Disclosure: Aquiris Game Studio gave us a free copy for review purpose.

Ballistic Overkill is one of the few PC games with a unique background. It originally launched as a free-to-play shooter game on Facebook last April 2013 and was first titled as “Ballistic”. It’s common for some paid games to eventually become free-to-play (like Team Fortress 2 and Evolve) but a free-to-play game becoming a paid game is rare. Aquiris Game Studio, the developer, relaunched the game on October 8, 2015 as an Early Access game on Steam and changed the title to Ballistic Overkill. Linux support came on May 23, 2016 and was released as a full game on March 28, 2017. The game uses Unity game engine and has support for Vulkan since May 17, 2017.

Features

OVER 80 WEAPONS. From pistols, grenade launchers, SMGs, sniper rifles, katanas, etc.

7 CLASSES. Each with its particular strengths and weaknesses.

4 GAME MODES. All maps have multiple game modes available: Team Deathmatch, Free for All, Capture Point, King of the Hill.

CUSTOM PRIVATE SERVER CREATION. Players can create their own servers with their own rules, map cycle and game modes to play with their friends.

Game Play

Ballistic Overkill is all about non-stop killing and the unlimited ammo nicely complements it. The main goal is just to kill as many enemies as possible while avoiding getting killed.

There are 7 soldier classes to choose from and all of them are attack-oriented. Each has its own set of weapon types and skills that suits a specific play style. The 2 unique soldier classes are the Grenadier and the Shadow. For players who want to quickly kill enemies at close range, the Shadow is an appealing soldier class due to its katana and invisibility skill. The Grenadier specializes in explosive weapons and is great for killing multiple enemies in tight spaces such as narrow corridors.

The main menu is straightforward and easy to navigate. Weapons and skills are equipped in the SOLDIERS tab and, once you reach a certain level, you can have 2 loadouts which are basically just presets for equipped weapons and skills. You level up by gaining experience points which are earned by playing any game mode and how much you get depends on how well you play. More weapons and more skills are unlocked as your level increases and each soldier class is leveled up individually.

Image Quality and Performance

There is only one setting that controls the overall image quality and the anti-aliasing setting is only limited to FXAA and MSAA. Image quality is not one of the main selling points of this game but it still looks good when graphics settings are maxed out at 1080p. The game natively supports ultrawide aspect ratio (21:9) which is good news for owners of ultrawide monitors.

Ballistic Overkill does not have a built-in benchmark tool and measuring performance of an online multiplayer game is tedious. We’ll just show you a video of the game running on the Windows PC of our Editor-in-Chief. It’s equipped with a ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! and Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.6 GHz.

The game is also easy on mainstream GPU’s as I have tested on my Linux PC equipped with a Gigabyte GTX 970 ITX and Intel Core i7 7700 @ 3.6 GHz (Hyper Threading disabled). I consistently get above 100 FPS at 2560 x 1080 resolution using High Quality with FXAA + 4x MSAA. Using only FXAA for the anti-aliasing setting boosts the frame rate to 160 – 180 FPS. Ballistic Overkill does not demand too much from the CPU and the RAM as shown by the screenshot below.

By default, the game runs using DirectX 11 and OpenGL on Windows and Linux, respectively. Vulkan is supported but there is no in-game graphics setting to enable it. To enable Vulkan, copy-paste “-screen-fullscreen 0 -force-vulkan” in the launch options. I tested it on my Linux PC and seemed stable in the 3 matches I played. No tangible benefit was observed which is really not surprising since the game was already running very smoothly with OpenGL. Perhaps Vulkan will benefit those using low-end PC’s equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 and Intel Pentium G3220.

Closing Thoughts

Editor-in-Chief’s Notes: “Ballistic Overkill is a fast-paced FPS perfect for those looking for an alternative experience to popular shooters right now. It differentiates itself from the likes of CSGO and Overwatch by offering a level path to customize each character as well as various loadout to adjust to in-game situations. Varied map options allow players to experience each map in different competitive scenarios like traditional Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill or Capture points and the old-school Free For All style of competition where frag counts matter. All in all, its an enjoyable experience and quick fix if you just want your shooter but it is definitely one game that has a lot to improve on. First off, there is a heavy lack of emotion to the game as it lacks any audio effects for shots and kill animations. No voice lines also mean its heavily dependent on 3rd-party voice chat applications if you want to coordinate with your team. Graphics itself is decent enough and lends itself nicely to people who don’t bother about specs and will happily run on entry-level systems. Ballistic Overkill is also plagued by bad matchmaking as you will be matched with high-level players automatically. Given the relatively low concurrent player count, that would be understandable but the lack of any tutorial or introductory course means you’ll be forged in the heat of battle immediately. Despite our nitpicks, Ballistic Overkill is a fun FPS game that prides itself in fast-paced action along with pure old-school frag-fest joy. Its definitely an enjoyable game if you don’t mind the lack of depth and the need to acclimate yourself quickly.”

Ballistic Overkill does not revolutionize the online shooter genre but it certainly manages to differentiate itself from other games. The game successfully achieves its goal which is to be an accessible and easy-to-play shooter game without in-game transactions. Anyone with a decent gaming PC can enjoy the game and the game play is easy to pick up. Aquiris Game Studio did a fine job of transitioning from a Facebook game to a Steam game and we hope the game will still be improved further based on community feedback.

The game is currently available at Steam for PhP 359.95. Steam Play is supported which means you only purchase Ballistic Overkill once and you can play it on Linux, Mac, and Windows.