Eifel Free Roam is coming to Assetto Corsa EVO later this year as part of the Early Access Program, introducing a new way to explore one of the most famous driving regions in the world.
The mode features a highly detailed recreation of the German Eifel region surrounding the Nürburgring, blending flowing country roads, dense forests, elevation changes, wildlife and iconic stretches of tarmac into a wide open driving experience. Whether players are cruising, navigating traffic or simply exploring, the road network is built to suit every type of car. A specific release date has not been announced.
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The area was originally planned for Early Access in summer 2025, continuing to grow over time, eventually spanning 1,600 square kilometers. The entire region is being laser scanned and recreated using new terrain technology developed by KUNOS with the open world launching in stages alongside additional features and content.
Beyond driving, players will be able to interact with local businesses, rent vehicles and upgrade cars using aftermarket parts. Real world businesses can also take part with car rental companies, auto parts stores and other automotive related brands able to appear directly within the game world.
The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Rockstar Games have traded more blows following a preliminary tribunal hearing this week. There, the IWGB asked a judge to grant the fired Grand Theft Auto 6 developers interim relief.
The price of an obscure PS4 game is skyrocketing on the second-hand market, thanks to its necessity in a new PS5 jailbreak. This game, of which 1,000 or less physical copies were produced, has suddenly become a hot commodity among jailbreak enthusiasts and resellers alike.
It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week it's not about what we've been playing, but what we hope to be playing on Christmas Day (you're reading this now, but we wrote this back in June or something as we plan ahead).
Escaping the Chaos: Why Lobby Racing Just Isn’t Enough
I started doing simracing a couple of years ago, and after some rocky days of learning where I was basically just trying to keep the car on the black stuff and not end up in the grass every second corner, I found myself playing Assetto Corsa Competizione the most. Eventually, you get tired of the AI. They are predictable and they don’t make the kind of human mistakes that make racing exciting, so you start to play online. And yeah, that’s a big difference, especially in ACC, playing the AI and playing the people. It’s much more unpredictable, much more fun, and much more crashes, which is the darker part of it.
Low Fuel Motosport – Total LFM registered users and currently racing
But yeah, this is very good overall. Assetto Corsa Competizione provides competition races within the game itself, but this service doesn’t have much deeper something in it. It’s quite boring after a while because there is only one option in one time, and sometimes when you don’t have all the stars for the given track, you cannot even join at all. But there is another option, the lobby service, which is where most people start their e-racing career – Low Fuel Motosport independent racing portal.
There is always around 900 active servers where you can race at any given moment. A lot of them have a pretty full list of people racing, so it’s a big fun when you get a good grid, but it’s dangerous, especially when you are not experienced enough. You will lose your safety rating very quickly because people are crashing like crazy over there. You have to build up the good SA and go to the lobby server where you have to have some amount of SA to join it. Those servers are much, much better than without any restriction, which is basically like Destruction Derby and killing your rating in ACC.
Low Fuel Motosport – Racing statistics
The Independent Powerhouse: Choosing LFM on PC
So after a lot of crashes, a lot of yeeting discussions in the chat where people are just screaming, and quite a lot of races actually on the lobby, I started to look around for even better option to race. And I came across Low Fuel Motorsport as the leading independent platform for racing. Low Fuel Motorsport is mostly focused on ACC, which is excellent for me, and it’s a big service. There are huge amount of organized races, they have a system when and how to join, and so forth. I chose another option on the market. This is for PC players only. If you have a PlayStation or Xbox, you would probably choose SimGrid, which goes for the consoles as well. Another option, similar, is Pitskill.io, but Low Fuel Motorsport is the largest sim racing platform at this very moment in 2025, by far. So this should be your first option, probably, if you are on PC and you want to race a lot with kind of the same quality persons like you on daily races. So I opted out for Low Fuel Motorsport like two years ago, and here is my experience with it.
