A new Need For Speed Heat update is arriving later today on PS4, PC and Xbox One. Internally known as Update 1.5, this is the next update since the removal of all the pizzaz from the night race intros to improve performance.
Good news is, Ghost Games have added them all of them back, and improved overall performance on top of that.
As for new content, it’s a bit light. Two new horns and underglows with Christmas and New Year themes are added. The d-pad navigation is made more useful thanks to the quick routing feature. Now you can set a waypoint to the nearest gas station or safe house without needing to open the map. A non-issue if you play solo, but a major flaw should you be playing online with no pause feature.
Speedwalls make a comeback. Now there are leaderboards for sprint races, circuit races, off-road races and drift trials. So you can compete with your friends, not just your crewmates in crew time trials.
The most exciting new content is the Polestar 1 Hero Edition. This is the cover car- that yellow Volvo with the very big wing. You cannot re-create the look of that car by buying a regular Polestar 1 in-game- it’s as unique as the Most Wanted (2005) BMW M3 or Eddie’s Nissan Skyline from Underground. The Polestar 1 Hero Edition is now unlocked when you finish the main campaign and all driver stories.
The rest is a long list of quality of life changes and bug fixes. You can read through them all here.
Need For Speed Heat is really good– especially considering the state of the franchise throughout this whole console generation.
That said, it won’t make you come for more after you’re done with the story, and there is a demand for post-launch updates. This update is not that, but good on Ghost Games for continuing to fix the game.