Steam’s No. 2 Driving Game Raises the Bar for Realism on PS5

BeamNG.drive belongs to that curious class of “enormous niche” games. In certain corners of the internet it’s a phenomenon, while everywhere else it has barely registered. It’s a driving simulator famed for its strikingly lifelike “soft-body” physics. It debuted on Steam eleven years ago and has stayed in early access ever since. As of today, it has also arrived on PlayStation 5.

Across those eleven years, BeamNG.drive has gradually but steadily gathered a large following. It now ranks as the second-most-played driving game on Steam, sitting above Forza Horizon 6 and below the formidable Euro Truck Simulator 2. I expect it to do well on PS5 too. If you love cars, as many PlayStation players do, you won’t watch much car-focused YouTube before someone mentions BeamNG.drive, usually with breathless enthusiasm. The PS5 release of Forza Horizon 6 has just been delayed until January. A PS5 may also be the most affordable way to run this demanding, processor-hungry game at respectable quality.

I had never played BeamNG.drive before, so I spent several hours messing about with the PS5 version. The game opens by cautioning you that it won’t feel like a typical racing game, and it’s right. Only part of that comes from its remarkable simulation engine, though. A large share comes from the fact that BeamNG.drive is an open, unpolished sandbox. Its developers are evidently still working out how to curate it and how to design inside it.

I’m told it’s far more approachable than it once was. There’s now an onboarding tutorial that walks you through the labyrinthine interface. It teaches you to spawn new vehicles and set them alight, as well as to drive them. There are suggested Quick-Start experiences too. There’s also a Career mode, essentially a more structured take on Freeroam. In it you buy a car, earn money and take out insurance to cover repair bills.

You’ll be doing a lot of repairing, because the game’s biggest draw is its astonishing crash behavior. With soft-body physics, every part of the car is simulated individually, right down to single suspension and engine components. Realistic behavior emerges from that simulation. It isn’t a hand-scripted imitation that can skip whatever is awkward for the designers. (Or for a car manufacturer who licensed their vehicle; BeamNG.drive features only fictional cars.) Drive into a tree at speed and your car simply stops working. The suspension may have snapped, a wheel may have vanished, or the engine may have been torn clean off the chassis.

The realism of the damage system is both astounding and thoroughly entertaining. In Freeroam you can just rewind out of a wreck. In Career you have to pay for repairs. In most of the game’s countless challenge scenarios, you either limp onward in a broken car or start over. It turns out licensing isn’t the only reason most racing games avoid realistic damage. It often ends your fun abruptly.

Beyond the damage modeling, the soft-body physics also give the cars strikingly authentic handling, even when it doesn’t feel that way. At first I was taken aback by the steering, which seemed jerky and lacked progression. The in-car camera bounces around and fails to convey what the car is doing, or perhaps conveys too much. Watching from the chase camera is more enjoyable anyway. You can marvel at the suspension soaking up bumps, or at the tires suddenly surrendering their grip.

The handling may lack polish, but its sheer capability is beyond doubt. The superb rally mode shows this off best. It includes a distinctive Rally Loop game style. You drive through traffic to reach special stages, stop at time controls and keep to a strict event schedule.

There’s a vast range of things to do, reached through a gameplay browser or by exploring the Freeroam maps. These include West Coast, East Coast, Utah and Italy. You can drift, race, run time trials, drive buses, flee police, crawl over rocks, haul freight, drag race, take on hypermiling fuel-economy challenges and practice precision parking. There are even missions where you fire cannons at cars to wreck them.

Some of it is tremendous fun, and the physics engine suits certain activities especially well. Flinging hatchbacks around a rallycross oval is one, and racing bangers along dusty outback tracks is another. But you must be ready to wander around and find your own fun and a suitable difficulty level. The event design can be basic, and nothing is curated, organized or tied to any sense of progression. The exception is Career mode, which is clearly still early in its balancing and development.

BeamNG is a team of talented engineers who have built something extraordinary. As game designers, however, they are still developing, much like the game itself, which feels as if it may never reach 1.0. If you enjoy tinkering and pottering about, and can tolerate a cumbersome, laggy interface and a lack of structure, you’ll have a wonderful time. For me, it’s simply too disorganized and too abrupt.

Realistic simulators don’t have to lack design sensibility and internal coherence. I’ve been playing plenty of American Truck Simulator lately, and it knows exactly what experience it’s selling and how to draw players into it. My concern for BeamNG is that this kind of vision isn’t something you can find eleven years into development. I’d love to be proven wrong.