You haven’t been in street racing for a long time. Although with the latest Need for Speed there was no reason to return to them.
If we take the racing genre as a whole, then on the one hand, simulators achieve continuous and long-term concentration of the player on driving, on the other hand, you can put karts, which have fun as their main task. Yes, of course there are interesting mechanics that are also difficult to master, but this is no longer on the surface. And somewhere in the middle of these two sensations and gaming experiences are arcade racing, the best of which both present some kind of challenge and, in no lesser proportions, bring fun. But in the latest NFS neither one nor the other. In the end, not so much an analysis of Need for Speed Heat itself, but rather its problems.
NFS Heat looks diverse: an open world with dynamic weather, where it rains often, the possibility of day and night, and racing concepts change. During the day there are legal races in tournaments with big prizes, and at night there is illegal street racing and chases with cops that give reputation, in NFS this is the equivalent of experience. That is, even the rewards are different, the night reputation gives access to new cars and parts, and the money earned in daytime tournaments will allow you to purchase all this, but if you are caught by the cops at night, part of what you have accumulated will have to be given away, which definitely adds involvement and tension in the chase and generally makes the entire game system complex and interesting, moreover, it is directly related to the plot. But to our greatest regret, the main concept of the game, its balance and progression is not built on this system of day and night. The core of NFS hit is something else.
After the first cycle of day and night, when I had level 2 reputation, for the next story mission I needed level 7! Of course, there should be a minority of story missions and they should be diluted with secondary races, but the point here is how the developers motivate the player. What blocks my path is not a weak car, not the need to win certain races, but simply a stupid lack of level. And such a lack is felt throughout the entire game. It’s not so difficult to hide this convention, for example, at least arrange more intermediate tasks so that there is not only one thought in my head that now I need to earn level 7.
Although EA said before release that there would never be loot boxes in the game, the balance and progression of the game is built around grinding. And the funny thing is, there really are no loot boxes or other microtransactions. Most likely, either EA decided to remove them too late so as not to anger the players, or Ghost Games simply don’t know how to make games differently.
But even without balance and progression, you can simply make the process of racing, drifting, fights with cops and even free driving interesting, then it will still be excellent street racing. But they didn’t.
Race. The most interesting thing about driving for me was the mechanics of drifting (like in go-karts). When entering a turn, if you release and press the gas again, the car enters a drift, which allows you to corner with maximum speed and efficiency. It also adds dynamism to the gameplay, a certain amount of fun, and simply watching a car in a drift with smoking wheels doesn’t get boring. But this drift is beneficial and easy to use on any turn and in any situation, which makes a conventional brake and even a handbrake completely unnecessary. When I fully mastered this mechanic, after about an hour of play, the opponents no longer posed any danger, except for some story missions, and of course I played on a high level of difficulty.
Low traffic also makes the journey easier. The city is generally empty, in every review on NFS Heat they complain that Palm City feels like a dead city and this is true.
Also in favor of simplicity, but not in favor of gameplay, all encountered objects were made piercing. At least the buildings were left strong, but all fences, benches, lanterns, trees, stone fences can be broken through without any problems, only slowing you down a little.
At first, due to the obstacles that are no longer blocking me, I experienced some kind of cognitive dissonance and tried to forget about this convention and drive “correctly”, avoiding all the obstacles, but my brain simply relaxes during racing and I no longer concentrated on anything.
Even on the road you don’t need https://goldenpokiescasino.co.uk/login/ to concentrate your attention, because the tips will illuminate and guide everything. And this is not just one navigation assistant, but a bunch of them and they are everywhere. Each turn is accompanied by neon, each control point is located at a small distance from each other, and the mini-map also indicates the road with a yellow line and control points with blue circles. Although I said that your opponents do not pose a proper threat to your victory, I was able to finish first a little less often due to my own carelessness. During the race, breaking away from my pursuers, I more than once lost myself in my own thoughts, forgetting about the road and the car, because NFS Heat itself, with its total downtime in every game mechanic, does not put forward any challenge for the player at all and turns driving into an unconscious process.
Chases with cops are more difficult, but they become a serious competition because you have few tools to counter them with anything. There are no interactive points at all, all you have to do is hit the barrel, maneuver and try to get off.
Although, an interactive point of interest can be considered gas stations that completely repair the car if you drive through them, but to avoid endless repairs, turning chases into endless fuses, only three repairs are allowed per night. It’s a good and honest system, but, of course, you can’t take it out alone. And if the chase rating gets high, then that’s it, prison. As a result, the best solution for me was to either simply get rid of them as quickly as possible, or not to come across them at all.
