nail'd

I've put time into plenty of off-road arcade racers, and the opening seconds of nail'd genuinely caught me off guard. You don't ease into this one. The throttle is pinned from the moment the start gate drops, and the sense of velocity Techland squeezed out of this 2010 engine is still striking. Tracks barrel down near-vertical mountainsides, launch you hundreds of meters into the air over Arizona canyons and Greek ruins, and thread you through moving trains, giant sawblades, and blimps floating at altitude. It's chaotic in a way that's clearly intentional, and for the first couple of hours, it's a genuine rush. The two vehicle choices, ATV (quad bike) or MTX (motocross bike), handle differently enough to have a preference, and as you grind through the Tournament mode you unlock parts that let you tune stats like boost capacity, air control, and ground steering. The customization is shallow by any serious standard, but swapping parts to get an edge on a specific track feels useful rather than decorative. What really holds the loop together is the boost system. You earn it by threading fire gates, landing on rivals, wall-riding, and chaining boost usage itself, so you're constantly making micro-decisions about when to spend it and when to build it. That feedback loop clicks. The mid-air steering, where you physically redirect your flight path between jumps, is the other standout mechanic, and it gives you real agency during the game's biggest set pieces. Here is where the caveats stack up. The career mode is essentially one long race-type repeated across Amateur, Pro, and Expert leagues, with Stunt Challenge events breaking things up by awarding points for feats like landing on opponents or jumping through airborne rings. The Stunt Challenges are not dramatically different from standard racing in feel, though Detonator mode (a hot-potato bomb variant that requires you to pull off boost feats to pass the bomb to a rival) is genuinely fun in short bursts. The AI difficulty scales unevenly, and collision detection has a well-documented inconsistency problem: your bike will clip a boulder and explode one lap, then bounce off the same object harmlessly the next. It does not break races, but it does sting when you're holding a lead. The respawn system is similarly erratic, pulling you back onto the track after anywhere from two to eight seconds with what feels like no logic behind the timing. For the couch crowd, there is disappointing news: nail'd has no split-screen multiplayer. Online supported up to 12 players at launch with Simple Race, Time Challenge, Stunt Challenge, and Detonator modes, but the servers are effectively dead now. This is a solo experience in 2025, full stop. Controller play is the right call here; a standard gamepad handles the steering and mid-air adjustments cleanly, and there is no meaningful wheel or HOTAS support given the arcade nature of the physics. The soundtrack of hard rock and metal from the likes of Rise Against, Slipknot, and Queens of the Stone Age fits the game's energy, though it runs on a loop short enough to become noticeable during longer sessions. On modern systems, compatibility can be patchy, so check community fix guides before you install. Who is nail'd actually for? Players who remember Pure, MotorStorm, or the older Excite Truck energy and want something similarly brainless and fast will find enough here for a weekend. It is accessible in the best sense: crashes reset quickly, the controls are immediately readable, and the game never demands simulation-style precision. It does run out of ideas by the time you hit the Expert league, and the lack of couch co-op is a real miss for a game this well-suited to shouting at a TV with friends. Go in for the speed, not the depth. Riley, Scout Team

Runs great on Linux after minor tweaks. Based on 16 ProtonDB community reports.

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