New York gets a savage makeover as Liberty City in 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV. The suggestive image of a city centred on vice and inhabited by self-interested urbanites has long held sway as an international stereotype, but somebody forget to tell the team at Rockstar Games it's mostly hot air. Ignoring the 90s clean-up efforts of Rudy Giuliani, Liberty City presents the Big Apple as a sandbox screaming for a sociopathic child to come in and kick up a storm. Gone are the museums, restaurants, and cultural icons, replaced by a labyrinth of streets in which players hijack cars and mow down pedestrians with the moral abandon of Lindsay Lohan. For a more sensible way of tackling the world's most influential metropolis, see our insider guide instead.

Scores of American right-wing pundits dream for the fall of the current government, but perhaps they'd change their mind if they saw the nuclear nightmare of the Washington DC depicted in Fallout 3. Tourists fill the Mall and Smithsonian museums daily, passing the White House under the shadow of the Washington Monument, but in Bethesda's imagining they'd all be executed by mutant soldiers patrolling the ruins with guns. If you can get past these, you might like to visit the Willard InterContinental Washington, a historic luxury Beaux-Arts hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and the centre of political life since 1818, presented in-game as The Statesman Hotel, full of prostitutes, guns, and megalomaniacs. Art imitates life.

... Or deep in Anaheim, California, as it turns out. The perennial adventure classic The Secret of Monkey Island blasted onto the gaming stage way back in 1990, but its sarcasm-soaked tropical jungles filled with as many pop-culture barbs as banana trees was inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. Savvy gamers might also note the heady dose of Hawaiiana on VGA display. If there's more than a passing resemblance to the iconic kitsch of Oahu, then perhaps the source material is to blame — after all, the latest Johnny Depp outing based on the theme park ride also used Hawaii as a Caribbean stand-in. Who cares about accurate geography anyway?

Rockstar Games takes a second swipe at America with 2010's Red Dead Redemption, a blockbuster re-imagining of the classic Wild West tale popularised by Hollywood, Sergio Leone, and Sam Peckinpah. Connecting landscapes based on the Midwest, Southwest, and the US-Mexico border, players holster their guns and ride out through open prairies and blood-soaked canyons. Fording the Rio Grande, the accuracy can be startling — but not necessarily in a good way. The anarchic lawlessness and in-game gun battles between cowboys and Mexicans mirrors the immersive chaos of today's borderlands and the failing War on Drugs. This is one travel destination where the video game comes recommended over the real thing.

Political correctness takes its own holiday in Capcom's 2009 offering, Resident Evil 5. A fictional African town of Kijiju plays host to a zombie-inducing virus, turning local residents into savage killing machines wielding machetes and large clubs against the white protagonist's arsenal of semi-automatic weaponry. Allegations of racism have dogged the title since its release, but the British Board of Film Classification ruled in favour of the game. Nevertheless, a traveller interested in Africa would do better to consult writer Ryszard Kapuscinski for an illuminating portrait of life on the continent — a portrait featuring less zombies, but heartbreak and destruction of a different kind that makes Africa a must see for any morally-engaged globe hopper.

An element of wishful thinking motivates the creators of any video game. Take Call of Duty: Black Ops, which has the player attempting an assassination of Fidel Castro in a flashback to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Unsurprisingly, Cuba wasn't particularly impressed, issuing a statement that the game "encourages sociopathic attitudes of American children and adolescents." They needn't worry much — an ongoing embargo means Americans remain officially prohibited from spending money in Cuba, making travel there quite difficult. For everybody else, Havana remains a vivacious Caribbean destination filled with strange juxtapositions and a promise of revolutionary passion. Just leave this game at home when you visit.

What travel video game list would be complete without a special appearance by that buxom babe Lara Croft? Few digital heroes get around as much as this girl: in her third outing alone she visits India, Nevada, some South Pacific islands, and Antarctica. But it's London that gets the most curious makeover here: did you know, for example, that a gang of mutants called 'The Damned' live in Aldwych tube station, closed since 1994? Neither did we, but we'll be adding it to our Where Not to Go list.

For the longest time, space has been a realm accessible only in dreams — so much so that it's sparked an entire gaming sub-genre encompassing everything from Lucasarts' Star Wars offerings to the recent award-winning Mass Effect 2. The promise of exploration, discovery, and adventure has made it ripe for storytelling flights of fancy. But thanks to Sir Richard Branson, another flight will soon put fantasy in the reach of reality for cashed-up travellers who don't mind dropping a cool $200,000 for a chance at suborbital spaceflight on SpaceShipTwo. "Feel the Freedom of Zero G" says the tagline at Virgin Galactic, but this is one travel experience that is anything but free. For the rest of us, breaking the sound barrier as you plummet through the atmosphere in a tin can will have to stay firmly within the limits of our flat screen TVs.