Review — Need for Speed Heat

Fuel the heat and earn your reputation on the streets

NFS Heat is the twenty-fourth installment in a franchise that has been around as early as 1994, which means it celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. It’s the third game developed by Ghost Games ever since they took over from Criterion Games, who still has creative oversight on the series’ development.

As opposed to the game’s predecessor, you can switch between day and night by your own preference instead of depending on a 24-hour day-night cycle imposed by the game. During the day you can earn cash to spend on cars and parts, but you can also participate in illegal races during the night which will reward you with reputation points that influence the amount of heat you attract from law enforcement. Once chased by the police you need to escape to a safe house before your car is wrecked or before you are cornered and busted by the cops.

Does NFS Heat manage to remain interesting enough to create an engaging experience or is the franchise in need to take on a new course?

Gameplay

There’s a light side and a dark side to NFS Heat in the form of a daytime and nighttime play mode and it defines a huge part in its gameplay. Whenever you leave your garage or safe house, you can choose to hit the streets in either mode. You’ll start off by roaming around freely regardless of your choice and depending on the progress you’ve made, one or more events will be available on your map. Waypoints can be placed to easily navigate to it and once arrived at the place of destination, a single tap on a button will start the event. Spending some time free roaming the streets to get acquainted to the car’s feeling as well as to discover important landmarks proved to be a fruitful strategy, especially discovering the safe houses which will literally be able to save you out of a tight spot later on. They will also allow you to fast travel and cross greater distances in little time. The safe houses have the added benefit that they restore your wreck on wheels to mint condition in no time. Gas stations share a similar perk but can only be used a limited amount of times.

However, the atmosphere in both modes differs quite a lot, as to be expected. During the day, all the events you participate in are sanctioned, which means they are official and take place on a closed course without having to worry about other traffic or cops trying to bust you down for speeding in their jurisdiction. This is the mode where you will earn cash for completing events, which you can use to buy or upgrade cars — what else.

The rules on the streets are quite a lot different at night, where you will have to deal with traffic during illegal street races which trigger the cops to chase you. And they are very dedicated at it. Even on the lowest heat level they can become quite aggressive, verbally as well as physically, by ramming your car and inflicting damage in the process, where it will eventually be wrecked if you don’t succeed in shaking them off. This will reset your heat but also punish you financially. Of course, you can give the police vehicles the same treatment with Burnout-style takedowns by having them crash into obstacles or other (cop) cars.

The most unique thing about the night is the fact that your reward is measured based on the risks you’ve taken along the way. Your heat level will rise according to the disturbance or mayhem that you cause or the many races that you participate in during the same night. The higher your heat was when you return to the safe house, the more rewards you will get in the form reputation, as the heat will become a reputation multiplier. This reputation level is important as it serves as a minimum requirement to participate in races, but also unlocks new upgrade parts and events. Since you won’t be able to do much with your money without having sufficient reputation to unlock the content, I feel like prioritizing night races over daytime events was a lot more beneficial.

Sidetracking activities

Although NFS Heat is a lot about racing, it offers plenty of alternative activities as well. In the streets of Palm City as well as off road, you will come across events such as drifting challenges, speed traps where a minimum speed is required to hit the mark, billboards to destruct and stunt jumps to perform. If you are into collecting you can also hunt for hidden street art, flamingos and the like which may reward you with cash and reputation.

You can also pick racing challenges in garages and safe houses; they are categorized in daytime and nighttime activities of which a lot of them you will most likely achieve by just playing the game as you would regularly. However, you won’t receive the bonuses out of them if you haven’t explicitly chosen the challenges from the garage, so I found it quite tedious to go back and forth all the time to enroll in these activities.

Graphics and physics

Most of the small objects you will encounter are destructible, such as flags, fences, street barricades and small trees. While you do not need to worry too much about them as you deface them like a hot knife through butter, they will inflict some damage to your car. Since you are not riding tanks it’s quite obvious that bridges, buildings and big trees will just cause a sudden stop and may cause a total loss to your vehicle. I did notice that the attention gone into the damage mechanic is a bit poor, as the amount of damage inflicted by hitting a concrete wall compared to a hug from a cop car during a chase.

