There are five ways to race in Nascar Heat, BEAT THE HEAT, RACE THE PRO, SINGLE RACE, CHAMPIONSHIP, and MULTIPLAYER. In BEAT THE HEAT, you have 6 sets (tracks) wherein you must perform 6 timed driving challenges to advance to the next track (set). I havent been there yet, (c'mon folks, Heets got a job) but if you beat all 36 challenges,you will unlock the "mystery set" and face more challenges and get to race against the "King" himself, thats right, Richard Petty. In RACE THE PRO there are 11 drivers to choose to challenge, and yes Richard Petty is one of them. You compete against a ghost image of that drivers car on one of 3 tracks you choose. Hasbro says "Each pro's car is a virtual representation of recorded laps they've taken around that track while playing Nascar Heat". Whoa!. The Championship mode allows you to run an entire Nascar season driving one of the 26 included drivers cars or one of your own from the paint shop. Wanna drive Dale Earnhardt's car?, fine, he's out for the season. Sorry Dale. You see you are not driving as that driver, you are taking his car, and bumping him out of the roster that season. Then theres single season, any car, any track. Good for learning how to run in the pack, and is just alot of fun for pulling
There is a Nascar Heat web-site link in the game but ain't nuthin up there yet. But there is a guy named JDEERE who made an multiplayer program for download and I've linked it on main page and here at bottom.Get it. I tried it and it works great. Sad companies ship stuff before it's complete an some guy can write a program in like a day. Shame on you Hasbro AND the whole dang industry thats always doin this!.And MUCHO KUDOS JDEERE.
The very in-depth garage is only available in expert mode. So unless your an expert, leave the tuning to them. I know I had to go in there too an try my hand at it, an thats why I'm saying leave it to them.Or at least make small adjustments, then try it out. If you totally jack it all up, just hit the default button and start over.(thank god for that ) The cars will overheat, stop running, wear tires, run outta gas, and slow down when damaged aerodynamically. So then it's pit time. Hasbro has done a fantastic job with this, the pit crew looks great!. They surround your car, pass tires to each other and throw the gas cans when their done, it's really awesome. You can choose to have the car computer controlled coming into and out of the pits, or not, but it's still gonna limit your speed on pit road. Just remember to slow down coming in there, or it will slow you down quite abrubtly. Pit roads have a speed limit. As your coming in the pits a window pops up to let you choose what you want done as far as gas, tires, and wing. Theres also a spotter talking to you when your out there swapping paint at 200 mph. He will tell you the nearest competitors position by saying "car high", (on your right), or "car low" (on your left).
Before ya go a racin, go to the set-up screen and set the realism, opponent strength, length of race, wear factor, and number of opponents-16 minimum to 43 max. Nascar Heat supports force feedback, if ya got it, it's great. It will run in resolutions up to 1280x1024, and will benchmark test your system to see your frame rate. From this you can adjust your resolution and detail to get a decent frame rate for your computer.They recommend 18 frames per second, but I suggest more like 30. I count 9 different views from bumper cam to far chase. Theres in car of course (F1) and some funky thing called chassis cam too (F2). F3 cycles thru 3 different chase views-near chase/chase/far chase. The detail inside the car is spectacular and you can read the gauges, DA HEET'S preferred mode. And you can adjust your tire pressures by hitting F9-F12 and the bracket keys for increase/decrease. Pretty good Hasbro.
You may like taking away Earnhardts car an having him on the sidelines in championship mode, but if ya wanna run your own car against all the greats, Hasbro has included a wonderful and complete paint program. I remember Viper Racing had one of these and I loved it. I dont know why more driving games don't include this! They provide templates of some basic paint schemes you can click colors into and remove and try, and several pages of wild decals and numbers of different sizes. Or you can start with the Hasbro car and make it your own. It's the same format as Paint in Windows. You can use brushes from thin to fat or drag a box of color over an entire area. The car panels are laid out flat in a little widow. To choose that area just click on it and it appears in a bigger window on the right. On the left is the whole car and you can see your changes applied immediatly to it, and you can spin the car around and look at it from any angle. So make some Nascar beast and go scratch da hell outta Gordon's gay rainbow car. I did.
Ok, now you ask "well HEET how is it to drive man?" Hasbro really got the car physics right. You can really tell when the cars going to brake loose or head for the wall, and ya need to back off. I use a wheel but if you use the keyboard click the Non-Linear and Smoothing boxes in the advanced options.These will smooth out your keyboard inputs It may look easy on TV, but driving 200 Mph inches from other cars takes alot of concentration. You don't just blow 'em away and out run 'em, it's a race of inches and tenths of seconds gained by driving in the groove lap after lap and not hitting anything. I was drained after a 6 lap race, imagine goin all the way in real time! A course these 'ol boys ain't gonna just give you the line you want, you gotta fight for it!. You can ride side by side fender to fender, but it slows you both down and you both get passed. So pick your line an go for it, but don't spend alot of time in contact with another car or hit em too hard. Small inputs cause big reactions at these speeds so be smooth. Pit before everybody else, you may gain a few seconds later. Learn how your car understeers (tight) or oversteers (loose) on different tracks and how to adjust the wedge. It will show up in your lap times. Practice the heall out of a track and tune your car for it before you run for the money and you can become a Nascar legend of your own.
(ya rite HEET).
This game has alot to offer, all the tracks an then some, and some unique never before seen stuff like RACE THE PROS, and BEAT THE HEAT, great car physics, detail, and the real feel of high speed bumper to bumper Nascar racing. Multiplayer needs support through a network though, and wheres the rest of the 43 Nascar drivers and teams? Oh well theres always patches. - HEET
NOTE: AND SO IT IS, THA HEET FOUND IT FOR YA. PATCH 1.1e- BETTER DAMAGE MODELING, NOW POSSIBLE TO DAMAGE SIDES, ROOF, AND REAR OF CAR. AND JDEERE'S IRF-INTERNET RACE FINDER-TO PLAY ONLINE. GET IT HERE, AND DOWNLOAD DEMO OR PATCH FROM GAMESPOT. LINKS BELOW. - HEET
