Need For Speed Heat - General Discussion

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Honestly might buy this game this week.

I really missed playing racing games wth customisation and the cops is icing in the cake. I cant play open world racing games unless if there is cops without it feels lifeless.
 
Very excited to play this tomorrow! What car is everyone starting with? I'm going to go with the 240SX Fastback.
I'm going to wait until Friday (weekend). I will pick the M3. Love that car. But then there is also the Evo KS. Maybe I will use the Evo from the start. Definitely going to level up to 10 pretty soon for the i8 KS and stick with it for a long time.
No early release for deluxe physical copies tomorrow right?
I think you have to wait until Friday for physical.
 
Okay, so I spent 3 hours with the game and here are my initial impressions.

The handling is nice and responsive. As I said before, BTD is totally gone. (EDIT: Correction, BTD is optional now and is not turned on by default.) You can still send your car into a drift though by either braking and immediately hitting the accelerator or by double-tapping the accelerator. However, drifting will slow down your car. So far, I’ve only driven the 180SX that I’ve been upgrading towards Race handling.

The cops are not pushovers in this game starting out. I’m playing on Hard difficultly and I’ve been busted once so far at Heat level 3. At this Heat level, the cops were driving Dodge Chargers and I did hear them mention spike strips on the radio but I never saw one, thankfully. Afterwards, I decided to try my luck once more and made it to Heat level 3 again but I managed to get away this time thanks to a jump. The cops can damage your car quite easily, so it’s important to be in close distance to a gas station. I’m curious to see what they will be like once I have access to the faster cars.

Money has been pretty easy to get and I’ve been able to upgrade my car at a reasonable pace. Towards the end of my session, I did do a bit of grinding and interestingly, the payout for an event will go down if you keep repeating it over and over again. However, I don’t think it’s permanent and will probably reset once you transition to the next day.

Here’s my car and character, which you can change to a different one at any time. Not the best color for the 180 but I don’t want to spend too much time customizing during the trial. :lol:

full
 
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Is this available to play today if I have EA Access on PS4? Their website doesn't state it clearly anywhere that I can find.
 
At any rate, though the game is now available via EA Access, I plan to wait for the Metacritic reviews - there currently doesn't seem to be enough reviews to generate a score, despite the game being only a couple days out. It does still look good - potentially being one of the better NFS games in years - but I like to be thorough with these things. I don't see there being anything that haven't seen already in previews that could seriously soil the game, and most of the complaints I see are both based on minute subjective tastes, and are often melodramatic enough that I'd potentially suggest that these posters audition for community theater.
 
Thoughts after about four hours of the it's-not-quite-as-free-and-no-strings-attached-as-I'd-like-but-it-is-at-least-a-demo:

I am neither over-the-moon-ecstatic nor seriously disappointed, which, being that this is a NFS game, means it's fairly alright thus far. It's got the online infrastructure of 2015, the gameplay of Payback and the risk/reward mechanic of Rivals. It's solid, but unspectacular. That's a TL;DR if I ever I saw one.

About the other things:
  • Handling model: Not too fuzzed about the switch to grip personally. My problem with the ones found in previous games has more to do with how clumsy they felt and unbalanced they were rather than "hurr-durr brake-to-drift is bad because wHeeL sUPporT" or whatever, but at least this one feels ever-so-slightly less "this handling model is so fundamentally broken it's practically begging for you to crash and put it out of its misery". You can still drift in a more grip-based car, but it will definitely slow you down. Which I'm mostly fine with.
  • Customisation: Functions exactly as you'd expect, but has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. Spaces in license plates and white-walls, for instance. Can you believe it only took Ghost four years to think "so we've got this huge amount of classic American cars, maybe we should add the most popular modification for those? Also maybe we should stop blacklisting spaces in license plates lol". It does, for some reason, also have police stickers, which, according to my rules, means at least one car can be modified with actual whee-whoos.
  • Setting: Aside from being heavily reminiscent of Undercover (probably a given when one considers how both are set in knockoff-Miami) and the obvious bits of Burnout Paradise (and I'm not going to stop saying that because it's true, thank you very much), it's.. meh. It's there, but it doesn't really do anything. It's got barely anything in the form of traffic, too. And before people start shouting "NFs dOEsN't nEEd TraFfIC", I'm not asking for GTA V levels of gridlock - however spectacular that would be - but it would be nice to occationally have more than two traffic cars on screen at once in locations other than the freeway. This is supposed to be a metropolitan area. It's not doing too good a job at selling that right now. At least you can indeed drive on the beach. Was it so hard to answer that question?
  • Character things: Tried to make a knockoff of exactly the character you'd expect. Worked out to a "good enough". Proceeded to not really care. At least they've thought about it more than R* and Ubisoft did, so you can always change if you so desire.
  • Soundtrack: ..I guess I'm supposed to say it "fits the setting"? All I really have to say about it is that it's like Undercover but with way less variety. Which I shall keep repeating is a particular shame considering the neon-heavy style of this game with a colour palette consisting mostly of blues and pinks, set in a knockoff-Miami and that's not only brought back the Infernus/Torero and Cheetah Countach and Testarossa (the latter making its first appearance for 25 years - that's right, they've brought back a car that was last seen in the original for this very game!) but also specifically branded the fuel stations "Outrun". I refuse to believe I'm the only person who's still a little.. miffed about this. Then again, this is Ghost, I guess they had to miss a golden opportunity somewhere, and this one at least has an easy fix.
So there's a first: this might actually be the first Ghost game that doesn't have any glaring, game-breaking issues. It's nowhere near as daring as one might have hoped, but it might just be the first instance of Ghost having made a "decent" game. How's that for a plot twist?

