BallisticNG

wow just wow been trying to scratch this itch since 1998

This game absolutely slaps on the OLED Steam Deck. Solid 90 FPS, gorgeous colors, tight and responsive controls. It's hard to sit still while you're absolutely flying around the tracks. I originally fell in love with anti-gravity racing with WipeOut XL and nearly 30 years later this scratches that same itch so hard and I love it.

this game is absolutely amazing for what it is and it has quickly become my favorite racing game of all time. i am a big fan of the wipeout games and this is just peak as all hell if you love fast paced futuristic racers. 10/10 game i will be playing it till i die

It definitely needs a little polish on the difficulty, although I feel that the difficulty stems more from the physics screwing you over than anything. The game punishes you for cornering by boosting the crap out of you, makes it impossible to beat the AI unless you stay firmly in first, and it feels like a perfectionist test at times. You must have Jedi reflexes to race these cars. The tracks are also pretty narrow overall, which both helps and hinders the gameplay. While it's fun to go fast and look cool taking a narrow raceway perfectly, a single smack will end your journey pretty quick. It would be nice to see some wider race ways since the floaty physics often leaves you smacking straight into a wall.

That being said it's about the only AG racer on the market these days, and it's a good one at that. Good mod support, but the real killer is the splitscreen, which should set a standard for any local coop game on PC. It allows the use of multiple monitors, as well as an absurd amount of customization for your races. Plus the hovercars are cool.

Overall, the difficulty is just about the only thing dragging this down. If you got friends or fa/ily though, this will probably be a household favorite for years to come. It's a solid piece of software overall, 8.5/10 fix the difficulty and I'd say 10.

The perfect wipeout game for me in 2025 ! Retro and modern at the same time.
You guys are totaly crazy ! developpers, and modders. Full of love, passion, work...
Huge Thanks

I have never played the original wipE'out" games so it's not nostalgia bringing me to this franchise. BallisticNG is just a very good racing game. It's pretty hard and so far I'm still far from being an expert in it, but I've already experienced how it feels to get better and better at it. It feels great.

The retro visuals don't bother me at all. The music is almost entirely very good, in fact I got the soundtrack just so that I can listen to it while I work. I needed to add "almost" because of a single track with an annoying repeating beep that sounds like a microwave button press. It's not a bad track either, "Bay Sound", but man, that beep drives me crazy. Fortunately, you can skip tracks.

I don't have much else to say. Controls are good, the campaign system maximizes usage of the same maps in interesting ways, the powerups are cool and fun to use, the expansions are good. I especially liked Neon Nights so far. Awesome mood.

All in all, recommended. No notes. Five stars.

Absolute masterpiece of racing game. And a near-perfect successor to the PS1 Wipeout games.

I have a passing curiosity with Wipeout in that all I've ever tried was the Omega Collection, 2097 (on Saturn) and the one on Vita, and I've found this one plays quite nicely. I'm bad at games so naturally I haven't gotten quite far into this yet but it looks and feels great to play. Nice stuff.

If you have played Wipeout on the Playstation, then you are going to feel right at home with this, since this is like a love letter to the racing franchise. However, this is not your grandfathers Wipeout, this is Wipeout for the talented.

The game feels incredible and flows really well, and the campaign helps start to ease players into the races. But once you get to maybe the mid second/third set of campaigns, the training wheels come off and all the AI play for keeps, so if you are wanting all the gold/platinum medals, you need to work your butt off to get them.

As said before, the game flows well that if you put wipeout and ballisticng *or BNG according to the community*, you'd think they are the same game. You have a good choice of ships ranging from handling focused ships, to ships that excel in pure speed, you have your air brakes to take sharper corners and even the pit lanes to restore your armour like the classic wipeout games or even F-Zero. What this game does add alongside that also, is a self boost button, that when pressed, gives you a boost for as long as you hold down the button, at the cost of your armour, very much like F-Zero, so during races you will have to make the decision on risk vs reward.

