Was the NASCAR Heat Series That BAD?

It wasn’t bad, but you can hardly tell the games apart from each other. No major improvements or changes were made

I juat get so mad with the physics of the heat games sometimes. Especially when racing the AI. They rarely make any mistakes and have less tire wear it seems. The multi-player was amazing in heat 5 imo though

Decent Series. This should be at least a Blueprint for the Next Companies who want to buy the License. Until then, we can always use those GOATed NR2003 Mods…

While Nascar Heat 4 and 5 weren’t exactly great games, they’re far from the worst Nascar games to ever be released (especially compared to games like NTG2011, Heat Evolution, and 21 Ignition). But it’s just unfortunate that the games never caught up to our standards. Especially since the emergence of iRacing and NR2003 modding blew the Heat games out of the water

Heat 4 was my favorite. I didn’t get 5 or ignition. Could only imagine what could have been if 704 didn’t rush a game every year. If they made DLC in between giving them 2years to make a solid game.

I only played Heat 2 from the Heat series. I’ve played NASCAR games on and off throughout the years from the N64 games, Chase for the Cup in 05. A couple in the 09 – 12. Heat was okay? Honestly with seeing what Heat 4 ended up, maybe picking that up now that it’s probably on sale doesn’t sound half bad. Great video!

I played the ever living heck out of every game until the newer one released, so here are my takes:

Heat Evolution: 5/10. Worst for the first, but it was sort of expected knowing we had a newer license. Of course there was many issues with it, but i think if a person just wanted to walk in and maybe spend a few hours on it, the only issue Id tweak would be the physics (sense it felt like a high-speed tank). Though one thing that Id like to mention is even how bad the career mode is, it was actually the only Heat game to have a pre-race intro; never understood why they didn’t use it for the future titles. Overall, an okay start.

Heat 2: 8/10. I loved playing this way too much and is therefore one of my favorite not only Heat games but Nascar games. I honestly dont know what it was. Maybe it was the awesome soundtrack, or the colorful visuals, or the additions with Truck and Xfinity, the best damage model of the series, the popping liveries of the cars- I just dont know! But honestly, idc. I loved it. Of course it had some issues like the ping-pog and the apron, but they never annoyed me that much. Well….that was until…

Heat 3: 6.5/10. Holy s### this thing looks ugly as hell. Heat 2 may have been more pixelated but even then it still looked better than this. Nighttime was better but the daytime just looked so dang dull. Enough with the visuals, this was the game that where the pingpong and apron glitches started to frustrate me- even as a kid I wondered why they didn’t fix it. Which also hindered a ton on the new dirt series to which I thought it was okay……….. when I wasnt getting slammed by the pingpong. Of course it still had positives like another great soundtrack and 360 cam, but other than that the game was just decent imo. Hopefully the next one will be bette-

Heat 4: 9.5/10. ..oh Dale yeah. This is as close as to a Nascar game from the early 2000’s can get, and it’s fantastic. The best visuals in a Nascar game up to date, the racing, the sounds, the career mode, multiplayer (ESPECIALLY at the superspeedways), the extra content, no more pingpog or apron glitch etc. It’s just so dang good! This was the time people were getting fed up with the amount of mediocre games Nascar was releasing, even if thebHeat series was steadily getting better (well…to most people), and I think everyone was very blinded by that frustration- sure it was another improvement but it didn’t seem to do much justice to people. Though im very glad to see people recognize Heat 4 being much better than most thought it was. Though it wasn’t perfect, and maybe a possible hot take here cuz I dont know anyone else who have gave an opinion on it, but the soundtrack is probably the weakest so far. Maybe ill re-listen to it but I probably know only 1 or 2 songs that I actually enjoyed from it. So… that means Heat 5 just needs to learn from it and try their best to improve on it without screwing it up! …..right?

Heat 5: 8/10. I mean… It’s not a screw up but I didn’t mean to copy the dang thing. Now I haven’t played any of the older games like ’07-’08 or Nascar ’13-’15, but one thing that always irritated me the most was how to visuals were always the same. Though Im sure those games were at least decent (def not ’08 though), but Im only going off of observation. However, if the game looks and feels the same yet it improves on other aspects from the previous title, then ill let it slide. So does Heat 5 accomplish that? Ehh….nahhh. Again, it still has the great gameplay, visuals, and other great aspects, but outside of it…. feels like empty space. The title screen is just confetti that goes away every minute, the main menu background pulls something from Heat Evolution with instead of cool clips it’s back to just showing cars every 10 seconds but with a less appealing background, I actually dont think any song from the soundtrack stood out to me this time, etc. But why was everything so lazy and boring to look at no- *oh…* *it’s the company that likes to cut costs…* Now of course it was MG’s first try at a Nascar game just like 704 with Heat Evolution (which is why I like to call H5 if Evolution was good), but we’d come to eventually know that 704 were the ones to actually manage to succeed for their future. Honestly the only addition that of course Heat 5 does have is the custom schedule for championship mode which was cool, though it was more of a cool addition rather than something that completely changes the game. Overall, by far the weirdest game of the Heat series. Im actually going to put this under Heat 2 because at least that game improved upon everything the original had. Heat 5 may still have the feel of Heat 4, but it was still a copied and lazier version of it.

Heat 4 is what got me into nascar along side watching in 2020 for the first time. I have a love for it but again don’t really have the previous to look at this with next to. To me they’re fine they do the job and are playable. Obviously plenty of room for improvement, but I still play 5 to this day and never bought ignition

The only Heat game I have is 4, and that was because the season pass had Jeff Gordon in it. I play it ever once in awhile, but it really doesn’t compare to the old EA Sports NASCAR games I grew up playing on my PS2…