BeamNG.drive on PlayStation 5 offers the most realistic car crashes in gaming, thanks to its detailed soft-body physics engine that models impacts in incredible detail. The game, still in early access, is available for £17.99 and was released on 19th October 2026.
Realistic Crash Physics
Unlike games like Gran Turismo and Forza Horizon, where the worst damage is scratched paintwork and cracked windows, BeamNG.drive goes much further. When your car hits something, the physics engine caves in body panels, concertinas bonnets, snaps axles, and leaves vehicles in a state where finishing a race would not be an option.
The most striking demonstrations are impacts at speed, where your car is reduced to a distorted semi-recognisable block of wreckage, with steam issuing from its shattered radiator. Even glancing blows at lower velocity can do plenty of damage, from steering that permanently veers to one side to a caved-in wheel that renders the car undrivable.
Career Mode Consequences
In free roam, tapping a single button completely restores your car, waiting exactly where it left the road. But in career mode, damaging your vehicle has far-reaching consequences. Towing your car for repairs costs money, as do spare parts and labour. After multiple patches, especially to the same component, performance can be irrevocably affected.
Races, time trials, and jobs feel weighty when a small lapse in judgement could be your undoing. Getting through races is about more than just perfecting lap times: you need to keep your car in good enough working order to drive it over the finish line. Misjudging a pre-corner braking distance and connecting with a barrier is no longer a minor inconvenience but can easily be a race-ending misfortune.
Driving Model and Vehicles
The driving model feels inspiringly intuitive to anyone who has ever driven a car, and it regularly demonstrates how easily things can go wrong if you go too fast, especially on roads you don't know. There are no licensed cars; instead, it uses fictional vehicles, although most have real-world equivalents. The range spans family, sports, vintage, and rally cars, along with haulage and military vehicles.
Some aspects are less welcome. Other drivers' AI is ponderous at best, and the unfairness of an accident caused by a PlayStation-controlled avatar rankles. The satnav's chevrons don't represent the racing line, as in most driving games, and tend to be painted down the middle of the road. The game also uses every button on the controller, making some combinations abstruse, such as holding down R1 and triangle to enter a race.
Standout Features and Early Access Status
The game supports four-player split-screen, a rarity that players with flatmates or game-loving families will find alluring. It also uses its physics model for side jobs, from police chases to rock crawling, which involves trundling four-wheel drive jeeps over monstrous concrete obstacle courses that look impassable.
BeamNG.drive is still in development. The PlayStation port is billed as early access and is intended to maintain parity with the PC original, currently on version 0.40. Because of this, it is not fair to give it a score, but it is already a brilliant and fully formed game and one of the most enthralling driving experiences currently available without actually climbing into a car.