Near enouth all the events from past wipeout games are present in this, from races, time trials, eliminations and even zone races, so you are never wanting for new race choices. There is even a special mode for time trials that tests the limits of the player on unique courses, aiming for perfection on every single corner and boost.

There is also multiplayer and mod support which i have not touched so i cannot give my verdict on that.

This game, can be brutal at points, sometimes on inclines or certain corners, my ship would bounce so much, losing speed and losing positions, the game wants you to pitch the ship up or down to prepare for such corners, yet playing on controller it felt hit or miss. I even question if playing on keyboard would've been the preferred method of play. So that can be a bit annoying, even more so when you reach 1v1 races and the AI is perfect on near every corner and you get screwed over by a slight bump.

My verdict on this however is positive, it has the nostalgia i longed for from past wipeout games but it has become too professional for me, that doesn't mean its bad, it just means i'm not as good as i used to be.
I would recommend the full price for what it has going for, its super reasonable and dare i say more better than current triple A games out currently, AND it still gets updated from the modders and the dev team.

Great feeling anti-gravity racer.
- Good soundtrack
- Challenging bots
- lots of steam workshop mod support (maps, tracks, racers)
- Online play
- Split screen
- Retro graphics options
- In game track creator
I salute those that play this in VR

An ungodly amount of effort and love was put into this game by the developer and it shows. Really good modding support, extremely satisfying controls, striking aesthetics, incredible soundtrack, and a level of polish I haven't seen in a long time.

As someone who has never once played or seen any AG racers prior to trying this game out, I can say this game managed to me into the entire genre on its own and went on to become one of my most favorite racing games ever, its that good.

TL;DR: It's a really damn fun, easy to pick up but hard to master game with tons and tons of content, tracks, and modding support as well. It's worth the full price, especially if you like games similar to it in any way.

The reason why its so good being, this is one of those games you can pick up and learn to play in about 2 hours, and then take 200 hours to get really good at it. But although it takes a bit to get a hang of at first, it does a pretty good job at easing you into it, and if you want a challenge, the expert difficulty bots do NOT pull any punches, and some of the later campaign missions especially will make you suffer for a good while to get through.

The gameplay itself is pretty solid as well, it doesn't lie when it says there's something for everybody here, theres tons of ships and the variety between them and what they do is pretty good, the combat itself is serviceable, nothing crazy good but its not bad either, which is perfectly fine for this kinda game, and the tracks are pretty damn solid in their layouts and variety, and if the near 100+ tracks, (including reverse versions of tracks) alongside 16 ships to pilot around somehow isn't enough, then the workshop support lets you get nearly 10 times the amount of both ships and tracks as well, with the quality on them being pretty damn good too. (also you can additionally mod in custom huds, music, ship skins, nearly the entire game itself if you want really)

And lastly, the presentation itself is really really nice too, it wears its inspirations very clearly (down to straight up copying some elements), but if you don't mind the ps1 styled graphics, the game genuinely looks great. On top of that, the soundtrack for the game is pretty damn good too, lots of electronic but plenty of variety within it as well, overall just a pretty fun and vibey OST with a nice mix of groovy and energetic music all over.

All in all, its a legitimately amazing game with tons and tons of content to play with, i could not recommend it enough if you like a racing game thats easy to play but hard to master, a more unique style of a arcade-y racing game, or a game that is very, very moddable.

(also obligatory WipEout mention but the game also lets you play it like any of the WipEout gameplay styles, classic, modern, AND fusion, so bonus points for that)

Amongst the best ag racers ever made. Lots of content, tight controls, gorgeous visuals. I highly recommend it.

A fantastic racing game and a callback to the golden age of hovercraft racing!

Absolutely captures the spirit of the Wipeout franchise in all the right ways. Controls are challenging enough to be satisfying to master, but simple enough to pick up quickly.

The presentation, atmosphere and soundtrack are all absolutely on point, and the whole package is assembled with great care, including a multitude of options for optimisation and performance, as well as gameplay customization.

Highly recommended.

