Recent reviews by Specter2k11

BallisticNG is a great homage to the AG Racing genre. To be more specific, yes, it is a WipEout clone on the surface. What makes this different is the amount of support towards the community that it has. Custom user-made tracks that you can download on the workshop (or make yourself!) and custom ships that you can also make/download as well. It makes it feel like it's a proper homage/fan game to the WipEout series.

To describe BallisticNG would be an extremely unforgiving racing game. It's face-meltingly fast that it'll most likely put off a lot of new players from following the curve. But once you understand the game and how to control it, it feels... entrancing. Like it's a state of Zen. It's just you, the track, and the scenery just whizzing by. Is it difficult? Absolutely. Is it satisfying? Hell yeah.

I personally had no experience to the older WipEout games. The only experience I had was WipEout Pulse. So seeing that there's another AG-style racer on steam (and while it's free at one point, too!), I gave it a chance. I downloaded it way back when the physics systems weren't as good, so my initial impressions were "wow, this game is needlessly hard". I gave it a few more months before getting into it again, and I can say that they've made a lot of improvements to the game. It's fast, it controls well, and it's unbelievably satisfying. Even with a keyboard (yes, keyboard. You read that right.) it still feels precise. You feel mostly always in control as you zip by the wonderful scenery.

And to add more, the community so far has been nice... ish. I can understand that some of the community is comprised of old, elite players that had been sticking by the WipEout series for a long time, but if you give it a chance, they'll help you get through the game. It's just that the community hangs out mostly on their official Discord server, so they mostly don't appear to be active as much.

As for the devs, I give massive props to you. From my time from hanging out on the Discord to actually help the game shape and form during testing, especially considering the size, I commend you greatly. I feel that the devs had been as transparent and interactive as possible with the community when trying to lead the game towards a direction. They've always been trying their best to have the game be *the* best homage for the WipEout series, and I think it's what separates this from other "WipEout clones". This game has a lot of love and labor put into them by both the devs and community.

The game's not with its faults though. Aside from the unforgiving skill curve that the game puts you if you're new, the tutorials (as of 0.9.4) doesn't help much towards new players. Multiplayer right now consists of having to join someone via direct IP, aka no server browser to help you find other players to play with. Some might argue that this game is a lot more focused towards the single player experience, but I feel that a better multiplayer support might give it a small kick of longevity. Then there's... the AI. The AI has a bad case of rubberbanding when you get to the higher difficulties. So the AI is either so slow that it's not funny, or it's fast to the point that you can't catch up with them because you're being shot by missiles every time you try to pass someone. To be fair, Campaign wise, the AI isn't *that* unforgiving, but you can definitely feel that the game demands more from you at a certain point. Other than that, there's some nitpicky things that I can say about the game, but it's mostly a personal gripe more than anything and too minor to mention.

TLDR; BallisticNG (as of 0.9.4) is a wonderful racing game that rewards you for the effort that you've put in trying to learn the game. That, and the fact that it's *only* $5, makes this game a steal. I highly recommend that you join the Discord (link in-game iirc) if you need to talk to the devs and community for either help or support. The visuals are amazingly faithful to the PS1 era style, the game controls nice even with a keyboard/controller, and it even has VR support (that I can't vouch for because I don't have a VR headset). Multiplayer integration and also community created content will give this game a nice longevity. It is absolutely worth $5, and I feel that you should give this a try.