NASCAR Heat Evolution Available, Post Your Impressions Here

[OPDriver]

I don't know if I'm missing something or what, but not really having fun with this game right now.

I start a career, finish in the top 30 and go to the 500. (Dumb concept btw) Start the 500 in the back and end up wrecking a few laps into the race and my engine is blown. No caution comes out, so I wait for the pack to come back around as I'm going 35 mph around the apron. Pack finally comes back around at a snails pace and I purposely wreck right into them which then conveniently brings out the caution. I choose to pit and fix the damage, tires, etc. After the pitstop my car is all of a sudden fixed, with no blown engine and is running the same speed as before. End up wrecking again to see if the caution would fly, which it did and I end up being a lap down. No major damage this time around, so it's straight to the restart. Green flag drops and I start flying by everybody. Literally to the front of the "pack" in a half lap. Then I proceed to pull away from the leader and end up gaining 10 seconds or more in the next two laps.

Now the settings are on simulation and hard difficulty with all flags and damage on. So maybe I'm missing something setting wise. I was hoping to see the percentage difficulty option for career mode too. Really was looking forward to this game, but pretty disappointed to say the least. Maybe a patch can fix some of these issues.

[StoneCalf]

I'm 8 races into my career, so time for my impressions, part 2:

-XB1, controller, normal physics, "hard" career setting, 2x wear, 13% race length-

Still enjoying the game. Would like to know how to make car adjustments in career mode other than the choices during pitting. I am not making upgrades/purchases in race shop yet because the game challenge is ok where it is, and I don't want to make the game any easier at this moment.

After finishes of 26th at Daytona and 28th at Atlanta, here's how I've fared in races 3-8:

Race 3 at Las Vegas: I incurred a black flag while pitting- wasn't aware of the correct pit road speed limit. I finished 35th.

Race 4 at Phoenix: Finished 24th. There was one caution (not me). I've noticed that so far, about 1 CPU caused caution per race is the average. I'm standing at 32nd in overall points.

Race 5 at California: Something weird happened on a restart. I was a lap down, and when the field went green, I basically took off like a rocket. I had 2 fresh tires, but that shouldn't have propelled me to overtake the leaders and check out. Not sure what was up with that- maybe a glitch on the adaptive AI. (so far through race 8 that was an isolated incident, so I'm not going to get too worried)

Race 6 at Martinsville: First time I qualified better than dead last. Started in 17th position and finished 19th. 65 laps. Had my highest speed rating at 89. (I'm usually in the range from 85-87). Pleasantly surprised at how good this short track racing was. Historically in Nascar games, my weakness is short tracks and road courses.

Race 7 at Texas: Qualified 40th (brushed the wall). Finished 32nd. Had my first run-in with another racer. Didn't catch who it was in the fury of the moment, but I basically got pinched up against the outside wall in the latter stages of the race. It crunched my nose some and my radiator damage indicator turned yellow. Still managed to finish on the lead lap (barely).

Race 8 at Bristol: OMG, this is the first Nascar game where I won't have to dread coming to Bristol!! It was an outstanding race with some expected light beating and banging, but no major wrecks or damage. Had an awesome battle on the last 2 laps with Greg Biffle. My RF tire was run down to about 50% in an effort to get to him. He was in a wad of lap cars and on the last lap of the race, I set up a pick and got past him. I thought I was in the clear, but in turn 4 he came back on me, whipped to my inside and got me by a nose! I still came away with my best finish of the season so far at 19th, albeit 2 laps down. (Qualified 14th at 19.300s) My best race lap was 19.306. Winner was Matt Kenseth, while #22 Logano clocked the fastest lap at 18.378 seconds. (let me just restate how happy I am that I can log laps at Bristol without running into the wall)

OK, gotta balance out the joy with some criticism:

• I can't figure out where to make car adjustments in career mode
• I don't think there's a quick look behind button, nor on the sides.
• Would like to see more statistics at the end of a race. All there seem to be is total race time per racer, but no list for fastest lap, only notes who led most laps, who had fastest lap, biggest mover and who had a tough break.

There was one of the old games, I think it was an EA game where you could have multiple cars in your garage (career), and develop and improve them individually. For example you could have a short track car and a separate super speedway car. I really wish this game had some deeper features like that. But, with that said, I think this game is a good foundation for them to build on and maybe it will be improved on via DLC or next edition.

