#1440P NEED FOR SPEED HEAT FULL#
#1440P NEED FOR SPEED HEAT SERIES#

The cars handle great, with a good balance of arcade silliness while still having some weight to them on the road. The biggest of which is the actual driving. So the storytelling is still in a rut, but there are a few key areas where Heat some significant improvement. It might have been saved with some appropriately campy FMV, but that’s not here. I mean, I know it’s a racing game so I’m not expecting it to move me like The Last Of Us, but the devs are clearly putting resources into the storytelling, and that department needs to move away from this D-grade straight-to-video Fast & Furious knockoff nonsense. While the script doesn’t quite reach the offensively awful lows of Need For Speed: Payback, it’s not much better. I have no idea if it’s good or bad as I am (unfortunately) the whitest man on Earth, but I enjoyed it while driving.Īnother thing EA has done to capture Miami perfectly is populate the story mode with thoroughly annoying and vapid human beings. Tying up the presentation is a Latin-themed hip hop soundtrack that fits the vibe perfectly.

Another nice touch is how different things look between day and night.

#1440P NEED FOR SPEED HEAT FULL#

Heat uses the Miami motif to its full potential with plenty of sunshine and neon colors, and it’s a sharp-looking game overall with detailed cars, slick menus, and great weather effects. Apparently car dealerships care about street cred as much as they do cash? Still, the system is balanced nicely and works well.

With this structure, lopsided play may mean that one has the money to buy a Pagani Zonda, but not the reputation necessary. The world is split between day and night cycles, with players choosing which one they want to participate in upon leaving their garage.ĭay events are spectator-populated circuits and drift competitions to earn cash for new cars and parts, while night events are illegal street races which earn reputation that unlocks new tiers of cars and equipment.

Heat falls into the latter category, and it takes place in a pseudo-Miami stand-in called Palm City. Need For Speed has two main subgenres: there’s the ‘Blasting Down Linear Path Highways In Supercars’ genre seen in stuff like NFS: Hot Pursuit, and there’s the ‘Open World Hip Hop Car Culture Street Racer’ from games like NFS: Most Wanted.

#1440P NEED FOR SPEED HEAT SERIES#

Perhaps they didn’t want to go too hard on pushing it considering the unmitigated disaster that was Need For Speed: Payback, but it’s unfortunate that such a high profile series has fallen to the point where its next installment kinda got shoved through the door. It turns out the answer was no, as EA released a trailer in August and snuck the game out during the annual cavalcade of holiday releases. My initial reaction was “…Wait…there’s a new Need For Speed game coming? Did I miss this during E3?” However, I found myself surprised when I was browsing Origin and right on the front page was an ad for the next entry in the series - Need For Speed: Heat. WTF: …which would’ve been more bearable with a healthy dose of FMV, which ain’t here.Īnyone who’s been playing games for any length of time has likely touched one version or another of Electronic Arts’s prolific racing franchise, and in years past there would have been a marketing blitz surrounding this latest release. LOW: The stories in this series continue to be insufferable… HIGH The Day/Night split is both interesting and well implemented.

1440p need for speed heat