Need for speed heat full#
The game’s artwork references that overused synthwave aesthetic, but the art direction’s more expansive in-game, working in partnership with a soundtrack full of latin beats and southern hiphop to build a vibrant hyper-Florida which proves a perfect host for modern car culture. It’s a Tony Scott vision of Miami, drenching every street with rain and neon lights. Palm City itself does its fair share to add a sense of drama. The most you’ll get mid-race to spice things up is a bit of radio chat from angry rival crews or pursuing cops, which crucially leaves you in control of the action. You’re only ever forced into driving through narrative setpieces in the prologue, and where 2017’s Need For Speed Payback had you stealing hypercars off lorries in tightly scripted quasi-races, Heat wisely leaves creating the spectacle to you. We’ve been passively and often reluctantly digesting stories about street racing crews since the venerable Need For Speed Underground in 2003, but what matters about this one is that it’s not intrusive. It’s not so much the narrative arc as its execution that represents a step forward here. Tough cookie Ana Rivera’s lost her crew and with the help of you, a customisable and, for once, not mute, newcomer to the City, she’ll take on the league of racer crews and prove she’s really, really good at racing. Since you’re dying to know, the plot this time revolves around an illegal street racing scene in the fictional Palm City and a local PD so hellbent on chasing down vinyl-clad Mazdas that elsewhere in the city murderers and muggers are presumably operating with impunity. The lightness and increasing vagueness of a car’s handling at high speed, the way even your HUD elements stretch onscreen as though pulled out of shape by sheer g-force - all ensures that driving in a straight line feels as absurd as driving around a corner. And as any game carrying this name should, it captures the feeling of driving far too quickly brilliantly. The challenge is in threading the needle through lines of oncoming traffic and holding max speed for as long as you can.
It’s preposterous, having such insane cornering power and speed, but within the open world of Palm City, it works brilliantly. NFS hasn’t tipped over into outright Mario Kart territory - drifting does still slow you down rather than boost you - but it’s certainly not pitching anything like Forza Horizon et al’s realism. And on the very rare occasions you need more stopping power, like police chases, the handbrake will turn you on the head of a pin. Get it right, and you can take a 90-degree turn at 150mph without braking. Instead, easing off the accelerator then tapping it back on while steering hard into a corner will start a drift. Part of that is removing all necessity in hitting the foot brake throughout the entire experience. Racing game developers often reference that abstract spectrum between racing simulators and arcade games, but Need For Speed Heat doesn’t seem to want to even acknowledge sim-cade’s existence. As any good arcade racer should, Heat delivers a wild fantasy of how performance cars might behave if you drove them with a gamepad. It’s not a victory by default, but finally a righting of the ship thanks to good calls in the key areas. It got me thinking about silly spoilers again, and the precise shade of neons to set off my 1980s BMW (greenish). Which says a lot about just how many mistakes have been made previously, because what it does is bring a real sense of place, revitalises the cops vs racers theme with a devilish risk-reward mechanic, and adds a day/night cycle that injects new interest in the old NFS structure. In many ways, Ghost Games’ latest addition to the storied arcade racer finds as much success in what it doesn’t do, as what it does. The days before half-baked always-on multiplayer concepts and bug-riddled release days. The days before loot boxes and live action cutscenes that practically forced your fist into your mouth.
Need For Speed Heat is a return to those glory days.
And then after eight or so hours, you’d have a thoroughly grotesque Nissan Skyline in flip-flop orange-lime green with a spoiler the size of Cheltenham drilled onto the rear bonnet, and it’d all be over. You’d gorge on a new Need For Speed over a couple of days each winter like a hibernating Richard Hammond, your mind full of rim manufacturers, neon skirt lights and Lil Jon songs.
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