After playing through Need For Speed 2015, I never thought I’d do another review of a modern Need For Speed game but here I am reviewing yet another Need For Speed game. The question is, will Need For Speed Heat manage to live up to the greatness of the PS2 era Need For Speed games or is it yet another cash grab by EA? Before I talk about the game itself in more detail, I need to address the elephant in the room and that’s EA and their anti consumer practices.
What bothered me the most about Need For Speed 2015 was the always online DRM and how you needed a constant internet connection to play the game. Need For Speed Heat on the other hand does not require a constant internet connection, however there have been issues where actually connecting to EA’s servers can cause a bug that can potentially delete your progress so I highly recommend not playing online should you care about your save data. Regardless of this, I have to give them credit for removing the DRM and letting us actually play the game after the servers shut down.
As for the microtransactions, it seems that Need For Speed Heat is doing DLC car packs and a useless map that reveals all of the collectibles. Why anybody would buy a map that shows all of the collectibles I have no idea, just look it up on the internet people… jeeze. In any case, the car packs are not a new concept, they have been done in many games. What bothered me the most about how they handled car packs in the series was how they were implemented into Need For Speed Most Wanted 2012 where you didn’t buy cars, rather you found cars by exploring the map. So imagine exploring the map only to find a Mclaren F1 parked up, sounds great huh? Only problem is that to actually drive it, you have to pay money to EA. So essentially the game got your hopes up only to be crushed by the fact that it was paid DLC.
Need For Speed Heat has added black market missions which appear as a marker on the map and they essentially reward you with a car but to unlock them, you have to buy the car pack DLC. The good news is however that most of the cars in Need For Speed Heat can be purchased with in game money from the car dealership so you don’t have to deal with the disappointment of finding a car on the map only to be presented with the store page, therefore I can tolerate them this time around.
Speaking of the cars, there are tonnes of them available to you early on. Unlike earlier games where you would have to drive around in your starter car for a while, in Heat you only need to do a couple of races and you’ll have enough to buy a new car early on and I highly recommend doing so because if you decide to drive around in your starter car, you’re going to have a really hard time with some of the early races and this is where I get into one of the game’s biggest problems, the AI difficulty.
Now while I will say that basing the AI’s difficulty on their cars and giving each AI their own individual difficulty level is a good thing, the game doesn’t really do a good job of informing you of how difficult each race is going to be. Before you start a race, there is a number which represents how high level the cars you will race are, the problem is that this number is kind of misleading as you can start a race with a recommended car level of 200 and be racing an AI with a level 275 car and it can seem impossible to pass them simply because your car isn’t fast enough. This was quite frustrating to me as I didn’t feel like I had a chance to catch up whatsoever because the enemy AI is just way too fast. The good news is that by the end of the game you’ll be racing level 400 cars and 400 is the highest car level, you won’t have to deal with the ridiculous spikes in difficulty due to having an inferior car to the AI. If the game told the player the highest level car in the race as opposed to a recommended level, this could alleviate this issue. Sadly this is not the case as you only find out after the race what each individual car level each racer’s car is.
With all this aside, the racing itself isn’t all that bad. When you do race against evenly matched AI racers, it can be quite fun. By default, you can release the accelerator and press it again while turning to perform a drift. This is quite handy early on since many of the cars are quite slow so you need all the speed you can get, later on though you’ll need to use the handbrake to make those corners. There is a break too for those who need it though I found myself relying mostly on the drifting/handbraking mechanic for most of the game and while I found it to be quite satisfying to play this way, I still prefer Need For Speed Carbon’s handling mechanics since I find myself utilizing the brakes more in that game. In Heat the brakes aren’t really all that useful by comparison. It is a more arcady approach to handling that is easier for players not used to playing racing games though people who are used to the controls of earlier Need For Speed games may feel a bit puzzled at first.
One thing that does bother me however is the cops. This is where the game fails in just about every aspect. Cop chases in Need for Speed Most Wanted and Carbon were adrenaline pumping and empowering, part of that was due to the physics. You could crash into a roadblock and send cops flying up in the air which made you feel as if you were some unstoppable god in a race car. At the same time however, the cops were challenging and there was a constant tension throughout the pursuit as the cops employ tactics to box you in and slow you down which kept players on their toes. In Need For Speed Heat this isn’t the case at all, cops are nothing more than a nuisance that the player has to deal with during night time races and they aren’t really any fun to escape from. Early on they can be very frustrating as your car isn’t very fast but later on they can be easy enough to outrun so long as you aren’t playing on heat level 5.
