Hello everybody and welcome to another game review. Today, we're looking at Heatwarped, a racing game produced by Sealime. From what I understand, the team is made up of people known for making mods for the Need for Speed games. This is important when we dive into the review.
As of right now, the game is only available in demo form. The demo actually only released a couple of days ago, so there's not a lot to go off right now. It's not every day that we play games in their demo form before they actually released, but I wanted to get this quick review up because of how interesting it seemed to me.
If It Looks Like Need For Speed Underground 2...
This entire game is a blatant homage to Need for Speed Underground 2, which you can easily tell right from this screenshot right here, which is literally exactly where you start the game off without even moving the car.
2000's era flip-phone, GPS arrow, trail effects out of the taillights, and the general night time vibe of the game. Just like when I reviewed Connie and the Essence of Chaos, this entire game is instantly about as blatant as you get with how it pays tribute to the game it models itself after.
To this day, Need for Speed Underground 2 is one of the most beloved racing games of all time. And it certainly was of that era. If you were anyone growing up with sixth-generation console, you had either Need for Speed Underground 2, or Midnight Club 3, or perhaps even both! Alternatively, you may have also had that street racing game with the initials SRS. That one.
The point is that just about everyone who played video games of this era will instantly be taken back to the time they grabbed their car, tuned it to the point of no longer resembling the base model and went out to have stupid fun.
Sounds Like Need For Speed Underground 2...
As is the case with any street racing game, you're able to customize your car with all sorts of vinyls, body kits, performance upgrades, and things like underglow neon lights that do nothing other than make the car look cooler. From just the hour of content you get in the game, you can already see that the core gameplay loop is exactly like the actual Need for Speed Underground 2. You start with a car in its stock form, win races to get more money and gradually upgrade your car to the point of insanity. It's all 2000's tuner culture to the max, which is exactly what the identity of the series was at this point.
When I say that Heatwarped is a clone of Need for Speed Underground 2, I mean that both lightheartedly and unreservedly. The game's overworld map (while obviously not all drivable) is definitely based on the map from that game, specifically the Beacon Hill area. You can find pickups on the map, and you use it as an excuse to drive all over the place and have fun. You can go to shops (or the 'shop' since the demo only has one, but that will surely change in the full game) to upgrade the car.
Unlike the games it's based on, Heatwarped does not use any licensed cars, which is to be expected given who the developers of the game are. This isn't exactly a multi-million dollar team with the ability to buy licensing rights, but it is made by a team of modders. When the game does eventually release, there will definitely be mods to replace the lookalikes with their actual models.
In typical non-licensed car fashion, the game makes no attempt to disguise what these cars are actually based on. Anyone who's played either Underground game will instantly recognize that car in the screenshots in this review as the Nissan 240SX as it's available in both games (it's the only car you're able to drive in the demo). The developers at Sealime know this, so they decided to have a bit of fun with it.
And Plays Like Need for Speed Underground 2...
How is the actual driving though? As you can probably predict, the driving in the game feels like Need for Speed Underground 2. Just like the original game, it can be characterized by going fast, finding shortcuts, and all of the cars somehow managing to magnetize themselves back to you after a major crash so you can never be too comfortable. Driving in the demo was generally quite enjoyable, and I didn't find the races to be too challenging. There's only about an hour of races, but you'll get a good taste of content from that hour.
Copy-pasted over from Underground 2 is the game's Circuit, Sprint, Time Trial, and Drift modes, which all play basically exactly as they did in the original game. Weirdly though, Heatwarped does not contain the Drag races from both Underground games. I don't know if this is because it's a demo or if the Drag races were just the worst part of the Underground games (they were), but the other modes are here to stay. The Drift races even still have the same multiplier thresholds and mechanic of doubling your score in the yellow zones. You can replenish nitrous the exact same way you did in Underground 2 (perhaps the HUD is a big indicator that the game plays like Underground 2), and the sense of speed in the game is really nice.
What is entirely original though is that races are actually ranked, and you unlock new races by getting a better rank in the races (or at least that's what the demo tells me, I don't know if the demo actually implemented any of these), so the events aren't a simple one-and-done like they are in actual Underground 2, perhaps implying that each individual event will serve more of a purpose than simple game completion. I don't know how to feel about these yet, but I appreciate the attempt to bring something original to your Underground 2 clone.
... It's Probaby Need for Speed Underground 2
If you've made it this far into the review, you know what Heatwarped is. It's a clone of Need for Speed Underground 2 through and through. If you enjoyed that game, you'll find something to love in the demo. It obviously still needs a lot of work to be done, but I would say that this game is worth paying attention to when it finally releases.
As of now, the demo can be downloaded on Steam.
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