So as a proud owner of every NFS, I gotta say Heat is definitely a step in the right direction. A few steps in the right direction to be completely honest, the several new additions to the game and a few returning parts as well. I love the returning customizations to the game (bit odd the payback crew decals were all retained) and I love the addition of the heat studio app, being able to walk around with my cars and being able to edit them if I get inspiration during my daily life. The day and night mechanic is a lot of fun, however as of writing this I haven't beaten the game but I hope after beating the story both day and night offer rep and cash, otherwise everyone would just play during the day. Seeing the cops active in Heat is a lot of fun even if it is only at night, and they are way more aggressive than they've ever been. That's especially true while racing whereas in previous games the cops would hold back during races, they pull no punches here. It definitely adds a degree of difficulty to the game and quite fun, gotta admit I would love to see pursuit breakers back in the game though the long jumps are a reasonable substitute to evade the cops. Even though they won't look as cool because of the lack slow motion since the game can be played online it would help out in pursuits. Adding to that pursuits are quite difficult. There seems to be a bit of a difficulty spike between after heat level 2 but if you keep up with cars modification it does gets better. Car health though is a noticeable inconsistency, I can smash into a wall at 150 mph and loss little to no car health, however hitting traffic at that same speed I could lose 30-40% health. That also doesn't play out well in pursuits seeing as how the cops are doing everything to make sure you don't walk out the car breathing (despite the story having you believe they value the cars???). My last major gripe with the game has to be with the controls. I play the game in both manual and automatic and I've noticed problems with both. In automatic the car seems to be slow to shift up when already redlining, In manual I have nearly the same problem when downshifting. I can't shift down multiple gears the game won't register it for whatever reason so I have to wait a second before being to shift again. I also am not a fan of the "Drift button" addition to the game. Having it set to gas is an absolute nightmare, I am constantly on and off the gas while playing so that sends me slide all the time at every possible moment. Having it set to brake is better but the problem there lies with the fact that I have to delay using the brake until after initiating the drift, and not having different control schemes makes this action feel very awkward, (and drifting is already incredibly difficult as is). The game is beautiful and stunning in how it's made and the different parts the make up the game, but playing the game feels like it's a difficult task sometimes and will have you fighting the car for control and battling the cops to not destroy you. With a few tweaks to the controls and a few car interactions this game would be amazing, however I do have a question. Does it ever stop raining in Palm City??
