BeamNG.drive

Introduction to BeamNG.drive
BeamNG.drive is a racing simulator with many ways to play the game. The game has many different modes to play.
There is no career mode yet in the game but the developers are creating this career mode. This doesn’t take away that there are many more ways to enjoy BeamNG.drive.
I found out the game was a big simulator with racing elements. There are only a couple of real races. They are against one opponent only. Don’t expect many grand races with multiple cars chasing your tail for the number one trophy.
This game is great with realistic crashes. If you want to see exploding cars crashing into each other this is the game for you. If this was real no one would ever let me drive a car again. They all have been turned into pancake cars.
I am very glad to be reviewing this game. It might not be a game I would normally play. But I am very glad BeamNG.drive was requested. Feel free to request any kind of game review!

Gameplay
There are multiple game modes in BeamNG.drive and they all work very differently from each other. In some of the game modes, you can choose your own car. All the cars work very differently and have been fine-tuned by the developers so they work exactly as they should in real life. The faster the car drives, the harder it is to control the car. I have no knowledge of cars and normally I don’t play racing games. The physics of driving a car is not clear to me because I don’t own a car. If you drive a car you should be able to understand the game better than me.
The braking system is realistic but you can change it to arcade-style. I have used the arcade-style braking system, using the realistic braking system did not work for me. If you are not satisfied with the cars or missions in BeamNG.drive you can always download mods made by fans. There are even mods to add an airplane or a boat to your game! I have killed everyone that was on the plane by crashing into a building, it was an accident! The people on the boat had more luck. I did not manage to move the boat even an inch but in my imagination to swim back to the shore. The damage your car sustains in crashes is realistic but I did not understand a single thing that happened to the cars. I will describe the modes available in the game and what you can do in the different game modes.

Game modes
Campaign
There are currently four campaigns available. The campaign is smaller than I had expected it would be but I have the feeling this is a build-up towards the career mode. There are no save points in the campaign mode, this means you need to complete it within one play session.
Depending on your driving skills a campaign session can take up to ten minutes or two hours. The campaign won’t let you choose in what car you want to drive. You will be assigned both a car and a mission. You need to complete multiple missions in a row.
You will get a score depending on how well you completed the mission that is assigned to you. The score does not save and there is no way of telling that you completed the campaign missions but they are very fun to play. There is a loophole for checking if someone has completed the campaign mode.
Three of the campaigns will give you an achievement in Steam. The achievements on Steam are your only proof that you have completed the three campaigns. The hardest campaign does not have a steam achievement.
The campaign called rocky start seems like how career mode might begin. If this is indeed for career mode I am very excited to see how it turns out in the end. If you like destroying cars, the senseless destruction campaign is for you.
I have completed the three campaigns. In one of the campaigns, I was driving a bus. Don’t ask me what happens when I drive a bus. But I can tell you this much, no passenger was happy when I drove the bus on a road next to a cliff. Scrap that bus part, no one seems to be happy when I am driving any vehicle.
Is this why I don’t have a driver’s license in real life?

Scenarios
The scenarios are missions you can freely select and try to complete. You can’t choose a car or save your score for the scenario after you have completed the scenario. The scenarios can be very different depending on the scenario you select. You get scores based on how well you have performed throughout the scenario. For example: one scenario asks you to drive a car with a trailer. The trailer has a crate on it with only one wall to protect it from falling off. You need to drive to a marker on the map but you can’t let the crate fall off the trailer. There are three ways to complete this scenario. I have managed to complete this scenario after only a couple of attempts. In the scenario selecting screen you cannot see which scenarios have been completed. There are many more scenarios to complete next to my example above. You will need to keep track of the completed scenarios yourself. I recommend a notepad app or old school paper and pen. If you are interested in more scenarios you can always check the mod page in the game.
The scenarios were fun but I disliked that I was not able to see which scenarios were completed.

Free roam
In this mode, you are able to choose your own car or bus. You can even spawn any items in the world that you want. For example: buildings and ramps. You can activate the A.I to see random cars drive around. Put up a brick wall and watch those random cars get pulverized when they drive into the brick wall.
This is one of the many things you can do in free roam. Almost everything is possible in free roam. Some people can play this mode for hours and others get bored quickly. There are so many options available in free roam, you can lose track of time or even days.

Time trial
In the time trial mode, you will need to select a map and a track. Once you have selected this you will still need a vehicle to drive with, you are able to choose a car freely. There are many tracks to choose from with a lot of different vehicles. You can change some alternate settings if you want. For example: you can change the time of day.  I choose the map with the multiple loopings in the track.
The idea is to complete the track as fast as possible. This mode is very fun to play but can get boring quickly since there are no computers to race against.
I used a mod to get a car with three wheels. For some unknown reason, the car kept rolling over before a looping was in sight. I did make it once to the looping, see the video below.

Bus runner
In this mode, you are in a minibus simulator! You pick a route to travel on the bus of your liking. Is your bus not on the selection screen? You can download mods to get the bus you want. I used a bus with a ramming spike on the front. This looked very friendly for the passengers who were about to die.
You need to follow the route and stop at the bus stop to pick up the passengers. I have no clue how the mode continues. I was only able to kill the passengers before reaching the next stop.
I hope no one ever hires me as a bus driver. I had very much fun playing the bus runner mode, most of all modes! My bus always crashed and turned into a pancake. This made me laugh every time and did not feel frustrating at all.

Light runner
In the light runner mode, the gameplay is the same as it was in the time trial mode, only you cannot select the vehicle you are driving. You will have a fast powered car that can reach over 150 miles per hour. You can also make it fly by trying to re-enact a fast and furious scene by flying off a skyscraper into another skyscraper.
You cannot choose a map to race on. You will need to race in the glow in the dark map. The car works well with steering even though it goes very fast. I never managed to complete one course. I did manage to destroy a lot of cars.

Track builder
In the track builder mode, you can build your own level. I have tried to build my own racing track but I have failed to do so. If you have that creative power you can use it in this mode.

Career
The career mode is not available yet.

Pros
– The game simulation is very realistic.
– I love that there are so many different ways you can crash your car.
– The graphics are very detailed.
– There is a big selection of cars to choose from.
– I am looking forward to the Career mode.
– There is mod support in BeamNG.drive.
– Safe to use for bad drivers
Cons
– There are no real races (yet) in BeamNG.drive.
– Career mode has been in development for years.
– There are not enough campaigns to select from. I would have liked it if there were more campaigns to choose from.
– Separate tutorial for people that do not know anything about cars is missing.

I have really liked BeamNG.drive. This was a welcome surprise. Thank you for requesting this review Penske.tw! I recommend this game to everyone that enjoys car simulation games and/or crashing cars.
If you are looking for a racing game, this game may not be a match for you.

I give this game…drumroll…

7.5!

When the career mode finally hits and the game is out of the early access I will re-review this game. This may increase the rating.
Thank you for reading the review. Please leave your thoughts about the game in the comments. You can also rate the game yourself!