Burnin" up

In recent years, the Need For Speed franchise has tried to evolve but sadly, change isn't necessarily a comfortable thing for most people. It's the usual challenge of wanting to embrace the new yet keep the familiar things that made it so memorable. Thankfully, Need For Speed: Heat hits the sweet spot of new and classic, reinvigorating the franchise and at the same time bringing gamers familiar with the title back to the good ol' days of NFS.

THE PLOT

In true NFS fashion, you take control of a racer new to the scene of Palm City, a Miami-like urban playground where racing is embedded in people's blood and at the same time, rather ironically, is home to a bunch of cops who are hell-bent on capturing street racers. Sure, there are sanctioned races and illegal ones but these cops seem to be really out for anyone interested in racing for a city that lives and breathes it. But as you earn rep and cash in races and make friends with other racers in the local scene, you find that these cops are actually corrupt and there's more than meets the eye to their so-called anti-racing campaign.

THE GAMEPLAY AND GRAPHICS

Need For Speed: Heat brings about a number of new features and mechanics unseen before in previous titles. One of the new things you'll encounter when you begin is the ability to customise your character, a first in the history of NFS. Sure, it's not a big change and you only get to see your character in cutscenes but it's cool to be able to pimp out your character's look along with your ride. One of the biggest changes introduced in this game is the ability to choose between racing in the day or at night. While races in the day are sanctioned with closed tracks, races at night are illegal with traffic and the possibility of getting chased down by the cops. It's your discretion what races you go for because each has a different payoff: races in the day will get you cash to buy new parts or cars, but races in the night will increase your rep and certain cars and parts won't be made available unless you reach a certain rep level. The day and night feature makes things a little more challenging since it's not just a simple "win races, get rep, earn cash" sort of deal now. Plus, it's a nice change of scenery switching between day and night.

Those familiar with the NFS franchise generally agree that two shining titles throughout the years have been NFS Underground 2 and NFS Most Wanted (the one released in 2005). The good news is that there are familiar features from both games in Heat. Customising your ride is a little more extensive like it was in NFS Underground 2 and police chases are reminiscent of Most Wanted though amped up a bit more. There are no Pursuit Breakers here -- for those of you that remember, these were structures you can drive through so they can crash into police cars chasing you -- and with the increased aggression of the cops, it's a little more challenging shaking them off your tail.

I played Heat on PS4, which is not the pinnacle of graphics out there. However, the races and chases were exhilarating and it's an extremely immersive experience with beautifully rendered graphics and environments. Thankfully, I didn't really encounter any sort of bugs and glitches. So if you're playing on something with higher specs than a PS4, I'm sure you'll be more than satisfied with how it looks as well as how it plays.