It's perfect

This is the ultimate racing game I would have dreamed for when I was a kid. Its not the easiest to pick and also hard to master. Its very customisable, it seems like the developers really knew what was needed to make a great game. I like it as an adult as it is a difficult game in general, especially on expert mode. It can be pure chaos at times and I absolutely love it. I struggled to get into it for the first 30 mins but im glad i pushed through. In a world of sweaty PvP games, this has been a much welcome breath of fresh air. There hasn't been any racing game i've enjoyed as an adult other than this. If you've played Rollcage, or N-GEN Racing back in the day ( those who know will know) you will definitely appreciate the asethtic and pace of this game

Very refreshing racing game. Made me feel like I was in elementary school again playing all nighters with friends. 100% recommend, my only gripe is that I didn't find this game earlier.

so locked in i started breathing hard

The game works alright in VR, however, the VR controllers do not function as a gamepad and you must use a xbox controller or something similar which is annoying, but I found a workaround, you can use IndeX360 to use your VR controllers as a gamepad. This works even with other headsets such as oculus quest. The settings menu is also kind of confusing and I haven't found a way to change to retro style graphics after I clicked modern the first time around.

Love it. Needs more multiplayer lobbies

It's Wipeout, except without the thought and finesse Psygnosis had. Psygnosis had traction and predictable physics - Neognosis has twitch and rote plugging of the track, down to the point of planning the least graceful nosedive into the scenery that just so happens to get you the most speed.

Psygnosis had progression and instruction through the campaign. Neognosis throws new players in at "normal" speeds, a speed where BallisticNG already shows it's cracks in everything from the "physics" (on-off) to the level-design (blind corner number 15/15 coming up!).

Psygnosis had smooth transitions and analogue triggers that were meant to be used at different intervals - while allowing you to also do quite well with trigger-switches, given that you used certain ships. Neognosis will punish you with impossible and unpredictable, physics-defying sideways drifts, if you don't tap the controls at a rate that would make a Trackmania-champion's eyes bleed, and music-producers reach for their recording devices to get a sample for a good snare drum.

Really, if only a developer could make an HD version of Wipeout -- a "WipeoutHD", if you will -- that embraced analog sticks and rudder-controls, as opposed to romanticise, to a fault, not even the ps1-era, but the c64-era and arcade sticks, clicking on and off at absurd rates. If only such a game existed. /s

What a joke of a game. The amount of effort put into this will make any Wipeout fan beam with expectations. But this is cruel - to everyone who actually enjoyed playing Wipeout.

Nintendo won't make a new F-Zero, but now I'm scared that if they eventually do, it might not be as good as this.

Go be a pilot!

Insane that the devs have been regularly adding free updates to the game for the past 7 years, absolute mad devs!

A great homage to PS1 games like Wipeout and Jet Moto. Runs well in VR. Has a pretty supportive community that creates custom tracks, racers, and liveries.

nyoom

If you loved WipEout you'll love this.

Total flashback to WipeOut. SO much so that it's satisfies that nostalgia perfectly. There are no alterations to the formula, obvious quality of life updates, but there is little changed from the classic inspiration. The music tracks are fitting, the controls are just as crazy, and the weapons are just as meh as the original (yeah, weapons aren't really all that special). Of course, who cares that the weapons are meh. The bread and butter to this all is the crazy racing experience. RedOut and FlashOut are nice modern takes, but BallistiCNg nailed it perfectly.

I got into Wipeout a few months ago and 100% every game in the series since - this one is a strong contender for being the best one, despite not being a part of the series despite me playing just for a few hours. It just feels right.

Blatant rip-off, but in the best way possible. Neognosis does what Sony...n't

Ship handling can take a while to get used to, but once you get familiar with them this game is very fun to play.

