Grand Theft Auto, and to a lesser extent Saints Row, has spent a good 15 years teaching you that barrelling at full whack into a bollard, lamppost or lady of the night is a perfectly fine and ultimately consequence free way to spend your time. This is not the case, because as you may not realise car crashes can actually be quite dangerous. Just ask the Yellow Power Ranger. PS – You can’t, she died in a car crash.
Our friends south of the Equator in the floating island Yorkshire that is New Zealand have spent some time thinking about this hazardous mindset and come up with their own game to counteract it.
The New Zealand Transport Agency’s game, “Flash”, is a high-octane driving simulator in which you leap behind the wheel of a suped-up Japanese import sports car and tool around the city like that kid in Tokyo Drift who was never in any of the other movies. The music’s blaring, the thrills are piling up, but exercise caution. If you die in this game, that’s it.
A fatal crash will spell Game Over in a more permanent fashion than you might be used to. A moment after collision the game flashes up a series of pictures from your own Facebook and then that’s your lot. You can never play again.
No Extra Live, basically. If you die in the game, you stay dead, the idea being to teach kids that driving like a coked up maniac in a Hawaiian shirt is the least sensible course of action available to you when embarking on a real life journey.
Created for the NZTA “Speed Reduction” campaign, the game is already winning design awards left and right for innovation, but probably won’t be coming out on the next gen consoles because £35.99 for a single turn driving game is a move beyond even EA.
You can have a blast yourself at http://www.flashdrivinggame.com. Drive Safe.
Words by Gazz Wood
No comments:
Post a Comment