If Payback disappointed, it was among other things for its low-end scenario, which nevertheless occupied a central place in the game, to the point that several entire sequences were a mixture of gameplay and cutscenes. In Heat, Ghost has completely dropped this approach, and is now content with a pretext scenario that will not really be a driver for progression. Moreover, NFS Heat is probably the only game that offers an intro cutscene that has little to do with the character that we will play later. We learn in this introductory video that the city of Palm Bay (inspired by Miami) is home to many street pilots, and that local police forces have sworn to put an end to this dangerous behavior. Led by the diabolical Franck Mercer, the local police use and abuse rather expeditious methods to enforce the law. Inevitably, we discover after a few moments that this gentleman and most of his subordinates are corrupt, and that the community of streetracers will therefore have to stick together to expose the misdeeds of the cops in the press. Indeed, when you are a highway thug, you can at least demand to be prosecuted by an honest police. Concretely, the player embodies a pilot (who can be chosen from a dozen, and who can be changed at will) who arrives in Palm City, and who dreams of rising to the top of the hierarchy of street pilots in the city. Inevitably, we will start the adventure as a stranger in a winded clunker, and we will have to spend many hours grinding the reputation to make ourselves known and invited to more prestigious events, as well as farming the money to change our clunker into a guided missile capable of crushing any vehicle.
NANI? KANSEI DORIFTO ?!
NFS Heat will split our schedule into 2 parts: day and night. During the day, we will participate in so-called legal races (which means that they take place on a closed course, without traffic therefore) which will allow us to win some nice prize money. Money is of course the sinews of war because it is what allows you to buy cars, modify them through the tuning box, and above all to boost their performance. However, without reputation, sellers will refuse to open their catalog of parts, while it will be impossible to take advantage of the dealer's finest displacements. To make a name for yourself, you have to sacrifice your evening and go out at night, when all the cats are gray, and the police are patrolling with the firm intention of crumpling the bodywork of offenders. The night also offers several small features compared to the day, apart from so-called illegal races, and therefore including traffic to avoid. Indeed, if you can go from day to night with a simple press of a button from the card, the reverse is impossible. To return during the day, we will have to go to one of the available hideouts, without having the constabulary running after us. Indeed, reputation, in the form of RP points, is obtained by multiplying illegal races, and night activities, knowing that the total is subject to a multiplier: the Heat index. With each race and especially with each chase with the police from which we escape during the same night, this search index will increase, and in the process, multiply our RP points when we join a hideout. Thanks to this system, you can grind the RP very quickly, since two or three good nights in Heat level 5 (the maximum) are enough to reach level 30, synonymous with access to the latest scripted missions.
Worse, only a few races offer very big rewards, and we quickly end up farming the same 3 events in a loop in order to finance our progress.
Be careful however, the higher the index, the more the police will deploy major means to stop us, with ram cars, harrows, fast cars and helicopters. In case of arrest, which happens when we get stuck or when our car sees its damage gauge at the maximum (we can repair 3 times a night in the gas stations of the city), our whole score will be reduced to nil, while we will see our bank account amputated significantly. Clearly, the more greedy you are, the more you can either win very big or lose everything. But the advantage of such a system is that it avoids grinding for too long, since by escaping big chases it is possible to blow up the scores. It is this mechanism that is sorely lacking during the day, and that means that we will ultimately spend much more time driving during the day than at night, in order to fill our bank account. Worse, only a few races offer very big rewards, and we quickly end up farming the same 3 events in a loop in order to finance our progress. It's all the more unfortunate, because during the day, the events are not very varied, with exclusively circuit races. Sprint races are for the night, and our only way to beat the boredom is to take a spin on the drift and offroad racing events. Moreover, the latter are particularly tasteless, with an AI that often struggles to fight, and plots without any inspiration. We would have liked to see a few drag races in the lot, but too bad. Overall, repetitiveness is one of the game's big problems, whether it's farming to progress, events with horribly similar layouts, or the city of Palm Bay, completely devoid of life or soul. Whether it's midnight or noon, the streets of this megalopolis are almost deserted, and even if some weather effects are on the menu to flatter our retinas (rain has no impact on grip) we can't get rid of a growing sense of loneliness.
THEY JACKY TOUCH
Fortunately, the game is catching up on the car side with a wide choice of vehicles, but also the great return of preparation and tuning. While we could hardly modify our cars in the previous games, Heat follows the path traced by the Underground, Carbon and Most Wanted sections by offering us particularly extensive customization possibilities. Each car has its personalization note, which allows you to know before the purchase if this model can be made unrecognizable with large kits, or not. The game offers a very wide selection of bumpers, sills and other bodywork appendages all taken from the catalog of major manufacturers such as Pandem, Rocket Bunny, APR Performance or even BBS. The content is therefore substantial, and car customization aficionados will be able to have a field day and create the car of their dreams. However, these licenses only apply to cosmetics, since the mechanical parts are simply classified by a quality index, from the worst to the best. It is these mechanical parts that will determine the performance of our vehicle, and thus change its rating. The higher the latter, the more efficient the vehicle. This also makes it possible to avoid having a Honda Civic that leaves behind an 800hp Ferrari. Be aware, however, that when a new camshaft is no longer enough, we can directly replace the engine of our car with another more powerful one, provided that the latter can be housed under the hood. Other mechanical parts related to the chassis (suspension, differential, tyres) will not improve performance, but modify the behavior of your car, in order to adapt it to the different disciplines offered. 4 axes are available, with Road (road behavior with oversteer), Race (pressed to the ground), Drift (soap) or offroad (effective off-road), which makes it possible to give several orientations to the same model of vehicle .
during contacts with the police, one regrets the many options of destruction and weapons that existed in the Rivals episode.
The behavior of the car will therefore largely depend on the choices of parts that have been made, and the settings made in the game preferences. By default, several aids are activated, and of course you can do without them. Know that whatever we do, there will be no question here of having a realistic behavior worthy of a great simulation (we have the impression that the cars weigh very heavily in passing), the franchise retaining its arcade approach. Thus, most of the sets are destructible in order to forgive the exit from the road and the moldy trajectories, while even pushing the damage to the maximum, it will be quite complicated to destroy your car without the help of the police. Also note that if the nitro is still present, however, its use has changed a little. From now on, there is no longer any question of injecting the precious gas at will, each time the dedicated button is pressed. Nitrous oxide is now packaged in bottles (maximum 3), and each time it is used, the entire bottle will be injected into the engine. We will therefore have to opt for a more tactical use, even if the gas always regenerates over time. We must also talk about drift, since Ghost Games has changed its operating system. If it is sufficient before applying the brake in a curve to stall the rear, it is now sufficient to let go and then fully press the accelerator again to cause the slide. Handling is easy, but poorly recognized by the game when, for example, you have to chain drifts to the right and left in a winding event. We must quickly return to the handbrake (which causes more speed to be lost), and we end up regretting the old system, which is much more pleasant to use. Likewise, during contacts with the police, one regrets the many options of destruction and weapons that existed in the Rivals episode. From now on, for the police to let go of us, the only viable option is to find a stretch of highway and spend a long time at more than 300Km/h.