While Heat level 5 cops in heat are difficult to escape from, I find that a lot of it comes down to luck and this is due to the damage system that has been added to the game. If you just happen to have wrecked your car before going into a heat level 5 police chase, you are screwed, there is no chance to get away. On the other hand if you have plenty of repair kits and are in a location filled with jumps, you can get away pretty easily. It’s all situational and feels unfair at times since the cops can appear at any time. It all depends on your location and the damage on your car. You can repair your car at fuel stations but you have limited repairs so don’t expect to be in any long chases like in Most Wanted or Carbon, you either escape early or get busted, that’s it. The cop AI isn’t as aggressive as they are in Most Wanted and Carbon but they don’t need to be since the damage system makes it easy for them to take you out just by weakening your car over time. Ramming into cops is a terrible idea as it causes damage to both you and the cops. The only reliable way to escape cops is by taking jumps and you better be heading in the direction the ramp is facing or you’ll have to turn around which may cause you to get caught. There are no pursuit breakers and no speedbreaker so good luck escaping from high heat pursuits.
Vehicle customization is back and it’s more-or-less the same as it was in 2015 which I can’t complain about since the vehicle customization was the only good thing 2015 had to offer and without the always online DRM, you can keep your customized vehicle designs for as long as you want. Each vehicle has a customization rating which states how much the car can be customized. Some cars offer a lot of customization options while others not so much though I’d say that the vast majority of the car selection in this game offers plenty of customization options. Sadly autosculpt is still absent from Heat which isn’t really a big deal but it’s worth noting. Also like 2015 there are no full body vinyls, in fact you can only put vinyls on each part of the car’s body so you essentially have to create the full body vinyls from scratch yourself. While this may not be an issue for me, it may be for some people. The good news is that if you have an online connection, you can download other people’s vinyl wraps to put on your car if you just want to slap on something quick. Performance wise, you can not only upgrade the parts themselves but you can also replace the entire engine which is an interesting feature that is new to Need For Speed Heat as not only does it adjust a car’s performance potential but it also changes the engine sound too.
Need For Speed Heat is set in Palm City which is based on Miami. It has several different locations spread out across the map offering a nice variety of locations to race in. Thankfully unlike the older Need For Speed games, there’s actually quite a lot to do in free roam as there are collectibles to find along with many other challenges spread across the map and completing them unlocks new cars and cosmetic upgrades. It’s a great way to take a break between races and encourage players to explore the whole map. Palm city looks gorgeous in dry weather, the problem is that it tends to rain way too often and there’s no way to toggle it which is a shame. Also one problem with the world is that there’s a lot of open fields that you can drive through but there’s no way to reset your car to the track so you have to somehow find your way back up a hill if you fall off which can be really annoying.
While Need For Speed 2015’s story was laughably bad, Need For Speed Heat’s story is serviceable. I think the acting is vastly superior in Heat than it was in 2015 and there is a more interesting plot this time around, revolving around the police as opposed to a rivalry between racers. I personally think that a rivalry would have been more engaging but sadly there really isn’t any tension between the racers themselves which is the biggest let down with the game’s story. The game needs a heel racer like Razor or Darius to make the player feel more driven to win against all odds. The issue with having the police as the sole antagonist is that the racing kinda takes a back seat in the story and just feels pointless as a result. Still, I do think that what they tried to do with the story worked and it was decent enough, though it was rather short.
There are a few side stories you can participate in, one of which revolves around legal racing, another revolves around drifting and there’s also a story that revolves around off road racing. I do like the fact that Heat encourages players to race off road as opposed to racing in road cars all the time. Even Need For Speed Underground 2’s SUV races didn’t really compel me to tune up a Hummer, it just felt like a minor diversion in that game whereas Need For Speed Heat makes it feel more meaningful to tune up and drive a SUV.
One of the few letdowns is the soundtrack, though I may be a little biased here since the music is all modern licensed music. I turned the music off when playing the game since it just isn’t my cup of tea. I could cope with some of the edgy punk rock/metal tracks from Most Wanted but this game’s music really wasn’t my thing. I think having licensed music in games isn’t really the best idea personally as I find that music made specifically for a game tends to be built more around enhancing the experience of the game whereas licensed music doesn’t really serve this purpose as it was made solely to be listened to.
This car was painful to make, I think I might have cut myself in the process
Need For Speed Heat was what I expected out of a good modern Need For Speed game, it’s nowhere near as good as the originals but is it worth playing? Well that depends on how thirsty you are for more arcade street racing games since this is pretty much the only one left and even then, there are signs that the “underground racing” setting has moved on but at least Need For Speed Heat manages to deliver a competent arcade racing experience. Chances are, this will be the last Need For Speed game to impress me for a very long time but at least it exists and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. I’d say if you can find a cheap second hand copy, it’s worth a try. If you’re not interested in playing another arcade street racing game though then you may want to pass on it.
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