Need for speed heat is a high octane action packed game supplemented by thrilling graphics bundles with its frustrations, a huge amount of challenge and incredible customization. It’s shaping up to be quite a come back for a franchise that has been spinning its wheels desperately looking for traction. The developer ghost has finally built something that feels true to its past. Heat is fast, thrilling, gripping and way way ahead of its disappoint ting predecessor need for speed payback that debuted in 2017. Let’s get straight to it.
Ghost has dropped some welcomed tweaks into Heat if you look closely and you’ll see the intense cop chases of need for speed most wanted and the classic need for speed underground theme. Palm city is the new Need for speed heat play ground. Being the major highlight of the game, the city itself does nudge you more to the exploration aspect of the game far better than payback. And this time there’s few momentum killers since even trees and walls crumble when you drive through them rather than bringing you to a stop.
Heats mains hooking point is that there’s two distinct modes to switch from to access various events and switching between them is done manually before you leave the garage. Daytime palm city races includes sanctioned street races on marked locations that earn you bank with each win. It’s decent but might pass as plain when you actually stop to recognize detail. Night time races on the other hand are all about fast racing to build rep points and escape from the cops.. I’m my opinion, heat looks amazing at night. Especially with the rain and aggressive cop chases and having to dodge traffic that’s increases considerably at night over daytime. I also like that Need for speed heat gives you the power to switch from daytime to night anytime. Both daytime and nigh events are needed to progress through the story but the cut-scenes and events are really set it apart from the cringy story back in need for speed payback.
Cop chases aren’t restricted to predefined timed routes like in payback but the cop cars here can really haul ass and chases are much much tougher to evade. There’s also a damage meter for your car this time so while you can fight back and get car repairs from shops for up to 3 times a night, if you pull too much rough action, you’ll get wrecked, arrested and lose rep points. You also have the option to bribe cops this time round but that only happens when your heat is low and before the chase Heats up. However the AI does chest at times by popping out cops in front of you in close proximity when you’re in the thick of it and that buster timer can really be unfair to you at times.
I honestly don’t see the need for a timer if your car can only take damage for a set number of times. I get it, it’s all in favor of thrashing some more adrenaline in you especially with the risk of losing huge bank and rep points but getting busted when there’s nobody in front or behind me just because the timer ran out is just baloney. Especially when I have to lose all that bank and rep. I haven’t thrown my controller at the TV yet but I’ve had close calls.
There’s a good selection of cars available to choose from but there’s lack of Luster in the garage if you’re a veteran player of payback since bulk of the collection spans from that game. It’s good to see that Ferrari have climbed back on board in heat seen from the abundance of Ferraris in the game but Toyota ore still absent. Was really hoping I’d see the new supra included in the game. There’s also a wide array of beast machines from the 90s.
Now immediately I got Need for speed heat and grabbed my controller, I noticed a few tweaks in the driving and handling experience. By default, a drift can be initiated by getting off the gas for a sec and smashing back on it immediately when turning into a corner. And that might be problematic for a bulk of people who like it old school by using the brake to initiate the drift and the handbrake to angle the car into a drift. Luckily with live tuning you can easily switch from using gas to drift to using the brake all within the game not from a pause or garage menu. . Speaking of live tuning, it gives you the option to tweak traction control, steering sensitivity and down force accordingly all from the game. Drifts are shorter in heat but you have more control over the angle of the drift making it more enjoyable. Also keep in mind that the car you drive also has a say in the drift. Example drifting in the BMW M3 gives you wilder drifts than drifting in say a lotus Exige.
Need for speed heat also does away with requirements for specific cars to race an event like what we saw back in payback. Any car I’ve bought so far can be tuned and returned in the garage to Suit the race at hand be it drifting, circuits or off road races. Even buying of duplicate parts. Speaking of the garage, this upgrade system is a massive leap from the payback garage. Beyond a few reward items, there are no more hoops to jump through to apply cosmetics or convoluted pump ups to tune your performance. Thaaaaank Goodness. If you want a part JUST BUY IT like it should be. One confusing addition is the presence of drag tires in the garage without a dedicated drag mode. Another big new addition is engine swap, that allows you to increase the performance potential of cars that would previously have been under powered out in a race. All in all the best new option in my books is exhaust tuning which allows tweaking of the already sweet exhaust notes. That is one bad ass geeky upgrade for us petrol heads out here and I am all about it. Vinyl changing remains top notch and stance is also retained for you guys out there that want your cars to have rickety stances. There’s avatar customization to if you’ve wanted a change of clothes in your gaming character or if you want to see this mans belly button. To add on that, there’s a wide range of characters to choose from and all of them look like fugitives from the law.
While need for speed feels like it’s in desperate need of a revolution, as all games these days, in trend setting strides developer ghost has definitely pinched nostalgic sweet parts off other installments in the almost 25 year old franchise, put it in a bucket with technology and sweet graphics and pulled out something wildly respectable and worth our time. Need for speed isn’t all sizzle and dazzle but it’s way way above what I expected and it’s definitely one of the best racing games in the long line up of what we’ve had all these years.
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Lord Hezion 