nascar heat 5 is finally here and is available on steam
xbox one and playstation 4 for 50 us dollars for the standard edition or 70
for the gold edition which will get you three tony stewart paint schemes
including the 2011 office depot championship scheme
and his 2016 homestead finale scheme it also gets you tony stewart as a spotter
option a career contract from stuart haas
racing 1.4 million dollars in career mode currency
and the nascar heat 5 season pass which will bring you 4 eventual dlc
packs i do have to say thank you to 704 games for sending me over a copy of
nascar heat 5 early just so i could get my hands on it and
spend more time at the game to make a better review for you guys and although
they did send me the game it does not affect my
review of it at all if anything i will be judging it more critically
because of that after spending a few solid days playing nascar heat 5
here's my review of it before we get started though if you could hit that
subscribe button down below to help me grow the channel and so you
can get notified when i upload new videos
also feel free to check out my other nascar heat
content so for this review i'm going to do it a little different
i'll be splitting this review into two different parts the first part will be a
review for those who are new to the nascar heat series
and the second part will be for those who have played the previous games
uh specifically nascar heat 4 as there's a bit of controversy that i will address
as somebody who's played both games for a decent amount of time 704
games as nascar heat 5 is the newest game in the nascar heat series
it is the official nascar video game and features 34 authentic tracks for single
player 2 player split screen and online
multiplayer for you and up to 39 other players eat
five includes all of the official teams cars and drivers from the nascar cup
series xfinity series and gander rv and outdoor
truck series as well as the fictional dirt late model
series called the xtreme dirt tour the game features an updated career mode
quick race mode championship mode challenge mode split
screen test session mode and an online
multiplayer where you can race with up to 39
other players as well as an all new online challenge mode in career mode you
can embark on your own journey to the top of the rank starting from dirt
or wherever you want actually and work your way up to the nascar cup series
you can create your own driver and get hired to a team
or even start your own team where you'll need to buy your own cars and hire and
manage your own employees nascar heat 5 adds more player and car
customization options like new fonts for numbers
and more statistics over the previous games championship mode allows you to
pick a series run a pre-made schedule including the updated 2020 schedule or
create your own schedule and race your way through the season with the goal of
getting that championship status challenge mode is a game mode
where you'll be presented with specific scenarios
generally themed after things that have happened during real races for example
kurt busch defending p1 from his brother kyle to earn himself a spot in the 2019
playoffs at kentucky and there's also some really crazy ones
like surviving the big one at daytona challenge mode has always personally
been one of my favorite modes in the nascar heat series and having some new
challenges available is definitely a good thing continuing
with challenges there's a new feature to the game called
online challenges the current one is themed after the
recent pocono doubleheader from a few weeks ago
where in real life kevin harvick won the first race and finished in second the
following day to denny hamlin the challenge this time is to win that
second race as kevin harvick and pull off that double up when i saw
this was the challenge i was pretty surprised to see how up to date it
actually was as that just happened like a couple
weeks ago two weeks ago three weeks ago and i'm interested to see what other
challenges they come up with in the future
upon starting up the game the game actually required me to change some
settings to get it to work right personally i play on pc
and i race on this game using a steering wheel for me all of the buttons were not
mapped correctly and required me to remap them this
immediately presented another issue though the button to get into the
options was also unmapped and required me to plug in an xbox
controller to get to them if i didn't have that controller available
i would have been completely out of luck fortunately they've just recently
released the patch that has remapped the options button
and made it accessible for all control types i should also mention at this
point that the game does not recognize a keyboard or mouse
as a valid control yes you can navigate the menus with the keyboard
but you cannot actually drive with them so you will need some sort of controller
to play this game on pc in my review of nascar heat 3 i judged
the game on an arcade to sim racing scale system to better explain how this
game will feel for somebody who hasn't played it before
a lot of people found that system helpful so i'll do it again for this one
so if a game like outrun is a one meaning
full-on arcade a need for speed is somewhere around a three
still kind of arcadey but not too arcading and if something like forza and
gran turismo are like a seven or eight and i racing as a full-on 10 meaning
full sim this game would be around a 6 or a 6 and
a half keep in mind this isn't my total rating of the game it's just a way to
explain what type of racing you'll expect
