EA’s fan favourite racing gaming is back and with it, so are the cops! The November 2019 release will come to PC in the form of an Origin store download. Of course as with most major EA titles there will be a standard and deluxe version and pre-order bonuses.
The last Need for Speed release was in 2017 with Payback but fans were mostly disappointed. The open world had a 24 hour day-night cycle and three playable characters but reviewers were not overly positive. Citing the ‘free-roam’ aspect as unengaging and the ‘missions’ as repetitive the average review on metacritic landing around 6/10.
You have to go back to 2013 before the franchise had a positively reviewed release with ‘Rivals’, the first to allow playable control of the police and only one year after the fan favourite ‘Most Wanted’. Will Heat deliver for the fans who have been holding out for 6 years?
What is NFS : Heat
Not a lot is know this early, but here is what we do know.
Set in ‘Palm’ city, the locale seems to be a fictional version of Miami, much like GTA’s Vice City, complete with wide open freeways lined palm trees and plenty of neon purple.
Car modification is of course a staple of the franchise and still is for NFS Heat. Hopefully the aesthetics (paint jobs, decals, giant oversized spoilers etc) aren’t monetised or loot boxed, but with EA’s track record it’s always possible.
The trailer suggests the game play will be split between track and street races, the later taking place at night and involving cop chases, with the former in broad daylight without them.
Checkout the Trailer.
The Cars
From the trailer alone we know the Polestar 1, BMW i8 Coupe and Mercedes C63 AMG are all in the mix. We also spotted a Chevy Corvette Grand Sport, Nissan GT-R and Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X. There will be plenty more to add to the roster but we’ll have to wait for future announcements for that.
System Requirements
EA and Origin haven’t yet published official PC hardware systems requirements for the game at this stage but as soon as they do we’ll be updating this post.
Do we think it will it have real time ray tracing (RTX) support? The emphasis on the street light reflections on the wet street in the trailer seem to suggest it might! Let’s hope it does as most of us of us sunk hundreds in to our new RTX GPUs finished Metro Exodus a while ago.
When will we know more?
Gamescom is right around the corner. We expect a few more details to be flushed out at the show with the rest to come in bite sized chunks evenly spread out between now and the release.