Low Fuel Motosport – FAQ is collabsible list, no search possible
The License Hurdle: Proving You Belong on the Grid
To join Low Fuel Motorsport and be able to race, you have to prove yourself as a kind of experienced driver, although you don’t need to be that super fast as the top of the race, but you have to be reasonably good. I like the system to join because it makes the good selection and those destruction derby players are filtered out with this system and this is a very good system. So if you want to join races, they have a practice server which is reachable via internet. You can find it within the free lobby servers. Just type in Low Fuel Motorsport LFM into the server selection and you got it. You have to find which is it on the server. To register you can use Steam or Discord. Then you have to go to the race and try to make 7 clean rounds and be within the range of the best times, maximum 5% on the top of the best times. This is the 107% rule they use to keep the pace consistent. After 2 or 3 attempts I was able to reach and I obtained the license to race. So my journey begins here. If you want to race Nordschleife, you have to make a similar license, but I didn’t go for Nordschleife yet. I just like shorter tracks and Nordschleife still has to wait for me. I’m not that interested to get into that.
Low Fuel Motosport – History of my races
Tools of the Trade: Technical Requirements for Serious Racing
To join the races you have to obviously sign up for the specific race in time and the other thing you must have is to download the utility which is called ACC connector which somehow translate the IP address of the server to your local IP address and then you have to go to local servers like on the LAN and the server when it goes online it will appear there. This is one extra tool you have to have when you want to race on the Low Fuel Motorsport and well this is a decision they made because you know the ACC had some outages and actually they still have the outages of the network. Low Fuel Motorsport didn’t want to rely on the public multiplayer service of the game and they are building like local servers independent of the race so when the ACC multiplayer is down you can still play Low Fuel Motorsport. This is sometimes problem because when the network is down you cannot even load your LAN server somehow so sometimes it’s struggle but it’s better. It’s more stable the servers especially those which are located in European area has a great ping and technically the servers are very good. Another thing you may want is the LFM Livery Tool.
If you don’t have this, everyone is just driving around in a plain white or carbon car and you can’t see the cool designs that teams put together. It makes the grid look much more professional when you can actually see the sponsors and the colors of the other cars. You also have to get used to their custom Balance of Performance, or BoP. LFM adds weight or restrictors to certain cars to make sure the field is even. So even if the game developers made one car too fast, LFM balances it out so you can still drive an older car and not be totally out of the race. This keeps the variety high which is good.
Low Fuel Motosport – Gamification is her as well . I got some trophies
The Daily Grind: Sprints and the Rating Struggle
So I did this basic license and I started to race. The options were to race, it’s quite big, but at the end you don’t have that much when you start. You can only race the 15 minute sprint races at the moment and that’s it because you are not building up your safety rating and your ELO enough yet. So you are doing these 15 minute races. Last year it was 20 minutes, now they push it to the 15 minutes. Well, that’s how they decided. So when you start to race you have to join the race. Every 45 minutes there is another 15 minute race. So you have plentiful options to race during the day, as much as you want, you don’t have any restrictions. You just click and wait a bit and you can join the races. So once you do that you go to practice. There is not allowed to race in the practice, it’s just to prepare your setups and so on. Then you go to qualification which is usually 7 minutes and then 15 minutes race. Races are much better than lobbies. This is the best advantage of Low Fuel Motorsport.
Low Fuel Motosport – Support via patreon
Here the races have its quality, even though when you are on the low tier the people are not trying to hit you as crazy and there are not that many accidents as there are on the ACC lobbies, especially those without SA filter. Here your journey starts, you are building up your ELO and you are building up your SA. When you reach the threshold you can join another races which are only filtered for the people with the higher ELO and higher safety rating. So ELO and safety rating decide everything. I’m not the greatest racer, so I was kind of struggling and stagnating because the ELO and SA rise slower than it falls. So you can build up for several clean races and then you have one wrong race where you get caught in someone else’s mess and it falls down instantly. But this is a fair play system which makes you focus on the safety first and then on the speed. This is the way how you should really learn driving in general. So you know your car, you know the spatial awareness and everything is much more important when racing here than when doing lobbies. So this really makes a big distinction and for those people who want real racing, they will like it a lot.
