When I hear the word Need for Speed, I immediately think of a green Nissan 350Z speeding through the dark streets of Bayview, drifting around corners on nitro gas while Snoop Dogg's "Riders of the Storm" blares from loudspeakers.
It's been around 20 years since Need for Speed Underground 2 and the green 350Z now and I'm probably also a Need for Speed veteran, having played since 1994 with the first part of the racing game series that Electronic Arts made its name with back then, so far I haven't missed a single Need for Speed game and who, like many others, is of the opinion that there hasn't been a really good Need for Speed since Need for Speed Underground (2003), but mainly Underground 2 (2004) and Most Wanted (2005).
But Need for Speed Heat does a lot of things right again and combines some of the strengths of its predecessors, dispenses with loot boxes, microtransactions, random systems of any kind and brings official Pro Street-style racing events, illegal underground-style night races and chases like in Hot Pursuit.
It remains to be seen whether the bottom line is a Best of Need for Speed or just a Forza Horizon (4) for the poor.
The heart of the game, the campaign, is divided into two modes. Day and night races. It sounds relatively easy at first, but every time of day has its own.
While we drive the legal showdown races for cash prizes during the day to put the earned money into vehicles and technical or optical tuning possibilities, we drive illegal street races at night to increase our reputation, the second currency in Need for Speed Heat bit by bit to unlock new vehicles or more powerful vehicle components. But probably the biggest difference to the day is the police, who are already chasing us at night when they make visual contact and are quite tough. Injury included.
The day and night system works quite well here and provides more motivation.
Cops against racers - the eternal duel
Palm City, the metropolis based on Miami and the surrounding area also invites you to let your crazy self out" away from events and story missions. Everywhere there are speed traps, ramps or drift zones where you can diligently collect points. Everything can be driven on freely and depending on how you decide either alone or in online mode with up to 16 players at the same time, who you can invite to races or just explore the open world together and make it unsafe.
The focus of the game is the Speed hunters Showdown, a big annual racing event in Palm City that is a bit reminiscent of the Forza Horizon Festival, where all the car geeks in the city romp about to see who has "the hottest tire" this year. As soon as you have decided on one of the characters that can be exchanged at any time, after a short and action-packed introduction, you go to the city's most famous mechanic, who, as usual, willingly makes one of his vehicles available because we play, as so often, a newcomer who is in the street want to make a name for itself in the racing scene. To summarize the story in a few words, because more is usually not necessary with Need for Speed and somehow, it's known anyway and equally doesn't matter, the police are corrupt, and the car of the female acquaintance was stolen. Sounds a bit like some Fast & Furious part, doesn't it? Don't worry, it will never be as entertaining as the films because the irrelevant "story" is only presented in special missions along with nice cutscenes and doesn't make the game worse or better. But so far so good.
In the heat of the night
The probably eponymous game element is the heat meter, which simply shows the wanted level. If you destroy things while driving or if you're just speeding, the heat meter will increase, and the cops will notice you and try to pull you out of circulation. The longer you resist arrest, which is not always that easy because the cops have a lot of resistance to offer depending on the heat level, the higher the heat level increases. Your vehicle also has a damage bar. If this is empty, you will be caught, and all previously earned rewards that you have worked hard to escape are gone. If you escape, on the other hand, there are big bonuses on reputation points and invitations to exclusive high-heat events where you can win particularly high-quality vehicle parts.
The tuning madness or the almost perfect (optical) tuning that you hardly find in any other arcade racer.
The driving experience, which many describe as spongy, gets a little better with the installation of tuning parts and isn't nearly as bad as in Need for Speed Payback, but the driving physics always somehow lack precision compared to other arcade racers.
Need for Speed Heat offers over 120 vehicles from various manufacturers that you can tune as you like. Almost every part of the vehicle can be exchanged, painted or cultivated. It doesn't matter whether it's the exhaust, colored nitro smoke or fat spoilers. For the artistically talented, the theme editor is arguably the icing on the cake. Here you can let your creative ideas run free and work with them for hours because there are almost no limits. The templates can also be shared within the community so that over time a really large repertoire of artworks for various vehicles has emerged.
In addition to the visual gimmicks, the tuning parts are of course also important and depending on which parts are installed, the vehicle is better suited for off-road, racetrack or drift parkour and only performs really well there. It is therefore advisable to use the vehicle selection offered and, with the appropriate change, to build a suitable car for each category in order to avoid unnecessary back and forth building of tuning parts.
And how does it look graphically in a 3-year-old game?
Visually, Need for Speed Heat isn't a graphical marvel, and the open world feels generic and interchangeable. At night, the feel of the game suffers a bit from the almost exaggerated neon and flashing direction indicators, which means that, at least for me, this can also be due to the age, the direction of travel cannot always be clearly assessed. Still, it doesn't look that bad and the environment destruction and the light and mirror effects are really well done.
So, everything is great?
Yes and no. The physics of driving with the absolutely exaggerated grip is simple but undemanding and due to the lack of performance limitations at events, especially in online races, leads to a miserable balance and can sometimes cause frustration.
Need for Speed isn't an Underground 3 and the result isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't look like a must-made title like some of the other games in the Need for Speed series and I'd say that while they're small steps, they're in going in the right direction and that it's definitely progress.
do you think the game is worth buying in 2022?
well, it all depends on how much you want to play need for speed if you just want a good racing game forza horizon 5 is a very good option but if you need a AAA racing game for under 20usd or sometimes even lower NFS heat is really good buy.
MY PROS AND CONS:
✅ large vehicle selection and realistic vehicle models
✅ great weather and light effects
✅ dynamic weather
✅ great tuning options
✅ successful day/night system
✅ different levels of difficulty
✅ large open world
✅ Racer Challenges
✅ optional collectibles
✅ playable offline
✅ destructible environment
✅ fat engine sounds
✅ Livery editor with community features
❌ no cockpit view
❌ no drag racing
❌ bad story and terrible dialogues
❌ quite monotonous races
❌ Controls not very demanding
❌ simple driving physics
❌ not a full damage model
❌ Grind required for story and equipment
❌ fluctuating balance in the starting field
❌ extremely bad soundtrack
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