Need For Speed Heat

Need for Speed: Heat is a fast-paced racing game with a duel experience. The game is divided into daytime races—and night. During the day, the city provides sanctioned street races that give the player the opportunity to earn money. NFS: Heat isn’t the first racing game in this series, but it’s definitely one of the best.

The police are present, but just. They will ticket you based on infractions, but won’t pursue beyond that.

Everything changes at night. During the night, illegal street racing takes place on a whole different level. If the cops catch you, it’s all over. Players must lose the police and avoid getting too much damage done to their car before they get to a hideout of some kind. If they don’t, they could lose everything. “Heat” refers to how much police have players on your radar. The more players participate in night races, the more their heat rises.

Incredibly Customizable

NFS: Heat allows a huge amount of customization. Almost every car is fully customizable, including color, exhaust, tail, and more. Upgrades improve the speed and performance of the car, as well as the appearance. On top of this, players can also customize their avatar. The game offers a large number of different clothing styles and options to make the avatar unique. The customizability of the game adds a lot of play value, but it barely scratches the surface of what this game is about.

Immersive Experience

The game has an Open World concept. The game opens with the player being thrown into a night race by way of tutorial. This follows with a cutscene that quickly explains the premise of the game so players can get right to it.

Night racing is very exciting, with traffic to dodge as well as the real threat of police. Racing in the game seems to favor drifting, with nearly all races requiring drifting at the turns, and almost never any real braking. Dodging the police can be difficult. They seem to magically catch up to players even after a Nitro boost or a jump to avoid them. Getting to a hideout is manageable however, with some practice.

Unable to Play Police

In past Need for Speed games, such as Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, gameplay included a mode that let players play as the police. This game does not allow this. With the extreme presence and importance of police in the game however, it might have really benefited from such a mode.

NFS: Heat took favorite aspects of many past Need for Speed games to create something new. The night and day modes do give a fresh coat of paint to the game, and players can spend many hours just customizing the car. While the game is fairly good, there’s still some room for improvement. The police seem to have an almost unfair advantage in the game, and there’s no option to play the other side either. This makes the game a bit unbalanced.

Pros:

• Very customizable
• Open world

Cons:

• Not much story
• Lacks a “Hot Pursuit” mode

Need For Speed Heat commemorates the 25th anniversary of the series. And that means the game has a huge responsibility of proving that the franchise is still alive and running. Ghost Games, the developers have this enormous task to take care of, even when they've been proven to not deliver the best results. Still, is Need For Speed Heat the game that the series needed to keep it alive, or is it a proof that these cars need to go out for a technical stop. Well, there's a lot to discuss it, so let's talk about it for a moment here.

About the game

Need For Speed Heat is the latest entry in the series after two years of no new games. It shines at sunrise and glows when the night falls, and that's exactly one of the main aspects of the game.

It features a story mode with a semi-open world that will allow you to explore the city as well as participate in many races. The day and night mechanics of the game allow you to choose whether you're going to drive in the daytime or when the night falls.

The main difference when choosing a different time is usually that during the days most races are legal and in pre-set tracks. But when the night falls the street races arise, more illegal, high-speed races, with extreme crashes and police escaping.

Most of the game revolves around managing the time and money you earn by winning the legal races in the daytime so that you can beat them all at night. Get the best car, enhance it and learn to master the city streets to own the racing crown.

There's also a multiplayer mode included, and it allows you to play with up to 15 players online and get into special races that are otherwise not available. This also expands the game world a lot, so it's highly recommended that you at least give it a shot

Revolutionary enough?

To keep a game franchise alive and running after 25 years you really need to keep innovating and adding new mechanics into the franchise. One of the best steps forwards the series made was back in 2012 when they released Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

It was like combining Need For Speed and the Burnout series for the very first time. The open-world was fresh and the races were exciting and full of action. In Need For Speed Heat, the formula is all used up now. It doesn't really innovate that much, and it probably reflects more the negative aspect of the series than a fresh new revival.

Review

It's better to not go into Need for Speed Heat expecting to get the best game in the series. In fact, it is best to keep your expectations very low for this one, or else it will be pretty disappointing. The game lacks the innovation needed in the franchise, and it doesn't do much justice to the 25 anniversary of the amazing games we've had in the past.

• Visuals and graphics: The game looks great actually, there really are no complaints here. The cars and animations are great, and the neon lights when the night falls give an amazing vibe to the game. It looks completely different at night and day.

• Gameplay: It plays great, there's a little learning curve to the different cars, especially the powerful ones. However, the big downside is that they somehow managed to make it incredibly boring and repetitive. Having the player play what seems to be the same race over and over again.

• Sound: The soundtrack has some good licensed songs that fit the game and an OK soundtrack. The sound effects are more for show than realism but it's alright.