Riding under the radar this year, Need for Speed Heat was announced in the summer
with a release date just a few months later.
With a career that spans both day and night in the Miami-inspired Palm City,
this latest entry avoids the biggest potholes of its predecessor,
but feels like it left the garage without all its parts bolted on.
The story follows your journey as you crew up with a pair of siblings with racing in their blood.
Ana is trying to prove herself on the streets, but her crew has been busted,
and her brother Lucas is done with the game, keeping to himself as he tunes up cars in the garage.
There’s some family drama as the two disagree on virtually everything, but
the main focus is on figuring out what’s up with the cops,
who seem more like high school bullies with motives
that have nothing to do with upholding the law.
As you might expect, the story really just connects new sets of races,
and side characters you meet open up branches like drifting and offroading.
At times, the storytelling doesn’t really mesh with the gameplay either.
You often have to drive behind other characters while they deliver dialogue,
typically driving in slow or erratic patterns that make them frustrating to follow.
There’s also one section when the story causes you to move your base of operations, but
whenever you’re in the garage,
the GPS shows the old location as your starting point.
Progression in Need for Speed is split into a day and night system.
In the day, you compete in sanctioned races and earn cash.
While at night, you participate in street races to increase your Rep,
which is basically an experience level that unlocks new cars and parts.
In the daylight, you’re free to fast travel and explore without getting harassed.
But at night, the cops are watching,
and your heat level rises for every event you finish
and every cop chase you escape from.
Your heat level multiplies the amount of Rep that you earn, but
you have to get back to a safe house without getting busted to keep it all.
So you have to decide how long you want to stay out, and how much you want to risk.
Not only do the cops send more reinforcements as your heat level rises,
but there are high heat events that are only available at certain thresholds.
Getting into one of these races with your heat level maxed
can be crazy as you try to escape from helicopter searchlights,
avoid oncoming attacks, and still win the race.
At the same time, the cop chases just don’t have the same sense of strategy as in the past,
and whether you outrun them or have them glued to your back, it all just feels a bit random.
The idea that auto parts stores won’t accept your cash unless you’re a bangin’ street racer is
kind of ridiculous, but in terms of progression,
there’s a nice rhythm as you race at night to unlock more cars and parts
and go back to the day to get the cash to afford them.
Each event is rated for a specific car level, so
the closer you are to that number, the more in-line you’ll be for an appropriate challenge.
Buying new parts to upgrade your vehicle is the primary way to prepare for higher events,
but upgrades can only do so much.
So you need to buy new cars to have a better foundation to build from every once in a while.
The problem is that the dealership has no sorting options whatsoever.
The cars are listed in order of price.
That’s it.
You can’t sort by specific manufacturers;
you can’t sort to find the best offroad vehicles;
and you can’t even filter by how highly a car is rated.
New cars that you unlock aren’t necessarily more expensive, so
they’re just thrown into the mix,
and with over 120 cars in total,
it gets tedious to go back and forth through the menu just to compare your options.
Another major area that feels undercooked is the online play,
which seems pointless unless you have a group of friends interested in forming a crew.
Most of the time, you just see a few random players roaming the map while you explore,
and there aren’t many ways to interact.
When starting events, there’s an option to invite others to race, but generally, the counter just times out.
If you’re lucky, one or two people will join, but
they might not have cars anywhere near the same level as yours.
There’s really no good way to just hop into a full race against other humans in competitive conditions.
Furthermore, frequent messages pop up to warn you about server shuffling,
forcing you to restart and listen to the latest phone calls from the story characters all over again.
Thankfully, despite some issues with the supporting structure,
a lot of the gameplay, courses, and map design is pretty solid.
Starting out, it can take a bit to find the right cars and options to suit you,
and by default, the game is so easy as to take the thrill out of most races.
However, bumping it up to hard makes for a better experience
where you need to make the most of cutting corners and outmaneuvering the AI.
Night courses are more challenging as well since they’re packed with random traffic that you need to dodge.
While the city streets are pretty flat,
the fictitious location allows for surrounding areas to include bigger hills
than you’d ever find in a realistic Florida,
making room for huge jumps and Need for Speed’s signature switchbacks.
There are wetlands, industrial areas, and even a shuttle launch center.
About half-way through the story, you unlock offroad races, which bounce over hills and dunes,
and these are some of the most exciting drives in the game.
Meanwhile, Time Trials feature more tight, technical circuits,
and by repeating them, you can graduate past the AI ghosts
to race against the times of better and better players.
The map is littered with a lot of side activities like blazing through speed traps,
jumping through billboards, and smashing neon flamingos.
There are also bits of graffiti to discover throughout, some of which feature cool artwork, but
unfortunately many of these spots end up just having clusters of bumper stickers which
aren’t interesting in any way.
For the most part though, taking on these side activities is a fun way to explore the world,
and some of the collectibles are hidden in clever ways.
From a technical standpoint, Need for Speed Heat
doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a series that’s had three previous iterations on the same generation of consoles.
A lot of elements feel sloppy, including vegetation and other details distractingly popping up,
car models changing shape in the dealership,
ugly reflection issues when driving by bodies of water,
and a momentary audio freeze before every race.
The rain and neon help to cover things up, but in general, it’s just not a pretty game.
This latest Need for Speed doesn’t have any luck-based schemes disrupting the progression this time around,
but there’s nothing moving the series forward either.
The core parts that have been strong in the past aren’t quite as potent here,
and the supporting elements feel directionless and half-baked.
Need for Speed Heat is like a beat up old ride
that’s still good to burn some rubber and get you around town,
but don’t expect to turn any heads along the way.
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