Making Bank.
The Need for Speed franchise has had a recent history of being glanced at and forgotten due to several of the titles in the past decade being less than stellar. Its newest entry, Need for Speed: Heat was released just three months after it was officially announced to very little fanfare or marketing lead-up. Normally, this is an indication that the studio isn’t terribly confident of its product and while the game doesn’t radically change up the series in any significant way, it’s by and large the best Need for Speed game I’ve played this generation.
Set in the fictional location of Palm City, and developed once again by Ghost Games, who has been the team behind Need for Speed since 2013 with Rivals, you’ll take on the role of your own character new to the racing scene. You’ll pick from a series of pre-made racers and change up their hairstyles and selection of clothes to make them stand out from the competition. You’ll also be customizing your car with a pretty robust creation toolset that is, unfortunately, part of a studio app you’ll need to download and not included within the game itself.
Regardless, there is a wealth of customization here with fitting your car with new parts that is pretty much standard across nearly racing game out there, tweaking and improving the performance of your ride so that you can keep up with the competition. Each part will increase your rank, making your car essentially perform better, letting you outpace your opponents and leave them in your rearview. As you earn money you can buy new cars and additional parts, but you’ll need to increase your reputation in order to unlock those.
As a newcomer to Palm City, you’re here to stand out and make a name for yourself in both day time races to make some cash, and night time races to increase your reputation. Day and night races fundamentally feel different and look different as well, each with their own aesthetics apart from the obvious time of day differences. Day time races are far easier and have fewer stakes, whereas night time races will see the roads flooded with cops that are looking to shut you down. Winning races during the day time will net you cash, which the game constantly refers to as bank, and while that is important, it’s your rep level that dictates how you’ll spend that cash. As you race during the night, you’ll have a heat level that will increase as you continue to compete in illegal street races or through the number of cops you’ll run off the road. As your heat increases, you’ll have more and more cops on your tail before you’ll need to lose them at high speed, or as you sale over the cliffside via an opportunistic ramp. Providing you haven’t been busted or wrecked, you’ll convert the rep you’ve earned while racing at night to increase your rank.
Your character is featured in the story pretty heavily and thankfully, they have a full-fledge personality with voice work. This allows your character to be more impactful during the story moments instead of just being talked to. Sure, you still have supporting characters chatting your ear off while in the thick of things, but this allows Heat to feel like an actual story is playing out with actual conversations occurring. The main story itself is built around a rageful Police Lieutenant who is set to shut down all illegal races across the city, with some pretty harsh methods. There are a few other characters that tend to fill out the normal tropes you’ll find across your typical street racing movie, and the only real complaint I have is that the main narrative is a tad short and could have used a few more story beats.
As I mentioned before, racing against cops happens very frequently during night races, but oddly enough, there isn’t really a police presence during the day. Sure, you’ll see a cop here and there during your day time drives, but I’ve blasted by them at 140km/hr without them even budging. At night, this is a completely different game as they’ll flash their lights and chase you even if you look at them wrong. Cops are impressively aggressive when your heat level is pushing 3 or higher and there are times where I’ve had 5 cops tailing me while being chased down by a rhino, an intimidating police truck that packs a mean wallop. They will also use shut-down kits that fry your electrical system to tire spikes and other methods. Thankfully you can customize your car with anti-lock down measures that see you pick and choose which one of a few that you want to have equipped. I opted for the electrical system add-on I mentioned as while tire spikes can put a damper on your driving, it’s easy enough to limp to a gas station to get repaired as opposed to your entire car just shutting down.
The types of races you’ll take part in this open-world are generally the same during the day as they are during the night, for the most part. You’ll have circuit races, lengthy distanced sprints, as well as taking to some off-roading or drifting, should that interest you. Frankly, I haven’t been able to enjoy any of the drifting Need for Speed has offered and it actually prevented me from completing 2015’s Need for Speed as I just couldn’t get the hang of it. Thankfully, the drifting is regulated to a single NPC that has optional quests separated from the main story, allowing you to bypass them if you want. You can also challenge individual AI racers or other challenges as well, not to mention taking the game online to race alongside other players, but considering you can’t pause this mode, well, I chose to play most of my time offline and solo.
With a collection of dealerships and garages all over the map, you’ll soon have your own pick of any car or part you’ll ever desire. Cars are kitted out through three categories; Suspension, Differential, and Tires. These categories then, in turn, affect the car’s handling towards being proficient in Racing, Drifting, Offroad, or Road, indicated by a dot placed in a 2x2 grid. Each part will be color-coded to indicate how good it is and newer parts again are locked by your rep level, so taking part in night time races is essential to pushing through your options.
The racing itself is very fun as zipping around corners with your handbrake can make for some intense comebacks as you zoom around the first-place leader. The AI does seem to lack a bit when you get in the lead with only two or three of the cars really seeming to get back in the race. Depending on how you set up your car with the various parts, you’ll get a different feel for how your car will act on the road. You’re also kitted out with nitrous on your car, and the sense of speed this game offers is incredibly fun and lives up the series’ name in spades.
The music options available are nothing special and lack some really decent tracks. While music is obviously subjective to the listener, I didn’t find much variety in what was included and felt like this was the type of soundtrack you’d get from your typical racing movie. Some of the artists featured are 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar, Diplo, French Montana, Cardi B, Toro y Moi, and Blac Youngsta. Again, I didn’t find the soundtrack too memorable and opted to mute it in favor of playing the Tokyo Drift soundtrack instead or catching up on a few gaming podcasts.
Visually, Heat is a damn good looking game that is far away better than the previous entries in the series. The night and day differences between the setting also flourish with very distinct differences between them. Night races are filled with neon lights, flashy lit-up arches to drive under, and visually contribute to the best aspects of the title. Day time races are typical with some nice colors for the racing posts and rail guards that punctuate that some street racing is going on, even if the cops don’t seem to notice. I’ll also mention that any sort of rail guard or obstacles in your way can simply be driven right through, apart from guard rails on overpasses or thick trees, otherwise, you don’t have to worry about getting caught on random junk around each stage. The visual language this game offers with how to read where the track is is pretty impressive and makes some high speed chases truly intense as this game packs a real sense of speed. Cars themselves look great but considering this is the tail end of the console cycle, a visually impressive car racing game by EA is pretty much to be expected.
Thanks to EA access, I downloaded the 10-hour trial and was instantly pulled into what Heat offered that previous entries just didn’t. Once I burned through the trial, I purchased the game immediately after and pushed through nearly every icon on the map. The racing feels solid and the night and day systems of earning money and rep kept the game refreshing despite the repetition of it being a standard arcade street racer. The story, its supporting cast, and even your own driver is something that really sold me on the title this year. Despite the game being announced and released to really no fanfare, I’m rather surprised how polished and enjoyable this year’s entry is. It certainly isn’t going to set the world on fire, but damn it’s nice to see a solid Need for Speed game once again.
Need for Speed: Heat was purchased by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X.