NASCAR Heat 5 (PS4) Review — The Gamer's Lounge (2024)

Every year, football and basketball games get a free pass to put out a new edition simply to keep the rosters updated. Yes, most of them tout new features, but there’s only so far one can go in tweaking the formula of a game who’s real-world equivalent has been running by basically the same rules for nearly a century. NASCAR has it’s drivers and liveries change year by year as well, but there’s not a new slew of tracks every year, and just like football, the general template for the field hasn’t changed a lot. Fans truly into NASCAR can be passionate about every little detail just as much as a football or basketball player can tell you the butterfly effect of one little change in scouting can do to an entire season of their respective sports.

When NASCAR Heat 5 came up for review here at The Gamers Lounge, my first reaction was “I swear I JUST did NASCAR Heat 4.” Sure enough, looking back, my last article was late September 2019, with 3 the September before that. Perhaps our socially-distanced world has caused the game to be pushed up a bit, but here we are. And much like last year’s 4 to 3 comparison, I’m seeing a lot more of the same from 4 to 5.

Other than the updated liveries and racers, NASCAR Heat 5 offers new options, such as the ability to hop into Career Mode higher up and get in on the big action without having to deal with dirt tracks and low placing. It offers more stats and camera options and tweaks the AI more (4 drastically improved the AI). Heat 5 brings a new online challenge mode and testing mode to find that perfect setup.

My biggest issues are the start similarities. First impressions are everything right? Menus act precisely the same. My manager that shows up is the same guy: even the same picture is used for him. I mean, can’t we call the actor for a different shot? Sure, I can “fast forward” to later races in my career but starting initially gets me the same qualifying on the same dirt I had before. Get to the racetrack, and there’s a garage shot. Same garage shot as last year, with same menu off to the left, with my driver leaning, crosslegged, on the same garage door talking to the same dude he was last year. After I got done with a race, I got social media comments on my racing. It didn’t help that in both NASCAR Heat 5 and my slip back to NASCAR Heat 4 for this review had someone say “I hope you aren’t a dirty driver, if you are I’ll put you in the wall!” verbatim. The biggest difference I can see is advertisem*nts for sim racing equipment on the loading screens.

Pros:
-Developers truly have a passion to craft an authentic experience
-New modes, increased options in stats, cameras, paintjobs
-Slight tweaks to AI
-I feel like I’m more “in the pack” compared to my experiences in last year’s title (could be due to starting equipment being better)
-Jump right into bigger leagues
-Best of all the NASCAR Heat games

Cons:
-If you were to put me into practice/qualify/race in either title, I would have a hard time telling you which one I was playing, right down to the User Interface
-Literal copy/paste jobs in text, menus, character animations, etc.
-Basically, coulda been DLC

Special thanks to 704 Games Company/Motorsport Games for providing a code for review!