NFS Heat also looks amazing, especially when played on the Xbox One X. Cars look fantastic because they are very detailed and the world in which you race really comes to life with realistic and detailed textures and landmarks as well as great use of lighting effects during day as well as night. Both modes look completely different as they each have their unique visual style to it which I feel has been nailed perfectly.

A very peculiar thing I noticed is that in some instances, if your car strays off-road and hits the water, you are automatically returned to shore instead of wrecking your car. It seems the physics of water work differently in this game. Although I can appreciate the lenience, it did sometimes make me feel I was playing a game of Super Mario Kart instead of playing a serious racer.

Winning the race

In order to keep winning the races it’s not enough to be good at driving the streets or memorizing the race track. In fact, unless you are playing in easy mode, you will soon find out your opponents will quickly outperform you. Luckily NFS Heat has an impressive amount of car upgrades that are unlocked as you progress into the game. These upgrades will help you win by increasing or optimizing your car’s performance, all by replacing the stock parts with improved aftermarket modifications. Different aspects of your car are covered, such as the engine, the auxiliary but also the chassis and the drivetrain, which can all contribute to race domination. Upgrades come in several levels, ranging from the default stock, to Sport level and Pro level, to even Elite levels. However you will need to have some kind of a strategy on what to focus your investments on. Are you spending your money on new cars as they unlock progressively, or will you stick with the few cars and make them better as you earn bank and reputation? Although it’s very tempting to a completionist such as myself to own everything, the best strategy in my experience was to stick with the few cars that are required for particular events and focus on upgrading these to their absolute limit.

Racing on the streets is dangerous, so make sure that you are the danger. In order to dominate the ranks you will need to get good at drifting. This mechanic works in a totally different way than most other racing games. Instead of handling the breaks at the correct time, you will need to release the acceleration button and trigger it again right after, which is quite a unique mechanic. It takes a while to get used to, but I managed to get the hang of it by practicing a lot in free roaming before getting to the actual races. You will need to rely a lot on mastering the drifting technique in order to maximize your advantage during a race.

Online Multiplayer

In a racing game that’s this entertaining at its core, I was really looking forward to the online experience as well. Unfortunately, this is the one part where I thought the experience wasn’t compelling enough.

You can start race events just like you would in offline mode, but since you share a server with 11 other players you can also accept incoming race requests. I often had the feeling I wasn’t properly matched with similar leveled players, as the first and second in place usually had a full lap advantage on me by the time I was half way. While that does trigger my competitive side to gear up and get better, it can also be pretty demotivating when you end 12th out of all ten races you play, even if you feel you’re doing pretty well staying on the track the whole time, cutting corners tight and using nitros whenever possible.

What also diminished the experience somewhat is the fact that some competitor’s cars just disappeared in front of my eyes as if they’d just hit 88 miles per hour in a Delorean. It is strangely fun however to end up in another player’s cop chase because you happen to be there at the wrong place at the wrong time. However, this game does not contain any pay-to-win microtransactions: at the time of writing no loot boxes are present. Nor for upgrades, nor for aesthetic items. At first I thought it was strictly local since our Belgian legislation banned the presence of loot boxes since 2018, it seems they are not to be found anywhere else either, which I applaud.

Verdict

NFS Heat manages to carefully cherry pick various aspects of previously successful Need for Speed titles and takes it back to its roots, making it the winner I was anticipating for. I felt the game was well balanced to accommodate for both the rookies as well as the racing enthusiasts in the offline mode, while I felt the online mode was less accessible and required more grinding to somewhat enjoy it.

Although recycling previous ideas means the game is not very original nor revolutionary in its core, it is a fun adrenaline filled racer at heart and it has all the ingredients make it the most thrilling Need for Speed experience of the rebooted series.

4 / 5

Reviewed for Xbox One.
Download code provided by publisher.