The Problem with Variety: GT4s and DLC Barriers
You are building up, and once you reach some threshold you can do the endurance racing 45 minutes or a higher league of 20-25 minutes races. They provide even the races for the GT4 cars or like specific BMW M2 races. But I don’t do that because especially those are the GT4 cars. You have to have the DLC and let’s be honest, how many people really do have this DLC? It’s a fraction of those having the base game. So if you really want to play all the races during the whole season, you have to have the DLCs actually because some tracks, some cars are not allowed in the base game so you have to pay for those DLCs of the base game. So here GT4 races are pretty empty. So if nobody is racing, it’s boring.
Low Fuel Motosport – Nobody much racing GT4 due to DLC restriction
I tried a couple of times but only a few players joined so I think this is almost useless category on the Low Fuel Motorsport. Endurance is good because and I really love to do the low tier endurance races last year. Because you have to make some tactics, there is always a pit stop so you don’t need to be the fastest but you have to think more strategically because of the pit stop and amount of fuel and it makes it really good. There is not that much players playing 45 minutes but quite enough to enjoy the race. Actually here I’m pretty angry on the Low Fuel Motorsport. They wanted to tweak it up for the ongoing season which is ending by the new year and they made a feedback and forum what to improve. I told them my way, what I want and actually everything happened was the opposite. So instead of 25 minutes like spring race, now we have only 15 minutes spring race and the 45 minutes endurance race is not yet reachable for me because I don’t have enough SA and ELO. So actually I can only do 15 minutes races right now which is ok but I was trying 45 minutes sprints and endurance like almost the same amount of races I did. So now it’s not possible for me. Yes, if I reach the level of SA, of the safety, I can join it but I’m not yet there. As I told you it’s quite tricky to improve but I’m not the best racer. What happened is that the options for me to race narrowed down pretty steeply and especially considering they were asking what to improve and they did the opposite, I’m not that happy with it.
Low Fuel Motosport – Track records and ELO evolution graph
Climbing the Ranks: Licenses and Tier Divisions
Even though the sprint races are short, the system behind them is very deep. When you join for example the 15 minutes sprint, there are a lot of people really in the tables, so it’s divided to even six divisions. So you’re usually playing the lowest tier division and as your indexes go up you are joining the higher divisions in the tier, like tier one, tier two. So there are six divisions for example. So you are not just attending more professional races, but even within those races you are divided to the division, so it’s pretty complex and you are racing against people on the similar skill set that you have and comparing to them. This leads to the actual License Tiers which are the backbone of the whole thing. You start as a Rookie and you have to grind your way through Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and eventually the Alien tier if you are fast enough. Each of these tiers has specific Safety Rating (SR) and ELO requirements. It’s a proper hierarchy that keeps the racing clean because nobody wants to lose their hard-earned indexes. But like I said, when they change the rules and lock you out of the endurance races you used to love because your ELO isn’t high enough yet, it feels like the goalposts are moving.
The Frustrating Reality of the Appeal System
Now, how to handle all these situations like accidents, appeals, and penalties. This is something which works technically, but I have to say I don’t like it very much. If you think somebody crashed you, you can appeal, but you have to make a video on YouTube, you have to put some specific information into that video, and then you can place an appeal. You spend a lot of time doing videos and stuff, and then the appeal might go wrong anyway. I didn’t do this yet because it’s a pretty time-consuming process to appeal, so I don’t appeal when I’m being crashed by people, but other people do appeal against you. I had some penalties where you have to agree with the decision of the arbiter who said that you did a mistake. Usually, you get some deduction of your Elo and you lose some seconds in the race results. But when they decide that you hit someone by purpose, like a retaliatory accident, you can get even 28 days of ban, and I actually got one. The situation looked like I really did it on purpose, but I know myself and I know what really happened. The guy who went against me in this appeal made the video in a way that looks like I was the one at fault, but actually, it was his fault. Because I didn’t make my own video, I couldn’t prove anything. What really hurts me is that there is no easy possibility to appeal against these big ban penalties. For small penalties, you can appeal right away from the form, but for a 28-day ban, you have to go to some hidden menu, create a ticket, and it really sucks. They don’t give you any guidance or a simple button to click, so they really don’t care much about this process or hearing your side.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – New Liveries for Haas RT on Audi R8 LMS evo II
Utility Over Community: The Patreon Model
The communication with the creators and the arbiters is very weak in my opinion. Even though they have a sophisticated website and a Discord server, the feedback feels read-only. You make a question, they reply, and that’s it. If the reply isn’t good enough, you have to create a whole new thread. It makes Low Fuel Motorsport feel more like a utility or a tool rather than a community-building service. They will likely have a problem with this at some point because there is no emotional attachment. They are even very strict about the in-game chat; if you say “sorry” to someone you crashed by mistake, they might penalize you for chatting, which is crazy to me. This cold environment is visible in how they handle the business side too. There are premium options where you can become a Patreon donator. This gives you things like deeper statistics and the ability to sign up for races sooner. I think the early sign-up is pretty useless because the servers usually only get full right before the race starts anyway. They probably make a couple of ten thousand euros per month from these donations and affiliations with brands like Fanatec or Syncmesh, but it’s a donation model. I don’t donate yet, especially after being angry about how they handled my ban. Most people don’t donate, and since the communication is so weak, you don’t feel like you are part of something you want to support with money.