Easily the best Spiritual Successor to WipEout and Jet Moto, even including options to play post-F9000. Well worth the purchase. It even includes a Track Editor, something I felt was missing in the WipEout Omega Collection.

honestly one of the best racing games I've ever played
a full fledged career mode, quick race, online and even split screen local multiplayer options across a variety of game modes with workshop compatibility for adding new ships and tracks to the game beyond the vanilla package and it's DLCs.
if you enjoy arcade racing games you should get this one

Played this game off and on for about 4 years now, about time I write a review. I have no experience playing any of the games that BallisticNG is inspired by, I decided to pick up the game solely because the gameplay looked interesting. Flash forward four years, this game is the shit. I'm consistently coming back to either work on completing the game's campaigns, or just because I want to get some races in. The core race mode is what I tend to play, but the amount of different modes or ways to change how you play is absurd. And that's not even including the amount of modding support this game has.

If you're a fan of racing games and just want something that kicks ass, buy the game.

I had some money left over from a gift card, didn't want to hook up my playstation just to play the Omega Collection, and saw that this was like Classic Wipeout.

Holy hell. It's like I picked up XL for the first time again, but so much smoother. I felt right at home with it, and it still amazes me how good it feels to race. Right down to the downright brutal AI.

Very easy to mod the game, and they even have a guide for it in the documentation. I immediately went for the classic Wipeout teams without delay.

I think I saw that this was a 2 person dev team? Take a bow, both of you. This was a clear labor of love for the series it's cloning, and absolutely deserves the Overwhelmingly Positive I see on its store page.

PLEASE pick this up it's so good.

A flash back to the old Anti Gravity racing from the 90's.
Its easy to run on pretty much any hardware but still manages to catch a great look and feel.
Easy to get into and even easier for old wipeout players to just plug in a controller and zip around like you never left.

Witch a nice techno beat soundtrack you will feel right at home.
And not to forget, support for linux. A+ for that.

My recommendation for anyone looking for a fastpaced racing game.

In a 1999 interview for VH1's Behind The Music, Mark Mothersbaugh stated "I was in shock. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. He sort of re-sculpted that song into something else and... I hate him for it, basically." In reference to hearing Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare To Be Stupid".

A sentence that, I'm certain, any former Psygnosis dev would echo were they to ever play this masterpiece.

Buy it.
It's good.
What are you waiting for?

Holy Hell, You guys NAILED Wipeout!
THANK YOU!!!

cool game

Very cool Wipeout clone would definitely recommend to fans

Feels bad

A must-get for every wipEout fan

By Any Means.

I'm geeking tf out this is great

Peak, absolute peak, it's even better in VR with a controller.

An amazing anti-gravity racer with beautiful tracks and music. The scenery and tracks are such a vibe that you'd want to grind out time trials on them for hours. Custom tracks, ships, tons of official content like game modes and even a tournament generator. What a great game! Works flawlessly on steamdeck as well.

yes

Calling this game a love letter to Wipeout is an understatement. Some artistic elements are almost a direct copy-paste. The handling and camera behavior is best compared to the original Wipeout. The game is tough as nails and will challenge people only used to Pure and Pulse [me]. The soundtrack goes hard and gives me 90s flashbacks. Couldn't recommend this game enough.

Wonderful. Just like the original WipEouT games

What an absolute gem this game is. This IS a Wipeout game in every way but name, even doing it better than Wipeout at times.

The AI is brutal and unforgiving, ESPECIALLY in hardcore, but is IMMENSELY satisfying to master and overcome. Some of the highest highs i've had playing in a racing game in a LONG time, set to an absolutely amazing DnB/Breakcore/Trance OST.

I've never been a Wipeout fan; the only game I played akin to this was Quantum Redshift on the XBOX. I haven't finished BallisticNG (just moved onto other games tbqh), but I still very much enjoyed my time with it and will continue to revisit it later down the line. The physics are super fun and there's plenty of room for skilled players to be on top, but lower skilled players like me can still have plenty of fun (the game has both multiplayer and singleplayer campaigns aka there's plenty to do). I'm not crazy about the combat but that's still pretty fun. The soundtrack is banging. The developers are extremely passionate and continually update the game well past its release date.

It's a fantastic indie project whether or not you're into Wipeout-style games. If you're just looking to do some futuristic, ultra-fast racing, this is one of the best options you can pick.