and what the game will feel like for you nascar heat 5 features a tuning system
drafting system damage and all new dnfs where you or an ai can be completely
wrecked out of a race the game also has stuff like oil temps
tire temps and fuel usage making it a fairly realistic game
feature wise but a little more arcadey on the driving side there are some
things that i would have liked to have seen in nascar heat 5 that weren't in
the previous games either things like manual control over the car
during cautions pit stops pace laps and restarts or not in the game
which really takes away from the experience in my opinion
also when a caution does come out there is no replay or description of what
actually happened during the race and this can be frustrating when you're
door-to-door with another driver and all of a sudden the game cuts away to a pace
lap with no explanation of what happened
that being said you can possibly see what happened in your post-abrasive
replay if it shows it in one of the quick
clips or if you can spectate yourself and
it just so happens to be in the shot that you're in otherwise you won't see
anything it would at least be nice to have a spotter tell you what happened
or where it happened and it would also be nice to follow other cars
in the post race replay i would have also liked to have seen a photo mode in
this game i think photo modes are a cool addition
to any game and would fit very well on nascar heat
besides the nascar cup series xfinity series and truck series
the game includes a fictional extreme dirt tour if you're a big fan of dirt
racing like i am don't get too excited this mode is
actually a pretty big miss from what dirt racing actually is
the car is modeled after a dirt late model yet doesn't really drive like one
at all the nascar heat series doesn't really
have a solid drifting mechanic uh especially under dirt so the car does
feel a bit looser than the asphalt cars but but still doesn't drive like a dirt
car you don't even have to counter steer the car
and throttle control doesn't matter except for on turning rather than to
balance the angle of the car and the grip of the tires i think this
mode was added just as a way to have you be a rookie
and work your way up from the ground rather than just starting off in one of
the official nascar series but other than that it's not really all
that fun in my opinion apart from the dirt series the ai in
this game is actually really fun to race against
they've made improvements since the last game and it's actually very noticeable
in the old games they would pretty much just stick to one or two lines
and that's about it it would be very easy to outpace even on harder
difficulties as long as you adjusted your setup a little bit in the last two
games i would run with bots on the hardest difficulty and still win a lot
of races pretty easily but in this game i find that even on lower settings the
bots still have the ability to outrace me if i'm not driving at my best
in nascar heat the ai can be set from a difficulty range of 85
to 105 and i find the highest setting in this game actually is
pretty tough for me i need to be on my a game with a good setup just to finish in
the top five beyond the general difficulty level
there are a few other settings for the ai to better tweak them to your liking
for example you can change how much they're affected by things like tire
wear how stable their cars are their chances of recovering from getting
loose or turned how common a malfunction is for them
how compact the restarts are so if everybody's bumper to bumper or if
there's a little space in between and how wide the skill gap is between
the top drivers and the lower level drivers
if you're also a wheel user the wheel feedback is actually pretty solid on
this game i found it to be too heavy by default
and i had to dial it back quite a bit but you can feel a lot of road textures
and can actually sense where the tires are starting to lose grip
as far as the online in this game goes it can either be a lot of fun
or a complete disaster i've been in some lobbies that have clean racers who
appreciate a good race but i have also been in lobbies that
could pretty much be considered a battle royale it's honestly just luck if you
get in a clean lobby or a lobby filled with trolls and griefers
the game does have a ghosting system that kicks in but it kind of takes too
long and trolls can learn how to avoid it altogether to still hit you
the best solution to this is to host your own lobby and to just kick trolls
out as they come in or to just join a league for the game
you can find some leagues or groups through the official nascar heat
community discord server they have a league section in there and
a looking for group section the cool thing about the nascar heat
series is that you can actually just kind of go from getting the game to
possibly being in the esports series uh when the esports is running they have
qualifiers uh it's a couple different qualifiers
for you to be able to qualify to get into the actual esports series
and it's open to everybody as far as i know there might be an age restriction
but otherwise it's open to everybody the only issue with that is it's not on the
pc for some reason which i don't really understand
i've played the game on console and i played the game on pc and it's
virtually identical when it comes to graphics in this game
they're pretty reasonable it's nothing to write home about but they also don't
look bad personally i play in 4k on pc with the
settings maxed out for anybody wondering about my pc specs
i have a ryzen 2600 16 gigs of ram and a gtx 1080.