The Road Ahead: ACC Stagnation and Future Sim Titles
The system is super reliant on ACC, and as we know, ACC is getting less focus from the developers because of the new games they are building. This might be the end of the road at some point. LFM is trying to move into games like Le Mans Ultimate or the original Assetto Corsa, but those races are often empty or feel like a beta. 90% of the players are on ACC. They are scared that the game is at the end of its life cycle and they are making petitions like the #SaveACC one to the developers, but it feels like they are just trying to save their own business model rather than the community. Everyone is waiting to see if they will move to Assetto Corsa EVO in 2026. If you are looking at this from a global perspective, it is mostly a European service. During the day, the European servers are packed, but the US servers during the night are pretty empty. I estimate only 10-15% of the players are from outside of Europe. You can still join with a higher ping and it’s playable, but it’s not the same experience. To conclude, the racing on Low Fuel Motorsport is unmatched in the current environment—only iRacing is on this level. It’s a great service for the racing itself, but do not expect to join a community. It is a utility to get clean races, and the moment a better option comes along, people will probably just jump off to that. If you want real racing, go for it, but keep your expectations low for the social side.
Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) received version 1.10.4 on December 22, 2025. This update introduces the official 2025 Fanatec GT World Challenge season as a free addition for PC simracers on Steam. While several major media outlets like Traxion.gg have reported this as the final content drop for the simulation, the official notes from Kunos Simulazioni does not use the word “final.” Instead, the developer describes it as a substantial update to align the game with the current real-world racing season.
Assetto Corsa Competizione New Update – Mclaren 720S GT3 Evo Optimum Motosport
New 2025 Content and Driver Rosters
The update adds a total of 95 official liveries to the simulation. This includes 86 designs for the GT World Challenge Europe and 9 for the GT World Challenge America. Accompanying these liveries is a revised driver set that reflects the actual lineups for the 2025 season. The update also integrates the 2025 GTWC Europe season as a standalone single-player championship mode. It is important to note that this update focuses on liveries and rosters rather than new car models; vehicles like the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo and the Ford Mustang GT3 are not included in this patch as the underlying 3D models were not developed for the ACC engine.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – Ford Mustang HRT livery for 2025
Verstappen.com Racing and Emil Frey Ferrari
A major highlight of this update is the inclusion of the Verstappen.com Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 operated by Emil Frey Racing. For the 2025 season, Thierry Vermeulen and Chris Lulham competed in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup using this car, eventually securing the Gold Cup team and driver titles. While Verstappen.com Racing has recently confirmed a multi-year partnership with Mercedes-AMG starting in 2026, the 1.10.4 update provides the chance to race the Ferrari 296 GT3 in its championship-winning 2025 colors. This is the definitive version of the Verstappen-backed Ferrari program before the team transitions to the Mercedes-AMG GT3 platform and shifts its technical partnership to 2 Seas Motorsport for the 2026 campaign.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – New Liveries for Haas RT on Audi R8 LMS evo II
Technical Improvements and System Changes
Version 1.10.4 implements GEN5 temporal anti-aliasing (TAA), which targets long-standing visual artifacts such as shimmering and ghosting in the Unreal Engine 4 architecture. This change improves image clarity on high-resolution displays. Additionally, the TV camera system has been adjusted to provide a more authentic broadcast perspective during replays. A critical technical detail for this update is the potential reset of the menuSettings.json file. Drivers will likely need to reconfigure their UI preferences and controller settings upon their first launch after the patch. The Balance of Performance (BoP) has also been revised to ensure the 2025 grid remains competitive for both league racing and official SRO esports events.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – New livery for Imperiale Racing Lamborghini Hracan GT3 EVO2
