Strangely named car-smashers Beam.ng have been teasing us for years with their awesome car destruction physics engine. Each video has been the torque of RPS, showing cars colliding with mountains and other cars. The crumpled the hoods, the torn off wheels, the cool slow-motion smaaaaassssshhhheees. I had to clutch my girlfriend each time I realised I couldn’t yet play it. Well there some things you auto know: it is called Drive, there is a new trailer, you can buy early access, and there’s even a demo for you to play right now.



After a brief poke at the tech, I am pretty much hooked. I don’t really care about driving or real car names, but I am a giant child and I love to break things. The tech demo lets you smash up a very boring looking van in a very interesting looking car playground. The abstract obstacle course has plenty of solid objects to ram, ramps to jump off, and even giant cylinders that have been left carelessly lying around so that someone might loop-the-loop. It’s almost everything I hoped it would be.

Pressing F1 will show you the controls, which include slow-motion keys. There are a few problems: movement is bound to the arrow keys and the camera controls are bound to the keypad, which is bit unwieldy, though it also supports joypad so I’d just go with that. The camera mouse controls need tightened up as well. But it’s early days. The techdemo is obviously different from the £10 early access game: that includes more cars, real-world areas to drive, and a terrain editor. All that’s in the new trailer.



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