In contrast, the latter requires you to manage your team, upgrade your staff, and micro-manage some elements to improve your car. The former is simple enough and has you focus purely on race days. Here you are tasked with progressing through all four of the disciplines, starting as a modest dirt racer and working your way up to the grandiose NASCAR Cup.ĭuring career mode, you have the choice to just be a standard driver and represents real-life teams or to create your own brand. Speaking of career mode, this is the core game mode found in NASCAR Heat 5. The likes of CoTA, Laguna Seca, and Road Atlanta would have helped a lot to vary up the repetition present in career mode. I realize 704Games was probably limited as to what it can do due to licensing, but there are other North American circuits that would have worked here. These are Watkins Glen, Sonoma, and Road America. Of the six non-oval tracks, three are what I’d consider iconic circuits. The much-needed breaks from this repetitive gameplay loop are few and far between.

Although there are mild differences in design, track length, and corner speed, all of the speedways fundamentally play the same.

Of the 29 available tracks, 23 of them are types of ovals. However, it can at times feel a little limited. The positive of this is that you get a very representative list of tracks. This is something some other games could definitely learn from.Īs for tracks, the majority of Heat 5‘s catalog is ripped straight out of the real-life NASCAR calendar. It’s great to see a licensed game trying to represent more than just the bare minimum. In fact, there are actually four fully licensed disciplines represented, including the satisfying off-road Xtreme Dirt Tour. Contrary to the name, it isn’t just limited to the official NASCAR series. NASCAR Heat 5 is a sim-cade racing game that focuses primarily on American oval racing. But if NASCAR Heat 5 is anything to go by, that mission is still very much in progress. This is the difficult task developer 704Games has been trying to overcome for years. The subtleties that make the real thing so thrilling for spectators is often lost when translated into the virtual world. Oval racing is one of the hardest forms of motorsport to make an entertaining game.

Nascar heat 5 review