Reissued on Wednesday, August 31, 2022: We’re retrieving this review from the archives following the September PlayStation Plus lineup announcement. The original text follows.
Need for Speed Heat brings the franchise back from the brink of disaster, but it only brought it back to life good again. The series has taken quite a journey this generation, going through several soft reboots in efforts to maintain relevance. Rivals was a good enough PS4 launch title, but it went on a downward spiral. Ghost Games’ latest racer does a lot of things right and offers a fun sandbox for racing, drifting and cruising in style. However, it still has a few issues that hold it back from greatness. The new Need for Speed is good, but good enough?
For our money, Heat is probably Ghost’s best effort yet. It combines some elements from the past of the series and feels like a mix that wants to please everyone. You’ve got the open world Palm City to explore, with collectibles and events littering the map with things to do, but you also have police chases, elaborate vehicle customizations and a story to, er, enjoy. There’s quite a bit going on and luckily most of it comes out pretty well.
The core of the game is the yin-yang of day and night. The two are separate entities, but the most interesting thing is the way they are intertwined. Win races and other events throughout the day and you’ll be rewarded with money that you can spend on new cars, parts and customization items. Switch to night and the focus will be on earning Rep, which is what you need to unlock those new vehicles and other stuff in the first place. Simply put, you have to play both sides of the game to make meaningful progress, and it’s a system that works well. It’s certainly a smart way to keep things from getting old, and the give and take of needing currency to increase Rep gains and vice versa is addictive.
This mechanic is contextualized by the hammy story. Palm City hosts a racing tournament known as the Speedhunters Showdown, the events you participate in during the day. At the same time, however, illegal street racing also takes place, and this is what you will do when the sun goes down, naughty thing. The local police have set up a task force with the sole purpose of tackling illegal races and other events. New to town, the player character, who can be customized at any time with outrageous clothes, quickly makes friends with a mechanic and his street-racing sister. The story and characters are unremarkable, but we’ll say you’ll definitely hate the cops during the first few story missions.
You’ll probably hate them on chases too, because they’re super aggressive. Getting into trouble with the law at night is inevitable and is even encouraged by the titular Heat system. If you want to earn serious Rep, increasing your Heat level works like a multiplier, meaning you can earn up to five times that amount. However, the higher your Heat, the more the cops will throw at you, and it can quickly become nearly impossible to outrun them. Fighting back isn’t really an option; with almost no tools to take out chasing cars, you’ll probably try to ram them into them, but doing damage this way feels inconsistent. Worst of all, if you get caught, the amount of Rep you’ve built up will drop significantly, meaning your time spent playing has been next to nothing. Your only hope is to escape, and only then can you bank your Rep and end the night. It’s frustrating.
The down side is that playing during the day is a bit tacky. There are lots of races, drift events, time trials and more to play, but Palm City isn’t much of an interesting place to be during the day. You can make a lot of money pretty quickly, and it’s nice to get a reprieve from the ruthless police, but the open world is just better at night. The map in both modes is well designed and quite large, and can look great in places. However, especially during the day, it is not a location that will remain long in the memory. There are billboards to smash, speed gates to smash and other distractions to find, but in the end you get the feeling that Palm City is pretty empty.
Anyway, driving through it is fun. The starter vehicles will feel very slow and heavy to drive at first, but once you upgrade them or buy something better, the handling will grow on you. It’s a little more grounded than something like, say, Burnout Paradise, as drifting will reduce your speed and occasionally require you to lift the gas and apply the brakes. But drifting is sometimes the better way to corner. The result is still very arcade-like and it can be a lot of fun throwing cars around. Perhaps the greatest success of the ride is that it really varies from car to car, and even better, you can change how your favorite ride feels by swapping different parts.
Customizing the controls is an aspect of customization, but it’s important to note that this part of the game is generally well done. Tinkering with the performance of any car to get the most out of it is great, and then of course you have extensive cosmetic options. Not all 127 cars can be completely transformed, but you can make your mark on every car with a huge range of bodywork items, paint jobs, decals and much more.
The vehicles are probably the nicest part of the game, understandably, but it’s a shame there are some technical issues. Playing online, disconnections are not uncommon in our experience, and visually we noticed a few glitches or inconsistencies. We imagine the game will be buffed up in patches, but there are some surprisingly rough edges here.
Conclusion
Like we said, Need for Speed Heat has been the best entry in the franchise for quite some time now, but it’s not quite where it needs to be. The day-vs-night gameplay is an engaging loop, and it’s a big step in the right direction for the series in general. It’s a solid effort with fun controls and plenty of customization options. It’s a shame the open world lacks personality, and the cops may be a little too harsh, but there’s still plenty to love. At the end of this generation, Need for Speed is good again – let’s hope it can be great in the future.
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