Racing on normal physics is pretty forgiving. I'm tempted to try simulation, but gonna stick with what I'm doing now for a while as I continue to get acclimated.

[OPDriver]

Quote: Originally Posted by StoneCalf

I can't figure out where to make car adjustments in career mode

You can change setups and adjust on the car when its in the pits during practice, qualifying, etc. On PS4 you can hit the L1 and R1 buttons to change between setups and you can press square to change your small setup details.

[Turbojugend]

To all locked track haters (pretty much all of us):

It seems as though the quickest method to unlocking all of the tracks is to race a few races at 20% or more track length. I was going for individual track ratings but that's all wrong, 20,000 points is enough to unlock everything and that's way quicker. If you end up with a high enough point bonus [Speed Rating x Track Multiplier], you should end up with enough points to unlock all of the tracks in about an hour.

[krtgolfing]

Quote: Originally Posted by Turbojugend

To all locked track haters (pretty much all of us): It seems as though the quickest method to unlocking all of the tracks is to race a few races at 20% or more track length. I was going for individual track ratings but that's all wrong, 20,000 points is enough to unlock everything and that's way quicker. If you end up with a high enough point bonus [Speed Rating x Track Multiplier], you should end up with enough points to unlock all of the tracks in about an hour.

What mode should you be doing this in? Definitely want to get all the tracks unlocked for "Race Now" events. Do not really want to do career mode as I am doing that in F1.

[krtgolfing]

Quote: Originally Posted by OPDriver

I don't know if I'm missing something or what, but not really having fun with this game right now. I start a career, finish in the top 30 and go to the 500. (Dumb concept btw) Start the 500 in the back and end up wrecking a few laps into the race and my engine is blown. No caution comes out, so I wait for the pack to come back around as I'm going 35 mph around the apron. Pack finally comes back around at a snails pace and I purposely wreck right into them which then conveniently brings out the caution. I choose to pit and fix the damage, tires, etc. After the pitstop my car is all of a sudden fixed, with no blown engine and is running the same speed as before. End up wrecking again to see if the caution would fly, which it did and I end up being a lap down. No major damage this time around, so it's straight to the restart. Green flag drops and I start flying by everybody. Literally to the front of the "pack" in a half lap. Then I proceed to pull away from the leader and end up gaining 10 seconds or more in the next two laps. Now the settings are on simulation and hard difficulty with all flags and damage on. So maybe I'm missing something setting wise. I was hoping to see the percentage difficulty option for career mode too. Really was looking forward to this game, but pretty disappointed to say the least. Maybe a patch can fix some of these issues.

Where can you find the difficulty settings? I only found where we could either do simulation or arcade? What am I missing?

[Turbojugend]

Quote: Originally Posted by krtgolfing

What mode should you be doing this in? Definitely want to get all the tracks unlocked for "Race Now" events. Do not really want to do career mode as I am doing that in F1.

Just "Race Now" at Bristol. It's a short track so you'll get a bigger track multiplier.

[Turbojugend]

Day #2 and I'm starting to come around to this game. The inconsistent framerate and lack of overall depth are still major issues, but I'm getting the on-track settings dialed in and things are feeling really good.

Two huge factors are (a) race length 25% or higher; and (b) A.I. on Hard difficulty. Also, All Flags and Full Damage. A lot of you probably did this right off the bat, but I didn't. At these settings it's starting to feel more like a real race, there is pack separation and CPU opponents will often battle you intelligently for position. I'm sticking to Casual controls for now, I'm still not very good and am finding the Sim controls way too difficult to handle.

My first career race at Daytona with these settings was one to remember. With no setup adjustments (we really need a setup thread!), I qualified 40th. From the outset, there was a position battle on every lap. These position battles can be pretty intense on Hard, although the CPU opponents still to tend to part like the Red Sea every now and then. After about 15 laps or so, I managed to work my way up to 20th. From there the next several laps were spent trying to catch up with the draft in the next pack. I finally caught up to Ryan Blaney but he immediately shut the door on me. Went high, went low, I just could not pass with my crappy rookie career car. It was frustrating but cool to witness at the same time. I ended up at 19th and it felt like the finish I deserved.

Again, I'm not great at racers, and maybe that's why I'm able to enjoy this. But at least with these settings I'm not regretting this purchase. Next I'm going to kick the race length up to 50%, it seems like the higher the race length the more enjoyable this game becomes.