Platform Availability and Compatibility
Currently, the 1.10.4 update is available only on PC via Steam. For PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S users, the 2025 season content is expected to arrive in 2026 following the platform certification process handled by Untold Games and 505 Games. It is confirmed that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game will not receive this update. Official support for eighth-generation consoles ceased during the version 1.9 cycle because the hardware is unable to support the latest physics calculations and graphical refinements like the GEN5 TAA system. This creates a technical split where older consoles remain on a legacy version while current systems continue to receive seasonal parity.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – New livery for Mclaren 720S GT3 Evo Team RJN
Context Within the Kunos Universe: Assetto Corsa EVO and Rally
The shift in development focus for ACC is clearer when looking at the broader Kunos portfolio in late 2025. Assetto Corsa EVO, the next generation of the franchise, reached version 0.4 in early December, introducing features like the Nürburgring Nordschleife and a dedicated ranked multiplayer system. Furthermore, Kunos has expanded its reach with Assetto Corsa Rally, which launched into Steam Early Access on November 13, 2025. Developed in partnership with Supernova Games Studios, AC Rally utilizes a specialized version of the Kunos physics engine designed for jumps and loose surfaces. This diversification confirms that while the core ACC team has transitioned to newer projects, the studio is actively managing multiple simulations simultaneously.
Assetto Corsa Competizione – New livery for Mercedes-AMG GT3 2 Seas Motosport
The Outlook for 2026
The official silence regarding a hard stop to ACC development suggests that the platform may still see maintenance in 2026. As long as ACC remains the official platform for GT World Challenge esports, further BoP adjustments and stability patches are a reasonable expectation. While version 1.10.4 is the most comprehensive update for the 2025 season, the lack of a “final” label from Kunos allows for the possibility of continued technical support and seasonal minor content as the 2026 real-world championships begin.
Assetto Corsa Competizione 2025 livery for Lamborghini Hracan GT3 EVO2 GRT Grasser Racing Team
Drivers looking to enter the simulation or complete their collection can take advantage of a significant promotion currently active on Steam until January 5, 2026. The base version of Assetto Corsa Competizione is currently listed at a 75 percent discount, while the comprehensive bundle featuring all released car and track DLCs is reduced by 60 percent. This pricing represents a deeper discount than the game’s typical seasonal sales, providing the most cost-effective entry point to date for those wanting to experience the full 2025-spec grid before the offer expires on January the 5th 2026.
Assetto Corsa Competizione New liveries 2025 – Ferrari 296 GT3 Kessel Racing
When you play Forza Horizon 5, it’s not just a racing game. You experience a sun-drenched Mexico where you can endlessly explore, while every mile is celebrating car culture. For me, the game is perfect because I have spent countless hours obsessively building my dream garage in Forza Horizon 4. However, the game is not a rehash of familiar roads. There is a special electric feeling that keeps you wanting more.
The Thrill of the Open Road (and Even Off It)
Of course, Forza Horizon 5 is primarily about racing, but the main focus of the game is exploration. The map has humid jungles, arid deserts, sleepy villages, and wild coasts, and every inch of this virtual Mexico is begging you to drive. If you are like me, you will take every opportunity to drive off-road. In the past Horizon titles, when the standard was to buy cheap PS4 games, it always felt that the fastest way to earn points was to stick to the main roads. Here? Not even close. Smash a patch of cacti, throw your car into a riverbed, and charge down a mountain. The more reckless, the better. There is something amazing about skidding to a stop in a dusty cloud, yanking a barn door open, and finding an old car that is just waiting to be restored.
The Pulse of Mexico’s Roads.
