Top 10 Games With The Best Car Crashes!

What happens when you take the chaotic weapons of Mario Kart and put it on top of a Need for Speed Underground style aesthetic? Well you’d get Blur, with its blend of stylish colors, realistic car depictions and vehicular combat on the racing scene. Seeing our cars go flying after tripping a mine or getting hit by an enemy missile was a gorgeous sight to behold thanks in part to the game’s colorful blurry trails. While the overall physical destruction wasn’t there, it was the sheer fun of combat that helped to make those crashes all the more better.

A more realistic approach to the racing genre, Grid 2 makes for some fast-paced and tightly controlled races. Taking place in real locations all around the globe, Grid 2 brings in a plethora of cars to offer an experience that rivals big-boys like Forza and Gran Turismo. Keeping the realistic side in mind, the crashes are -although imperfect- quite the spectacle, as we see shreds of paint fly, and parts of our car chipped away and thrown onto the tracks. While Grid 2 may not have the insane physics of other racing games, it really helps to create a deeper sense of immersion.

The latest game in the DiRT series, DiRT Rally -like its predecessors and sequels- is a rally racing game, taking place on all sorts of various terrains. The series has been praised for its fast pace and extremely well-made depiction of rally racing. Yet even with its superb attention to detail, it doesn’t hold back on the crazy crashes. Due to the uneven terrains and sudden turns, you’ll need to make sure to slow down at certain intervals, otherwise you’ll be sent flying. Holding down the gas pedal can make for some high-flying stunts… and even bigger crashes.

The FlatOut series is no stranger to car on car destruction, as Ultimate Carnage continues to support the demolition derby style FlatOut is known for. While the racing portion in the series hasn’t created anything spectacular, it's the CARnage that makes it stand out. Thanks in part to the evolution of gaming, Ultimate Carnage boasts up to 40 unique destructible parts on every car. Let’s face it, this game was made for spectacular crashes. Of course, this wouldn’t be the only game series Bugbear would become well known for…

Do you just want to bypass all that racing nonsense and get straight to the crashing? Then BeamNG.drive is for you. Essentially just a driving/crashing simulation, BeamNG.drive utilizes powerful soft-body physics to create a crashing system that creates extremely realistic scenarios. The level of attention to detail of the car physics has apparently even caught the attention of some movie executives, wanting to use this game as a prototype before sending an actual stuntman out. However, as amazing as the car crashes are, for a video game, it sports little else.

After the first game’s not so successful launch, there were a lot of skeptics for this hacker sequel. Thankfully it was well met with its cheesy story, colorful San Francisco setting, and even more ways to hack than before. While Watch_Dogs 2 may lack the car physics its sandbox competitors possess, it more than makes up for it in the destructive nature. Thanks to your hacking skills, you can steer any NPC car into oncoming traffic, break traffic lights to cause pile-ups, use the environment, or cause every car around you to malfunction. Marcus may want to bring justice, but sometimes he can really act like a supervillain.

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#4: “Project Cars” (2015)

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Another entry that took on the realistic motor-sports giants, Project Cars did its best to stand out from the crowd by bringing in more realistic aspects than its competitors. From dynamic weather and physics, to highly detailed vehicles and tracks, it does a good job of holding its own. While the crash physics aren’t something to write home about, it’s how one crash can turn into a very large car pile-up. Tight tracks and lots of cars make for big piles of junk, giving Project Cars its rightful place on this list.

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#3: “Next Car Game: Wreckfest” (2014)

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If you thought Bugbear was done with demolition derbies after FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, think again. Known at first as “Next Car Game”, then “Wreckfest”, it now combined the two names. As it plainly sounds, the game is all about -you guessed it- wrecking cars. Unlike BeamNG.drive however, Wreckfest boasts different modes such as demolition derby and just straight up racing. Also utilizing a soft-body physics engine, Wreckfest creates extremely gorgeous crashes with high level of detail. Unfortunately, the game’s development has been slow up until recently, making us wonder what else this game can do.

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#2: “Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit” (2010)

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Everyone loves a good street race… except for cops. The 16th entry into the popular Need for Speed franchise, The 2010 reboot of Hot Pursuit amps up the gameplay by allowing players to play as the classic street racer, or the justice bringing law enforcement officer. Whether you are a speed demon or guardian of the streets, both sides have various means of bringing each other down. From spike strips, to roadblocks and even EMPs, it’s a wonder how neither party is killed and vehicular manslaughter added to the list of charges. Either way though, Criterion makes for some excellent and destructive racing games...
Before we crash into first place, here are a few honorable mentions.

“Grand Theft Auto V” (2013)
“Motorstorm” (2007)

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#1: “Burnout: Paradise” (2008)

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Take me down to Paradise city, where the cars are fast and the crashes are gritty. The first of the Burnout games to take place in an open world, Burnout: Paradise set the bar for racing games to an all new height. Seamless missions and gameplay accompany an awesome soundtrack to create an extremely fun experience. Of course this wouldn’t be number one without its awesome crash system -seeing our cars get crunched, flipped, wheels sent flying, or all of the above. All this in a slow motion cinematic view, car destruction has never looked better. This is one game where crashing wasn’t frustrating, but was a treat to behold.