BallisticNG

I came to BallisticNG the same way most people do: frustrated that nobody at Sony would greenlight a new WipEout, searching Steam at midnight, and landing on something built by a tiny indie team that somehow nails the physics better than some of the official entries did. That first session is a wall. The airbrake-based drift system asks you to tap left or right trigger in the direction of the turn to bleed momentum around corners, and until it clicks you will pinball between walls like a billiard ball in a dryer. Stick with it past the first few tracks and the movement starts to feel genuinely expressive in a way most racing games don't bother attempting. The mode list is generous. Beyond standard Race and Time Trial, you have Speed Lap for solo wall-to-wall practice, Survival where your ship keeps accelerating until something has to give, Knockout where the last-place finisher gets eliminated each lap, Eliminator which is pure weapons-focused carnage, and Upsurge, a head-to-head endurance mode with mutual annoyance as the design goal. All of these are playable in Custom Race with up to 16 AI opponents at whatever difficulty you set, and every one of them can be taken online for up to 16 players or into two-player local splitscreen. The campaign itself is a substantial commitment, spanning around 100 races with two expansions adding more, and it gates new ships and liveries behind progression, which keeps you pushing into the harder speed classes when you might otherwise be content to grind the same few tracks. The weapon pickups are scattered across the track surface and pulled into your loadout on contact. Rockets, mines, cannons that fire up to 30 bullets, guided Hunter missiles, a Plasma shot that used to one-shot anything it touched before getting sensibly toned down, turbo boosts, shields, and the Afterburner mechanic that lets you drain your own hull energy for a speed burst. Ships with no weapons systems at all, like the Barracuda variants, exist as a deliberate high-risk choice for players chasing clean lap times over combat positioning. The G-Tek R34 is the obvious learning-wheels pick with its forgiving grip, but once you're comfortable you'll be switching to faster, twitchier hulls that reward track knowledge. That ship diversity matters more than it sounds: at the highest speed classes, choosing wrong is a lap-time conversation before it's even a race. The one honest criticism is that the online player base is small. This isn't a game where you queue up and find a lobby in thirty seconds. Finding a populated online session takes coordination through the community Discord. Local splitscreen and AI customs cover the gap reasonably well, but if you came here for a ranked ladder with matchmaking and regular opponent variety, manage expectations. The Workshop more than compensates for content longevity though. The tools are the same ones Neognosis used to build the base game, the modding community has been producing custom ships and circuits since launch, and the developers have kept updating the game for years post-release, which for a small indie title at this price point is a commitment worth acknowledging.

Fred · Scout Team

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