Review: Need For Speed ​​Heat

You certainly won't play Need for Speed ​​Heat expecting a good story and great acting. In general, we will have people thirsty for speed and a corrupt police behind these corridors to end this “party” in the streets.
During the game you will choose an avatar that can be a woman or a man and you will look for Lucas, a former runner who now only owns a workshop and runs legally. Soon after, he will meet his sister, Ana, who likes to run at night in illegal races.

While these brothers will put you on the racetrack, the police will be eager to arrest these racers. They will always arrive quickly and with great ferocity to take you down and arrest you. They will be commanded by Lieutenant Mercer who will spare no efforts.
Along the way you will be introduced to different characters that will evolve the story and put you in new tests and challenges.

That is, you can expect a story well in the American canned scheme with a lot of speed and action. And while the voice acting is good, the characters aren't the most inspired and some of the animation is a bit harsh. Since it's not the focus, don't expect anything too much.

Good gameplay and a giant map:

To be very honest, the first impression of Need for Speed ​​Heat is terrible! After choosing one of the few cars available, you will have to go out with it to win some races and make a name for yourself. The first few races were absolutely pitiful and it feels like you are trying to maneuver a battle tank. At that moment I feared for my life.

However, after some tuning and even changing cars, I was able to have a lot of fun in the races and it became very pleasant. Of course there is the adaptation time and especially with the drift which is strange initially. After that comes the fun.

About the races the game has two styles, the morning and the night. In the morning you will have to run in cool races that Lucas will fix you and earn your rich money. At night, Ana will take you to run for reputation and be able to increase your RP and consequently your level.

In short, the game follows the following cycle: Earn money in legal races in the morning, being able to tune your car. The night will participate in illegal races earning RP's (respect point). As the night ends, you can level up. With a new level, new cars and parts are unlocked for purchase. Return to the race in the morning to buy the parts and improve the car.

This cycle turns out to be very addictive, especially as the world of Need for Speed ​​Heat is full of things to do like breaking speed limits, breaking police billboards, breaking flamingos, drift challenges, long jump and much more. You will never run out of things to do in the game.

Beautiful graphics:

As I mentioned above, the Need for Speed ​​Heat map is very large and full of things to do. The city of Palm City has many neighborhoods and each one has its theme. You will find different types of environments like a big city, forest, beach, parks, mangrove and even a NASA rocket station!

With so many environments the races are always very varied and beautiful. It will always be possible to pick up numerous tracks for the race, including jumping through unexpected stretches. And of course, all this with really cool graphics. While in the daytime we have the sun illuminating everything, at night everything is full of neon lights. Not only are the lighting and environments interesting, but we also have rain in the game. But it's a lot of rain falling practically all the time. While this doesn't affect the gameplay, it gives an excellent lighting effect to the game. Everything looks very nice and cool.

That tuning everyone wanted and lots of cars:

And what is a Need for Speed ​​without tuning and lots of cars to buy? Well, in Need for Speed ​​Heat we have a lot of tuning options, almost infinite I would say.

The first option will be to give more power to your car with improvements in the engine, suspension, gearbox and so on. One cool thing is that there are driving styles like track, racing, drift and off-road. Each of the styles caters for types of challenges and it will be nice to have 2-3 main cars to tackle these possibilities.

In addition to being able to improve your car's handling, it will be possible to tune it in the visual part. Change all the parts of the car, paint all the parts, put different stickers, neon light and much more. Ink type, gloss type and so on.

It is worth mentioning that the game features several famous car brands such as Nissan, Mazda, Ferrari, Lotus, Ford, Volkswagen (including the good old Beetle) and much more. The car selection is very good and I particularly only missed the Toyota cars. After all, I need my Trueno to do the drift tests!

But don't think it's over, the game brings two very interesting things. The first is the possibility of changing engines. When changing engines, you have to re-purchase all the components, however, it will have much more power than before and can be tuned even more.

And on top of that, there are good rewards for completing the challenges and doing the numerous activities present in the map I mentioned above. After completing the challenges in each region, you'll earn exclusive items to tune your car, whether in terms of performance or visuals. It is even possible to win new cars as well.

Police chases and traffic in Need for Speed ​​Heat:

To close the Need for Speed ​​Heat review, it is worth mentioning two interesting points. The night police chase as well as the traffic present in the game.

As for the police, it's all very well done. They can appear out of nowhere, either exploring the map or running. And it will be up to you to escape them, which is far from easy. If you manage to escape, it will be possible to go to a base and deposit your RP's which will be multiplied by the "Heat" of the chase.
We always have moments of great tension, as your car cannot break down and be arrested. If you lose, you will lose your hard-earned RP. Also, some races are only available with a high heat level.

Conclusion:

Need for Speed ​​Heat is an incredibly good game. After so many setbacks in this generation, Ghost finally got its development right and brought a game with a lot of content. Speed ​​lovers will be able to have fun for dozens of hours exploring the entire map full of activities and tuning each of the numerous cars. I highly recommend you play NFS Heat, who enjoys this style of game, will love the game!!!