Nascar Heat 5 Reviews
The career mode is deep and fun, and when I add in the online options, season options, newly tweaked paint booth and new user interface, I'm mostly satisfied. For a short development cycle, NH5 delivers a lot of longevity, and even more importantly, a lot of fun on the track. This is a title that, even for the fringe racing fan, should see a lot of time in your rotation well into winter and beyond.
Despite a lot of the same, NASCAR Heat 5’s improvements to gameplay make it a fun swan song on the Unity engine.
Yes, the framerate is stupidly janky, killing whatever sensation of speed the game was trying to offer to players. Still, I had way more fun with this game than I could have ever expected. It aims to please a specific niche of racing fans and succeeds, mostly due to its unbelievably deep and addictive career mode.
Gameplay was a strength of NASCAR Heat 4, and that has been augmented for NH5. The play is so much fun, it helps to compensate for some of the presentation issues, and what I’d describe as a lack of creativity in other areas.
Moving all development in-house for 704Games may be beneficial down the road, but for NASCAR Heat 5, it enabled minimal changes.
Just enough newness to make it worth playing, and it remains the most complete, enjoyable package for NASCAR fans.
If you skipped last year’s NASCAR Heat 4 and are looking to pick up a new NASCAR game, NASCAR Heat 5 is the one to grab, no doubt. It is indeed the best NASCAR game to date. There’s such a small margin between them, however, that unless you’ve got a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, there’s no real reason to pick this up if you do already own NASCAR Heat 4.
Although not awful, NASCAR Heat 5 feels like a rehashed version of its already underwhelming predecessor. The small quality of life improvements do not make up for its disappointing lack of any meaningful innovation.
NASCAR Heat 5 doesn't offer up anything new, but what it does offer is a solid, enjoyable racing experience, and it does that very well.
NASCAR Heat 5 feels like the definitive edition of Heat 4, along with yearly team, roster, and track updates.
NASCAR Heat 5 has a brilliant career mode, but it raises again the question about continuing annual sport game releases.
NASCAR Heat 5 is a modest improvement over NASCAR Heat 4 in terms of performance. And unlike last year, I did not encounter any bugs. Beyond that, though, I honestly cannot tell the difference between the two games.
Including all of the NASCAR license must be a mammoth task, and while Heat 5 is an improvement over its forbearers, the overall feeling of the game is that of a vacuous slog. With no obvious USP other than the volume of cars and tracks, or magic new features that other racing games should take inspiration from, NASCAR Heat 5 is a perfunctory depiction that's enjoyable in small doses but runs out of tyres once you get past the initial stages.
Overall, the experience for NASCAR Heat 5 was fun and enjoyable with a hint of repetitively.
The evolution of the NASCAR saga has taken a step forward with this Heat 5.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Hardcore fans are the only ones that will want to suit up for this iteration.
NASCAR Heat 5 improves on the previous and successful episode adding new features and modes coupled with very well balanced difficulty modes. It's still got lot to improve in the presentation area and in the multiplayer modes too similar to the ones in previous game, but while waiting for the next-gen jump this remains a very good NASCAR experience.
Review in Italian | Read full review
NASCAR Heat 5 is a step backward for the series, but still delivers some tense and rewarding racing.
NASCAR Heat 5 is a good addition t this officialy lincensed franchise, until it breaks your heart and your savefile during the career mode.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Like going around in fun circles.