I haven’t played Heat but like you I like the Forza Horizon balance of pretty arcadey feel with some sim elements mixed in without it really going too far to either extreme.
I don’t want to be excessively harsh on a game that is still pretty early in its development so far but also not having played any of the previous entries I dont know exactly what feel they are going for, so maybe this is already pretty close to their goal (which would be a shame I think)
As it is right now though it is very arcade-y feeling and in all honesty the “upgrades” didn’t really make the car feel any different as I spent money on the car, it was consistent throughout. The cars don’t really corner that well, you cant really initiate a drift or have any real control through the corners to that level, you can yank up the handbrake but the car doesnt slide in a nice, predictable manner at all. You can either use it to cut a lot of speed suddenly in a quick jab or hold it and spin out.
So generally you’ll be driving flat out dodging traffic until a corner at which point you’ll slam on the brakes to cut your speed enough to try and get around the corner without riding the walls (the races use a battle system with “health bars” to win or lose and hitting walls depletes your health bar)
As I said in the previous post as well the opponents definitely need balancing as well as you will often need to cheese the harder battles or just hope to god that they crash and you can get far enough ahead to win. A lot of the AI drivers will hook their front onto your rear and plow you into a wall which is extremely frustrating.
The game itself is set in an open world of sorts. So when you leave for the night you choose which highway entrance to enter on and in which direction. You are then free to cruise the highways (you start with a small loop and then a little more opens up as you play, I presume the full game will have a lot more) and challenge any other vehicle you see to battles. You can race all the civilian trucks or cars if you want or you search for other rival gangs. When you beat a certain amount of members from each gang then you unlock the boss of that gang for a boss battle.
Whilst cruising you are stuck going the direction you began with unless you pull into a parking spot. Here you can chat to random people about inane shit or challenge some others that are parked up. Here you can also leave the parking area to go in the opposite direction on the highway. It is realistic but also frustrating sometimes to try and find a parking area if someone you want to battle is on the opposite side, I wanna have some places where I could illegally switch sides really.
If you dont like JDM shit then I would say the appeal would be even narrower for you cause it is focused on those cars. This is what I love so what kept me involved to see it through but the selection of parts and wheels etc is honestly shite (nightrunners blows it out of the water by a long way in this aspect).
TLDR: you probably won’t like it that much based on what you said, even cruising the majority of the available world is really fucking long straights and is pretty boring and you dont even like JDM stuff :)
I would describe them as not great currently xD
I haven’t played Heat but like you I like the Forza Horizon balance of pretty arcadey feel with some sim elements mixed in without it really going too far to either extreme.
I don’t want to be excessively harsh on a game that is still pretty early in its development so far but also not having played any of the previous entries I dont know exactly what feel they are going for, so maybe this is already pretty close to their goal (which would be a shame I think)
As it is right now though it is very arcade-y feeling and in all honesty the “upgrades” didn’t really make the car feel any different as I spent money on the car, it was consistent throughout. The cars don’t really corner that well, you cant really initiate a drift or have any real control through the corners to that level, you can yank up the handbrake but the car doesnt slide in a nice, predictable manner at all. You can either use it to cut a lot of speed suddenly in a quick jab or hold it and spin out.
So generally you’ll be driving flat out dodging traffic until a corner at which point you’ll slam on the brakes to cut your speed enough to try and get around the corner without riding the walls (the races use a battle system with “health bars” to win or lose and hitting walls depletes your health bar)
As I said in the previous post as well the opponents definitely need balancing as well as you will often need to cheese the harder battles or just hope to god that they crash and you can get far enough ahead to win. A lot of the AI drivers will hook their front onto your rear and plow you into a wall which is extremely frustrating.
The game itself is set in an open world of sorts. So when you leave for the night you choose which highway entrance to enter on and in which direction. You are then free to cruise the highways (you start with a small loop and then a little more opens up as you play, I presume the full game will have a lot more) and challenge any other vehicle you see to battles. You can race all the civilian trucks or cars if you want or you search for other rival gangs. When you beat a certain amount of members from each gang then you unlock the boss of that gang for a boss battle.
Whilst cruising you are stuck going the direction you began with unless you pull into a parking spot. Here you can chat to random people about inane shit or challenge some others that are parked up. Here you can also leave the parking area to go in the opposite direction on the highway. It is realistic but also frustrating sometimes to try and find a parking area if someone you want to battle is on the opposite side, I wanna have some places where I could illegally switch sides really.
If you dont like JDM shit then I would say the appeal would be even narrower for you cause it is focused on those cars. This is what I love so what kept me involved to see it through but the selection of parts and wheels etc is honestly shite (nightrunners blows it out of the water by a long way in this aspect).
TLDR: you probably won’t like it that much based on what you said, even cruising the majority of the available world is really fucking long straights and is pretty boring and you dont even like JDM stuff :)