and it can manage this game perfectly fine the gameplay you're seeing in the
background is actually 4k max settings but it's just downscaled to
1080p for youtube heat 5 and 4k looks pretty sharp and it
actually has really nice lighting there aren't that many settings you can
change to customize the graphics though on pc you can only change resolution
quality level bloom anti-aliasing shadows and
replay depth of field it also has three different v-sync settings
there's none which is an unlimited frame rate as far as i know
then there's every frame which is 60 or possibly just match to your display i
have a 60 hertz monitor so it runs at 60 and then half which is 30
or half of what your display's refresh rate is on top of visuals
the driving camera selections are pretty good but they did add some that weren't
in the previous games the exterior cameras are very good so if
you prefer exterior cameras to interior cameras
you're all set i would like to see a roof cam that looks kind of like the one
used in real life broadcast but the current roof camera will do just
fine for me the issue in this game comes with the cockpit camera
i can't really explain what the problem is with it but it just feels off
it almost feels like the windshield is actually just a screen inside the car
and you're sitting there looking at it the camera for me is way too zoomed out
and it makes it hard to see out of the car and judge
distance i also find it incredibly difficult to judge the speed of the car
from the cockpit camera which is never a problem you want
to have while driving they do allow you to turn off the
steering wheel now inside the car which is nice
but i would like other adjustments as well in the future games i'd definitely
like to see a seat adjustment so everybody's going to move the camera
exactly where it would work for them and on top of that a field of view slider
would be good the audio in nascar heat 5 is very good
that is until it starts glitching for about 75 percent of the race the
audio works and sounds pretty good eventually the audio will become a
choppy mess and it's very annoying and it creates a stuttering effect this also
isn't just a pc thing because i have friends who play on consoles and they've
also experienced it and it was a problem in nascar heat 4 as
well now i've tried to assess this issue with a bit of audio experience that i
have to me it sounds like the game is failing
to handle the audio of your car the audio of 39 other cars the spotter
the crowd and the reverb that comes off the walls
i honestly don't really know what the problem is but i hope they try to fix it
soon in a patch and at the latest the next game some
other bugs in the game include the game crashing after finishing career races
or starting a second season uh there's also some texture issues
and probably some others that i'm not aware of i do know that the game
crashing bugs are being worked on right now or may have possibly
been fixed already i didn't personally experience either the crashing bugs or
the texture bugs but i have seen pictures of them online
and discussions of them on reddit and twitter despite the bugs and the few
gripes i have about this game it's still very fun to play overall
there's a good amount of content in the game for the fifty dollar price point
and for the heat four players i'll address that shortly
just hang in there real quick you get pretty much everything you'd expect from
a nascar video game you get all the tracks all the cars and all the drivers
you get the fictional dirt series you got a pretty solid career mode
a 40-person online multiplayer and the game has
decent physics that work for everyone whether you're new to racing altogether
or have been playing racing games for years
the game isn't a simulator so you can't really expect sim physics from it
i do find that the game has managed to pull off a good balance of arcade and
sim elements to make an overall enjoyable racing experience for everyone
now for the overall rating of the game i like to review my games on a skip
wait for sale or buy rating i feel like this system works better than just a
random number that doesn't really mean anything at the end of the day
and this is where the crossroads comes in between new players
or veteran nascar heat players so in this specific case i'll be giving this
game two different ratings if you don't already own nascar heat 4
nascar heat 5 in my opinion is a definite buy it is the best official
nascar stock car racing game right now that can deliver when it comes
to having all the drivers all the cars and the tracks to make it an official
nascar experience as long as you're comfortable with the
few bugs i've mentioned that are probably going to get patched anyway
and don't mind the potential battlefield that is the online
then it's a pretty safe purchase now for those of you like myself who have played
nascar heat 4 there's a lot of controversy around
nascar heat 5 primarily around its price tag of 50
or 70 dollars for the gold edition i've spent past few days really trying to
experience everything the game has to offer to
determine whether or not i feel it's worth the money what i've decided
is that it really depends on what you want from the game if you're like me
i primarily stick to single player if i want to do some online racing i'll just
get an eye racing for that but the new ai in this game is the best
i've seen in a nascar game ever they really find their own grooves they
try different lines and they don't just stick to the same two spots on the track
they can be aggressive they decide whether they want to work
with you or just try to pass you they do bump and runs once in a while and push
you up into the turn and dive under you they pressure you they don't feel quite
like real players yet but they aren't too bad for being ai to
me that's a pretty big deal and they really
shine in a longer race like a 50 percent or a 100
race i also really appreciate having the updated roster
it's cool to see everyone in their new rides and they also announced that
they're going to be adding indie road now
that the xfinity series has raced there and with them doing that they may even
add daytona road at some point since they're going there this season now
instead of watkins glen at the end of the day even though i love the new ai
upgrades the 2020 roster and the eventual edition
of indie road it is hard to justify that 50
price point and that's a hard thing to say too because the game isn't bad
it isn't even worse than heat4 it's actually better
it just hasn't added enough to really sell itself what i would have
appreciated was a discount for those who owned heat4 to get the game for like 25
to 30 dollars at the most it does kind of hurt a bit to see things
like kenseth pretty much just looking like kyle larson in game or even sharing
his exact driving style with the infamous
larson line the game also has loading screens now that are
essentially fanatic ads that are just a little strange to see
but aren't really a big deal to me since nascar does pretty much just have
200 mile an hour billboards going around the track the only new things besides
the ai and roster are the testing mode which is basically
just practice without ai more fonts for numbers new challenges
some career mode stats and the championship mode after
assessing all that my rating for returning players would be
a weight i don't really think it's worth skipping completely
unless you exclusively run online races because that's pretty much something
that's exactly the same from the last game
but if you can find the game on sale i would say it's worth picking up
this is a bit of a weird review to make typically i wouldn't give a game two
ratings but in this odd very specific situation
it really needs it usually a game is either good bad or
just meh but this game is good but it does also
just feel like an update to the previous game
that being said i will be playing this game a lot i do plan on following the
entire 2020 and 2021 cup seasons on this game
at least until heat 6 comes out as well as doing a career mode playthrough
so if you're looking for some nascar heat content make sure to subscribe so
you get notified for when i upload new videos anyways i know this is a bit of a
strange conclusion to a review but if it helped you out make sure to
let me know by hitting that like button down below
thanks for watching everyone see y'all next time peace
you