake Eater remains one of the greatest, stupidest games ever made
Hornet strikes at a red flow bud beneath her in Hollow Knight: Silksong in The Marrow
Hollow Knight Silksong has beat my ass for 11 hours, but it's not too hard – we just have a problem with instant gratification
A close-up shot of Pinhead from Hellraiser
Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival – Everything we know so far about the gory new game
Hollow Knight: Silksong still of Hornet dueling a sword wielding bug
Silksong is way harder than Hollow Knight, and my theory is that Team Cherry became evil masterminds without even realizing it
The Conjuring: Last Rites
The DCU doesn't need to look to Marvel for pointers on building a cinematic universe – horror movies like The Conjuring have always done it best
Word Play screenshot of a typical match in the roguelike spelling game
Word Play is a spelling roguelike that feels like the final boss of Wordle and it made me feel like an angry genius
  1. The Vantage box on a white wooden surface, against a plain wall
    1
    This enormous exploration board game won't be for everyone, but it's a masterclass in narrative and sandbox gameplay
  2. 2
    Hollow Knight Silksong review in progress: "Worth the wait and then some, this isn't just more Hollow Knight but an evolved, spindly beast all its own – even if it's fiddly at times"
  3. 3
    Cronos: The New Dawn review: "An unabashed mash-up of survival horror greatest hits, from Dead Space to Silent Hill, with plenty of its own gory ideas"
  4. 4
    This gorgeously weird monster board game warms my Halloween-loving heart, and it's a delight
  5. 5
    Lost Soul Aside review: "We (don't) have Final Fantasy Versus 13 at home"
  1. Vera Farmiga as 'Lorraine' in The Conjuring: Last Rites
    1
    The Conjuring: Last Rites review: "Not bold or memorable enough for the Warrens' final chapter"
  2. 2
    Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle review: "Roars past Mugen Train as Demon Slayer's best adventure yet"
  3. 3
    The Long Walk review: "One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made"
  4. 4
    Frankenstein review: "A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation"
  5. 5
    Weapons review: "A twisted fairytale that bests Barbarian"
  1. Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, Luis Guzman as Gomez Addams, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams in Wednesday season 2 part 2
    1
    Wednesday season 2 part 2 review: "Ortega shines, but it's a zombie who steals the entire show"
  2. 2
    Peacemaker season 2 review: "Darker and sadder than the first year, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids."
  3. 3
    Wednesday season 2 part 1 review: "Complex and exciting but weighed down by too many subplots"
  4. 4
    Alien: Earth review: "Arguably the franchise's strongest outing since James Cameron's Aliens"
  5. 5
    King of the Hill season 14 review: "Hank Hill himself has evolved into a much more open and accepting person"

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...