In other news, I somehow decided getting into a heat level 5 pursuit was a good idea in a barely-upgraded Mustang. Somehow I escaped by falling into a body of water and having the cops follow me. Not quite sure that's intended, but I'll take getting to the rep cap in the first night. Which, of course, you hit before you get to any of the *really* interesting cars. Oh well.

Oh, and because posting a photo from your thing is fashionable as always:

upload_2019-11-5_19-11-40.png


Yes, that is exactly who you think it's supposed to be driving exactly what you think it's supposed to be. This is why you don't let me make a custom anything.

So I guess the last six hours or thereabouts shall be spent on exploration and general mocking about. I've got a couple of questions I'd still like to find an answer to, but actually playing the game has left me mostly positive thus far. It's almost as if letting people try things for themselves does a better job at selling good things than just telling people about it. I'm fully aware of the multiple levels of irony in that, but if even Fancypants McJokesalot over here is being positive, take it as a sign: it can't be all bad.
 
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My favorite part so far is trying all the cars out with the exhaust levels, some great pops and bangs and raw sounding cars I have now ::)

There isn't too much traffic, but I like this especially in races as it can be frustrating being taken out car after car especially on boost. The police chases are pretty basic and so far I have not been caught but early days.
 
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Tbh, I really want to see how the story goes!! :D. Ltd. Mercer and Officer Shaw pretty sure have something else bigger on their hands rather than just busting some street racers, something they are justified to do since it's obviously illegal and it's their job after all...
 
Thoughts after about four hours of the it's-not-quite-as-free-and-no-strings-attached-as-I'd-like-but-it-is-at-least-a-demo:

I am neither over-the-moon-ecstatic nor seriously disappointed, which, being that this is a NFS game, means it's fairly alright thus far. It's got the online infrastructure of 2015, the gameplay of Payback and the risk/reward mechanic of Rivals. It's solid, but unspectacular. That's a TL;DR if I ever I saw one.

About the other things:
  • Handling model: Not too fuzzed about the switch to grip personally. My problem with the ones found in previous games has more to do with how clumsy they felt and unbalanced they were rather than "hurr-durr brake-to-drift is bad because wHeeL sUPporT" or whatever, but at least this one feels ever-so-slightly less "this handling model is so fundamentally broken it's practically begging for you to crash and put it out of its misery". You can still drift in a more grip-based car, but it will definitely slow you down. Which I'm mostly fine with.
  • Customisation: Functions exactly as you'd expect, but has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. Spaces in license plates and white-walls, for instance. Can you believe it only took Ghost four years to think "so we've got this huge amount of classic American cars, maybe we should add the most popular modification for those? Also maybe we should stop blacklisting spaces in license plates lol". It does, for some reason, also have police stickers, which, according to my rules, means at least one car can be modified with actual whee-whoos.
  • Setting: Aside from being heavily reminiscent of Undercover (probably a given when one considers how both are set in knockoff-Miami) and the obvious bits of Burnout Paradise (and I'm not going to stop saying that because it's true, thank you very much), it's.. meh. It's there, but it doesn't really do anything. It's got barely anything in the form of traffic, too. And before people start shouting "NFs dOEsN't nEEd TraFfIC", I'm not asking for GTA V levels of gridlock - however spectacular that would be - but it would be nice to occationally have more than two traffic cars on screen at once in locations other than the freeway. This is supposed to be a metropolitan area. It's not doing too good a job at selling that right now. At least you can indeed drive on the beach. Was it so hard to answer that question?
  • Character things: Tried to make a knockoff of exactly the character you'd expect. Worked out to a "good enough". Proceeded to not really care. At least they've thought about it more than R* and Ubisoft did, so you can always change if you so desire.
  • Soundtrack: ..I guess I'm supposed to say it "fits the setting"? All I really have to say about it is that it's like Undercover but with way less variety. Which I shall keep repeating is a particular shame considering the neon-heavy style of this game with a colour palette consisting mostly of blues and pinks, set in a knockoff-Miami and that's not only brought back the Infernus/Torero and Cheetah Countach and Testarossa (the latter making its first appearance for 25 years - that's right, they've brought back a car that was last seen in the original for this very game!) but also specifically branded the fuel stations "Outrun". I refuse to believe I'm the only person who's still a little.. miffed about this. Then again, this is Ghost, I guess they had to miss a golden opportunity somewhere, and this one at least has an easy fix.
So there's a first: this might actually be the first Ghost game that doesn't have any glaring, game-breaking issues. It's nowhere near as daring as one might have hoped, but it might just be the first instance of Ghost having made a "decent" game. How's that for a plot twist?

In other news, I somehow decided getting into a heat level 5 pursuit was a good idea in a barely-upgraded Mustang. Somehow I escaped by falling into a body of water and having the cops follow me. Not quite sure that's intended, but I'll take getting to the rep cap in the first night. Which, of course, you hit before you get to any of the *really* interesting cars. Oh well.

Oh, and because posting a photo from your thing is fashionable as always:

View attachment 863012

Yes, that is exactly who you think it's supposed to be driving exactly what you think it's supposed to be. This is why you don't let me make a custom anything.

So I guess the last six hours or thereabouts shall be spent on exploration and general mocking about. I've got a couple of questions I'd still like to find an answer to, but actually playing the game has left me mostly positive thus far. It's almost as if letting people try things for themselves does a better job at selling good things than just telling people about it. I'm fully aware of the multiple levels of irony in that, but if even Fancypants McJokesalot over here is being positive, take it as a sign: it can't be all bad.
Having had similar opinions in the past, I appreciate this post 👍
 
I'm glad that grip driving is actually usable again but I really, really don't like how the drifting is set up in this game.
 
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