Film Review #30: BeamNG Drive (game)

Yeah, another "film" review about a game.  Deal with it.

BeamNG Drive is a car simulator.  And it's SUPER COOL.  So you know how metal is, in some way, soft?  It bends, stretches, etc.  Well, what BeamNG (the studio) has done is gone and simulated metal.  In the parts of a car.  So basically, a CG car that ISN'T just a box with wheels and a pretty visual mesh, but an ACTUAL PHYSICAL ENTITY, made up of dynamic parts capable of bending, breaking, etc.  It's amazing.  Everything from rollcages to doors to suspension to drivetrains to axles to wheels to tires, all simulated with dynamically tuned characteristics to match the physical properties of their corresponding materials in real life.  It's early alpha, and the physics can still get... interesting at times, but still, truly amazing.

The game itself features all this tech mentioned above, among some more awesome stuff like slow motion, plus multiple large open-world maps, plus multiple customizable vehicles, including various types of cars and trucks.  You can also spawn in multiple cars and give them behavioral properties, like follow (and smash), drive in this direction, etc., plus you can switch between them.  Easy access to built-in Lua code integration means you yourself can code in whatever might please you.  That's right, that, and it's got TERRIFIC mod support.  I've seen planes, helicopters, submarines, rocket cars...  It's pretty great.  Police chases and races are in the works/implemented in some respect or another.  Also, you can put stuff around the map.  Ya know, scenery-wise, and whatnot.  It's running in the CryEngine, which basically means it looks nice too, and is super-goddamn-optimized.  Like, dayum.

In terms of driving mechanics, it actually handles REALLY well, and not just for an insanely-complex-precarious-softbody-simulator-type game.  It's ... nice.  Different vehicles handle differently; the fastest car, an 80's supercar, handles far differently than the versatile little coup.

Anyway.  In all, I really enjoy BeamNG Drive.  It's fun, challenging, expansive... There's probably a whole bunch of stuff I simply missed in this review, just waiting for you to find.  It's for PC alone as far as I know, though via bootcamp and such macs seem to handle it pretty well too.  I dunno about Linux, though I'm sure you can find something on that.

Their dev blog:  http://www.beamng.com/blogs/
Just go and check that out.  Believe me, it's worth it.