NASCAR Heat Review
Dateline: 08/29/2000The world of NASCAR racing on the home PC has been largely dominated by Papyrus, a division of Sierra Sports, with their NASCAR Racing series of simulations. Last week Hasbro Interactive threw their hat into the ring with their new title: NASCAR Heat.
NASCAR Heat is a product of Monster Games Inc., a game development company founded by former Papyrus employees. These guys were deeply involved in the development of the original Papyrus NASCAR Racing so they had a head start on how to build a successful NASCAR simulation.
Eye Candy
After getting the game installed (extremely simple) and diving right into a race the first thing you will notice is that the graphics are truly stunning. A quick ride around any of the nineteen Winston Cup race tracks included in the game will show off the remarkable attention to detail of the tracks. The other cars on the track are also very well rendered.
One quick point (although it's not all that critical) is that the colors seem a bit too bright, bordering on cartoonish. But overall, the game looks great.
Playability
NASCAR Heat took the basic racing genre game, included all of the "been there done that" stuff and then went two steps further.
Included in the game are all of the basic play modes that you would expect. Single race mode lets you pick any track, race length, number of opponents and run one race, championship season mode lets you run a full season (short, medium or full length schedule) for the Winston Cup and multiplayer mode supports modem, internet and LAN racing.
The real "killer app" features of NASCAR Heat are the "Race The Pro" and "Beat The Heat" game modes.
Race The Pro
The developers of NASCAR Heat gave the game to ten current Winston Cup drivers plus "The King" Richard Petty and recorded their best lap. Now you can select a driver, choose one of their favorite race tracks (each driver has two or three) and you can race against their "ghosts" to try to beat their best lap.
Some quick playing with this feature and you will quickly learn who the drivers are who spend some of their free time racing on their computers. Bobby Labonte and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are both very tough to beat while Kenny Schrader and Joe Nemechek were a bit easier. Overall, this is a pretty fun feature. It's pretty cool to go head to head with real NASCAR stars.
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