There’s something deeply intoxicating about cruising down a sun-drenched highway, the horizon shimmering with the promise of the unknown. Whether you’re drifting through a dense jungle, tearing through arid desert plains, or weaving through cobblestone streets of colorful villages, the world feels alive and personal. It’s not just a map—it’s an experience.
The team at Playground Games has designed a Mexico in Forza Horizon 5 that is not only personalized but also vast; a Mexico that has postcard views and a Mexico that has little treasures begging you to stop and appreciate. Every little detail is accounted for, like when you speed through a tropical storm and sunlight reflects off your car and paint, and you appreciate the sunlight. They are extremely chaotic but comforting; a good reminder that natural machines are just as important as the storms and the other machines you are controlling.
A Collector's Dream
Having stored numerous cars and having built a dream car garage in Forza Horizon 4, I Forza Horizon 5 fulfilled my needs in ways I didn't know I needed. I could spend hours in Forza Horizon Vista in the car observation mode just to check the car and interior details. The detailing down to the aggressive lines of the Lambo Huracan and the rich and shiny leather of the Jaguar E-Type is impressive. Some players who buy PS5 racing games enjoy making shifts to their customization settings. Customization is incredibly satisfying. There is nothing quite like the feeling of tuning the handling of a Ford GT to match your every nerve and command.
While the interaction with the simulated car is satisfying, it also experiences the most refined and improved car interaction. The driving experience has improved with a greater connection to the road and the vehicle being driven. There is a single spot for every driving experience that can be achieved by a driver, whether the driver is a casual driver or more serious.
The new Horizon Arcade mode replaces the structured Forzathon Live events and offers a more organic and untamed multiplayer experience. It’s not flawless—some events in Forza Horizon 4 are more memorable—but the variety is enough to keep things interesting. There are plenty of high-speed sprints to salt flats and plenty of designed technical tracks to urban centers of the country.
The Essence of Mexico
However, the finest thing about Forza Horizon 5 is the Mexican culture it represents. Most certainly, the main story missions, even when they are somewhat cheesy to partake in, narrate deeper stories about the culture. One of the more memorable moments involved a barn find of a venerable Volkswagen Beetle, forked in a race, that the finder restored to its former glory. There was personal history in the story beyond the car, and plenty of rich culture and people.
Cars, Cars, and More Cars
Each car has a personality, like a McLaren 720S that begs to be driven at top speed, or a Baja Bug that is unstoppable in the dunes. Customization is unbelievable. I have spent—actual hours—doing liveries, tweaking suspension, and adjusting power-to-weight ratio. While the design tools are complex, the designers made them user-friendly to the point where they can save you from getting frustrated. My favorite moment? Creating a custom paint job for a classic Mustang and then watching it shine while I jumped off a ramp going 120 mph.
The Auction House
Collecting cars is not as simple as racing through the campaign. You can collect the rare cars, but it will take some work. You can enter the auctions where people are able to sell the cars they no longer want. While this isn’t new to the series, it has a better flow here. You can have the thrill of sniping a rare car at the last moment, then flipping the car for a profit.
Word of advice: Most players who buy PS5 games already have mission-earned cars, so their value drops quickly. If making money is your goal, go after cars that are rare and in demand. You shouldn’t miss the thrill of a great deal either. Like the adrenaline rush I get from racing, finding a great deal, like a Porsche 959 in great condition for a small percentage of the real price, is a racing thrill unlike any other.
A Couple of Bumps in the Road
While the Forza Horizon series is spectacular, this one definitely has flaws. The Horizon Challenges can feel somewhat monotonous, and while the game provides you with what seems like an excessive amount of events to pick from, I found myself wishing for a little more organized flow. There are only so many times one can sprint from point A to point B and not feel bored.
While connecting with your pals is simple, it can feel painstaking when a whole party is trying to compete in coop races and their game progress doesn’t match up. However, the feeling of unity when you and your buddies are driving all over and conquering the land definitely redeems it.