Drifting mechanics are exactly the same as in normal NFS Heat driving, and because of this the car has neither inertia nor a sense of sliding, since Ghost Games did not modify it in any way for the drift mode. But with the points system it becomes downright bad. In the training drift race, the task is to score 80 thousand points in two laps; and for a TRAINING RACE this is a disproportionately difficult task, but why? Why make your workout difficult?? It’s just that in Need for Speed Heat it’s 80 thousand on high difficulty, 40 thousand on medium, and 20 thousand on low. That is, the difference in points differs by a factor of two, stupidly in each drift event. This is the laziest and most moronic solution that can be in game design and balance building. But that’s not all. When you complete this training, the next drift event opens for you. It is in the same place and it is the same track where you need to score the same number of points per lap. This is how drifting turned out in the latest Need for Speed.
But there is also a plot, which, by the way, is very similar to the movie Step Forward 4. It’s the same conflict of young rebels who want to express themselves through dancing (or racing), but damn evil capitalists (or corrupt cops) stand in their way. The characters’ motivations and methods are also the same and ridiculous.
Yes, Need for Speed is now a Step Up from the world of video games. Either one or the other is simply a bad product, designed for teenagers who like dancing in one case, racing in another case. And Need for Speed Heat shows signs of this mediocre approach everywhere. It contains a ton of incomprehensible and inconvenient decisions regarding most aspects of the game, and here is one random example.
Arriving at some story missions, you meet your “homies” who will show you the way to the mission, while simultaneously conducting dialogue and driving at low speed. That is, you get to the mission from the garage or from some point on the map, spending probably a minute of your time on this, then it turns out that you need to get to the mission again, but at a limited speed, listening to the dialogues. After all, this is exactly what the player wants from Need for Speed and exactly what the thirst for speed means.
Best comments
Played the trial version on EA Access. In 7 hours I reached the allowed maximum progress for the trial, and after this playing time, I won’t say that the game is bad or even average. I didn’t notice any critical moments for myself. The downsides for me are the empty city and the destructibility of everything on the highway without any consequences for you. But the most important thing that should be in racing is, in fact, the process of racing itself, which is very good, fun, and exciting. Physics is nice. The locations are varied and beautiful, in general, pleasing to the eye. There are a lot of collectables on the map, some of them are sometimes not so easy to complete/obtain.
The plot, well, the plot in racing is like in a porn film, according to the precepts of Carmack. And here it performs the function of variety and explanation of some game elements. The characters are not annoying, there are no stupid and creepy lines during races, like in Payback.
The car fleet and tuning are very good, varied, you will be stuck in the editor for a long time and it’s good that most of the visual improvements are available at the beginning.
In general, the game of stars from the sky is not enough, but I agree that this part is the best NSF in recent times. And it fulfills its main function – to entertain and captivate. I was pleasantly surprised.
I liked the analysis, the text is pleasant to read. The author’s hairstyle is top)
Look for yourself in the best, buddy. Well explained the material, but you forgot about the editor functions with highlighting words, quotes, etc.d.
And probably in some moments it’s very subjective, but otherwise it’s good, as always actually.
It’s not so difficult to hide this convention, for example, at least arrange more intermediate tasks so that there is not only one thought in my head that now I need to earn level 7.
The problem with intermediate tasks is that they force you to do certain things. And in Heat you can earn this level 7 as you want. Do you want night races, do you want day races (they give less experience there, but they do), chases, radars, jumps, etc.d. You are not limited in any way. And if they tell you to complete 10 drift races to access the story competition, and you can’t stomach drifting in such quantities, then everything will be very sad for you.
When entering a turn, if you release and press the gas again, the car enters a drift, which allows you to corner with maximum speed and efficiency.
This is configured via quick auto setup. There you could switch the drift mode “gas” or “handbrake”.
Although, an interactive point of interest can be considered gas stations that completely repair the car if you drive through them, but to avoid endless repairs, turning chases into endless fuses, only three repairs are allowed per night. It’s a good and honest system, but, of course, you can’t take it out alone.
Personally, I had a problem with the fact that any patrol car with one poke takes away a third of your health, and rhinoceroses, which are thrown at in huge quantities at later levels of the chase, take away half. I had to chase the cops in close proximity to the garage. They break quickly.
Arriving at some story missions, you meet your “homies” who will show you the way to the mission, while simultaneously conducting dialogue and driving at low speed.
You could drive away from them, and they would complete the dialogue and tell you the end point of the route.