Need for Speed: Heat review

There is no bad weather...

Most of the series of the racing simulator Need For Speed never featured an original plot. But not to say that the players were waiting for the new part of some kind of breakthrough in this direction. After all, NFS, first of all, is driving and dynamic “rides”, which in different parts were implemented in their own way: somewhere the city streets became the competition grounds, and somewhere the races were held only on specially equipped tracks. In Need For Speed: Heat , the developers tried to combine these and many other elements, but you will find out if they succeeded in our review.

There is no bad weather...

This time, the events unfold in the fictional city of Pulp City, which, with all its appearance, is very reminiscent of Miami. Sunny beaches, mirror-smooth asphalt and a free car for a novice racer - what else do you need for life? But, the "sunny" weather will not last long, and you will be convinced of this very quickly. As it turned out, the laziness of the developers led to the fact that the game simply lacks a dynamic change system foryears, and it changes only after the sortie from the shelter, or before the races. Most of the playing time on our screen, we observed, if not a downpour, then cloudy weather, which began to annoy even before the middle of the game.

Sometimes you want to get back to the garage as soon as possible so that this fucking downpour is finally over!

Such weather makes walking around a half-million city with a huge number of paved roads and forks not very rosy. Indeed, thanks to the fast travel system, which, in principle, does not exist, the game deliberately forces you to see the sights of the city. In fact, you can quickly move, but only during the daytime and only to an open safe zone. In this way, you can shorten most of the path, but this rarely works, so in most cases you will have to get to the right race on your own.

Despite the "non-flying" weather, you still have time to enjoy the local beauties, since the visual part, of course, is the strength of the project. The details are worked out to the smallest detail: starting frombuildings and cars, ending with small objects, the vast majority of which can be subject to destruction. Moreover, the colors in Heat are so saturated that the first few hours in the game look at the picture is very unusual. This is especially true for night walks, since all the control points are made in pink and purple colors, which are hard to miss. However, it will rain soon, and gradually you will forget how sunny Miami looks like.

Heat is not much different from previous games, although there was a place for innovations in it. Those players who caught the NFS of the zero years will surely remember the first chases from police patrols in the legendary Most Wanted series and walks through the night city in Carbon. Need For Speed: Heat offers the user to make money on legal races during the daytime, as well as try to get a reputation as a reckless racer in night chases with government officials. But, was it worth going to such conventions? After all, it was much easier to make a dynamic change of day and night, races available regardless of the time of day, and simply divide them into categories. Especially since in the daytime you can wait for the night at the touch of a button.

Plot?

As with many NFS titles, the plot in Heat is fairly typical. A young racer arrives in a city on the ocean, in which certain rules have been established between local racers and the police. From the prologue, we find out that the police in virtual Miami are not the most honest. To be more precise, not the entire police, but only a special department of police-racers, which “crushed” all street street racers under itself, and instead of official fines, offers them a ransom for a tidy sum. But in addition to numerous bribes, we learn from the plot that this same squad is also engaged in the illegal confiscation of sports cars for further resale. It is at this point that the storyline begins.

The street racers' war with a special squad of police ends rather quickly, but suddenly the player has other problems. From task to task, you will have to earn a rating in order to earn money later, so that later you can buy new parts or a car. To be honest, such a prospect. The division into day and night races deliberately delays the gameplay, because ka?? to purchase a new sports car, you first need to increase the reputation of a street racer. But as you progress through the night races, you can be caught by the cops. And if this happens, then most of the funds will be deducted from the account, which will again force legal races to take place during the daytime. This cycle is simply unbreakable.

The only innovation

This is not to say that this mechanic is somehow better than the existing one, since in the first few hours of the game the finger still involuntarily reaches for the handbrake button.

The main innovation of the latest part of the racing simulator was the drift mechanic. In standard control, in order to start drifting, it was necessary to “tighten” the handbrake for a moment and deflect the steering wheel in the right direction, supporting the skid with the accelerator. Now, in order for the car to skid, it is enough to quickly release and press the acceleration key when turning. This is not to say that this mechanic is somehow better than the existing one, since in the first few hours of the game the finger still involuntarily reaches for the handbrake button. But after a while you start to get used to new drifts and you completely forget about the handbrake.

Need For Speed: Heat is not a revolutionary game in its genre and, with the exception of the "drift" system described above, does not offer anything new. In all other respects, this is the same dynamic street racing simulator, with a considerable number of available cars, a huge city and a boring plot. I would not like to answer on behalf of all the fans of the series, but the vast majority of players love Need For Speed far beyond the plot. The game turned out to be colorful and in its own way difficult to pass. And even despite its obvious shortcomings (or maybe due to the lack of some kind of alternative), we still recommend the project to all lovers of fast virtual driving.