NASCAR Heat 2 review: A hotter lap this season, with room for improvement

Some much-needed additions make NASCAR Heat 2 better than its predecessor, but there are still obvious places it has opportunities for growth.

If it seems like the glory days for NASCAR video games are long behind them, there’s a reason for that. Where the license for making games simulating the top level of stock car racing was one held by EA Sports for a number of years, it’s switched hands several times this decade, leading to little stability and multiple restarts — and not the racing kind.

704Games is trying to change that with NASCAR Heat 2, the follow-up to last year’s NASCAR Heat Evolution. Where the previous game was very much a debut effort in some ways (though the development team at Monster Games has handled racing games before) and presented as such, the sequel improves in some very welcome ways but still leaves the door open for future improvement.

What’s new

The most highly touted improvement to NASCAR Heat 2 is also its best. The career mode has received a massive overhaul with the arrival of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR XFINITY Series, as well as tracks that only appear on the schedules of those two circuits. Instead of taking on the top drivers in NASCAR right away, you now have to work your way up through the ranks.

Most of the teams in all three series are represented, giving you the opportunity to tackle one-off rides in the next series up to prove your stuff. If you complete the goal given to you by the team, it will be an option for you to sign with for a full-time ride next season. Part of the fun in career mode is trying to get the best possible offers to advance your career with better organizations. Even better, you can take, say, XFINITY Series challenges while competing full-time in the Truck Series, which is more or less how it happens in real life for many drivers.

The developers gave the career mode some more character as well, incorporating video clips from real racers offering words of encouragement or warning, depending on how you perform. Drivers you literally run into on a regular basis will remember that and race you more aggressively, while competitors you pass clean will cut you more slack in return.

Outside of the career mode, the split-screen co-op feature is the addition that stands out the most. It’s great to be able to play with someone on the same TV for the first time in the current generation of consoles.

The visuals seem to have stepped up a notch too, with a lot of detail put into each track and excellent lighting effects to illustrate the difference between day and night races. It’s definitely the best looking NASCAR game in some time, relative to the equipment on which it’s being played.

While not a new feature, a shoutout is deserved for the spotters in NASCAR Heat 2 as well, as they actually give you very helpful feedback about cars around you and whether you need to stay in your lane or make a move.

What’s still missing

The on-track action has some noticeable tweaks, but nothing as major as the career mode got. Driving in the draft is still way too effective, especially on tracks where you wonder if that’s true in real life, but you can use that to your advantage as well. And while you can get into massive wrecks, even the “full damage” setting doesn’t really reflect what happens to cars in the real world when they collide, or at least not at the level you feel they should.

Online races work just fine, but the lobbies are still extremely confusing until you’ve spent some time playing in them, and even then, you don’t always end up with what you expect. Hosts for certain races can change the settings right up until the last second, which can cause chaos and often leads to you racing on a different track than you thought you were taking on. thosIt would probably behoove 704Games to make this as big a point of emphasis as the career mode was for this game when the inevitable next installment in the series arrives.

Not that the revamped career mode is without its warts, either. It’s great that you can work your way onto better teams, but they’re as good as they are when you arrive and no more. There’s a sense of individual progression but not one at the team level — the good teams simply have better equipment and resources, and that’s that. A team ownership aspect might be outside the realm of what the developers envision for this franchise, but there should be … something you can do to improve the team you’re on. Or at least to spend the money you win in your career, which currently represents nothing more than bragging rights.

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The verdict

Considering this is the only game in town for NASCAR fans, it’s worth picking up for that reason alone, and it plays well enough to be worth it. The extra series and tracks add a lot to the overall package, enough so that it feels like a more complete, well-rounded game than its predecessor.

If the career mode and split-screen racing don’t sound enticing, you can probably sit this one out and wait for next season. But there is forward momentum here, enough to make NASCAR Heat 2 a contender if not a champion just yet.

Score: 7/10

Disclosure: FanSided was supplied with a free digital copy of NASCAR Heat 2 for the purposes of this review.