Conclusion
There is no need to reinvent the wheel on Forza Horizon 5, and it simply doesn’t need to. If you have even a casual interest in racing or cars, the open-world gameplay, authentic car culture, and attention to detail in craftsmanship will make it a game you simply have to experience. Playing Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 is amazing. The light and chrome of the supercars and the dust of the off-road trucks are in sync with the changing weather. I find myself stopping mid-race to take in the stunning scenery, be it the neon festival or the waterfall.
I love the original Wipeout games in a way that probably isn’t healthy. 1996's Wipeout 2097 was literally the first PlayStation game I ever played, and I played it to death. As a life-long electronic music fan, this was less a video game and more a way of life, a manifesto in digital form. It was speed, attitude, sound and sweat all fused into a Red Bull-charged fever dream.
When Wipeout 3 arrived in 1999, I can clearly remember the hype. For anyone whose interests were at the crossroads of gaming and club music, this was a cultural event, forever linked with Sasha’s hugely influential Xpander EP. I remember descending the staircase into Sydney’s legendary Central Station Records, seeing Wipeout 3 running on TVs in the store, and playing the opening race while drinking my first ever can of Red Bull. As an icon of underground culture, Wipeout was a bridge between the worlds of gaming and music.
After picking up Wipeout 3: Special Edition during a trip to Asia in 2000, I sunk 100+ hours into it. I unlocked everything, chased those gold medals, and only hit a wall at the highest speed classes. I never loved the later entries like Fusion, Pulse or HD as much. Even though the Wipeout Omega Collection on PS4 was excellent, it never captured that gritty magic of Wipeout 3, with the floaty handling and angular, industrial courses that felt like rainy, moody glimpses of the future.
A lot of it came down to the raw gameplay, too; I've always loved the turbo boost mechanic of Wipeout 3 (sacrificing shields for speed) over the barrel roll boosts of the later games. And while Wipeout 2097 kicked off the hysteria and was a much larger commercial success, true fans know that Wipeout 3: Special Edition was the refinement of the original formula into something close to perfection.
So when I tell you that 2018's BallisticNG is a lovingly crafted homage to classic Wipeout, I’m saying it with deep affection and slightly unreasonable levels of nostalgia and expectation.
BallisticNG. Source: Author.
Old-School Heart, Modern Muscle
While BallisticNG accurately captures the vibe, handling, art style, and track philosophy of Wipeout 3, it also folds in modern flourishes that broaden the experience. Some new-era weapons are included, like the machine-gun cannons, and the mode variety is enormous, vastly outstripping the 90's series' offerings. The huge single-player campaign features a deep variety of events with ever-increasing difficulty, moving far beyond the standard combat racing formula.
The most interesting inclusions are two distinct physics modes that lean toward both the classic and modern. The base handling, called 2159, is rooted in that classic floaty feel, with pitch control being a big part of the dance. Keep the nose up by holding back as you air-brake through tight corners and land on ramps, then push the nose down on straights to squeeze out extra speed. Then there's 2280 mode, which leans more towards the Wipeout HD/Fury feel, bringing the camera closer to the vehicle and generally being more forgiving in the corners.
BallisticNG’s 1.4 update in May 2025 was centred on the expanded 2280 mode, bringing redesigned menus, quality-of-life improvements, and beefed-up modding tools. I still prefer the classic 2159 feel because I was raised on the original trilogy, but I’m genuinely glad 2280 exists. It opens the door for a whole new wave of players who grew up with the modern Wipeout titles.
BallisticNG. Source: Author.
A Team On a Mission
BallisticNG’s developers are a tiny, independent, remote team called Neognosis, whose name feels like a cheeky nod to Psygnosis (later Studio Liverpool), the legendary British studio behind the original Wipeout series. Their wider presence is pretty low-key, but the core of Neognosis appears to be two key people: Adam Chivers as lead developer and Aidan Lee handling support and Linux/Mac porting.
As far as public info shows, their only publicly released game so far is BallisticNG, but they’ve backed it up with custom tools and strong mod support, so it feels alive and evolving rather than a one-and-done. In 2025, Steam reviews keep flowing, and the game's Discord is still very active. That long-term care is a big part of why BallisticNG comes across as a passion project that grew into a genuinely polished and community-adored indie success story.
