Ballistics Demo

Racing games come in two varieties, and they are about as far apart from one another as possible. Hence, you either choose to simulate true racing conditions as close to reality as possible, or you zap around the tracks using anti-gravity boosters and rocket fuel, with nothing in between. In the case at hand, the latter is true, so put your steering wheel away and forget about tires entirely.

Ballistics is an arcade racing sim that takes place in the future, featuring extremely fast hoverbikes going at incredible speeds, on a variety of tubular tracks littered with all kinds of traps. Your goal is to both win and survive the races, while also keeping an eye on the engine’s overheat indicator, to avoid exploding into a million pieces due to a mechanical failure.

Although the game might look way too over-the-top to be considered challenging, it is actually pretty tricky to remain at high speed for too long if you do not take some precautions beforehand. As such, given the fact that you theoretically have no speed limit, you must pay attention to the obstacles and try to avoid them, while also picking up power-ups to help you get out of sticky situations.

Speaking of which, every hoverbike has a booster that can be activated to gain immense bonuses when you need them the most. However, these boosters have to be recharged by picking up power-ups, which are spread around the tracks. Naturally, some of these are strategically positioned to put you in danger by picking them up, so a lot of attention is required to successfully avoid crashing.

Even if the game was released quite a while ago, you can still enjoy it on modern computers and not be totally turned off by the visual aspect. In fact, the graphics still look decent and you barely get to pay attention to them anyway, since everything tends to blur out when the race gets going. The soundtrack is nice as well, featuring energetic tunes to keep you company.

Given the lack of a top speed and the constant possibility for improvement, Ballistics can provide you with many hours of gameplay, especially if you enjoy improving your results. Hence, the game is a definite must-have for arcade fans, as well as a fine racing game altogether.