Nowhere is this love and reverence for the source material more evident than the absurd amount of content on offer in the stellar campaign. For starters, there are modes galore: Racing, Team Racing, Tournaments, Time Trials, Speed Laps, Eliminator, Knockout, Survival, Upsurge, Rush Hour, and Stunt modes are all here, with Custom Race options too if you want to get tweaking. You also get two-player split-screen, online play, and even VR compatibility, which, looking at the upcoming Steam Frame, could be very interesting.
All these expansions are included in the base game too, with no extra DLC to buy. Everything comes bundled, which helps the whole package feel huge. It expands the world and adds even more event variety, with over 50 courses available once you factor in mirror modes and other variants.
Along with the staggering amount on offer, the excellent course design deserves its own spotlight. These are hands-down some of the greatest anti-gravity racing tracks ever made. You’ll be racing through everything from busy sci-fi mega-cities and seaside industrial zones to snowy mountain circuits, cavernous canyons, huge smoggy factories, glistening speedways, and ancient forests. For an indie project, the range and artistry are truly impressive.
It’s the kind of game that makes you quietly furious Sony isn’t doing more with the Wipeout franchise, because a small dev team just walked up and built a whole parallel universe for the genre.
BallisticNG. Source: Author.
The Anti-Gravity Gauntlet
I’m more of an offline-mode person these days, and BallisticNG is perfect for that. In my region, I haven’t had much luck finding online matches, and as a Mac user, my mod compatibility is limited. So I’ve been living inside the single-player campaign, which is massive. And here's where the “Dark Souls of racing games” label stops being a joke and starts feeling like a warning.
BallisticNG starts pleasantly enough. You get into a rhythm. You start thinking, “Okay, I’m still good at this, I still have it.” And then about halfway through the campaign, the game calmly removes the floor and lets you fall. Suddenly, you’re staring at a level of difficulty that feels almost pathological. It shifts from exhilarating to intimidating in a heartbeat, like the game quietly deciding it’s done being friendly.
One bad corner and suddenly you drop from first to eighth, with the entire pack flashing past your eyes. I can see how this could be discouraging if you’re not fully locked into the anti-gravity mindset, but I also get why the game is built this way. There’s a certain purity to it. The challenge is the point, and mastery is the reward.
At its best, BallisticNG creates that intense patience-and-focus loop where every failed run teaches you something tangible. You warm up. You lock in. You sharpen your line. You learn the track’s secret language. You stop fighting the ever-increasing speed and start dancing with it. Much like a Souls game, there are no compromises here. You just have to put in the time and rise to the challenge.
BallisticNG. Source: Author.
Into the Groove
The original Wipeout series' soundtrack was a landmark in video games, being among the first video games to license underground music artists and make full use of Sony’s new CD-ROM technology in the original PlayStation.
The in-game soundtrack for BallisticNG is certainly strong, but to really fall into the trance, I’ve found the perfect move is building a custom playlist of classic and modern electronic music (think The Prodigy, Underworld, Paul Van Dyk, Sasha, Metrik, Fred V & Grafix) and playing it alongside the game's stellar sound effects on a high-end pair of headphones. This is the fuel you'll need to lock in, find flow, and push through the tougher tiers.
At a certain point, something magical happens. After repeated plays, you memorise a course so deeply that the speed melts away. You anticipate each corner. You feel the air-brake timing deep in your bones. The game demands near-flawless execution for gold and platinum, and that can be brutal. But if you love the vibe, the style, the music, and the combat racing chaos, these are hours well spent.
BallisticNG. Source: Author.
Commit or Crash Out
BallisticNG is a ridiculous package. It's a love letter to PS1-era Wipeout with modern flourishes, a huge range of modes, loads of tracks, expansions, split-screen, VR, modding and multiplayer. It's got an active, passionate community. But it’s also unapologetically demanding and merciless. You simply have to put in the time, or get left in the dust.
So yes, BallisticNG is the Dark Souls of racing games. Not because it’s grim or punishing for the sake of it, but because it respects your potential to improve. It’s a game that asks you to commit, and if you do, it rewards you with some of the purest anti-gravity racing highs you can get. If you’re a Wipeout fan and you haven’t played it yet, you genuinely need to fix that.
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