Was the NASCAR Heat Series That BAD? 

How would you rate the NASCAR Heat series of the 2010s?

The Heat series were slowly improving until Motorsport Games took the fucking NASCAR gaming license away

I juat get so mad with the physics of the heat games sometimes. Especially when racing the AI. They rarely make any mistakes and have less tire wear it seems. The multi-player was amazing in heat 5 imo though

The biggest selling point for this series, no matter what anyone says, is the fact that they included a full field of real Xfinity and Truck Series drivers, something that EA can’t claim. I truly enjoyed the series and it got better with every single edition. With how the series was going, it makes me wonder what the series would be like today if it stuck around.

I was not too big of a fan of 1-3, but 4 and 5 were really enjoyable for me

Heat 4 was my favorite. I didn't get 5 or ignition. Could only imagine what could have been if 704 didn't rush a game every year. If they made DLC in between giving them 2years to make a solid game.

It wasn't bad, but you can hardly tell the games apart from each other. No major improvements or changes were made

Another thing to add is that the timing of the release 2016 to 2020 the late gen 6 era a lot of things changed in that time stages the mustang camaro bodies new tracks new team's with the heat games you had a reason to buy each game

My opinion on the reboot NASCAR Heat Series: NHE - bad physics NH2 - only good thing was Xfinity and Trucks. Xfinity is more fun to play. NH2 is step up from NHE NH3 - eh, okay. The ping pong was still annoying and apron stuff NH4-NH5 - I really like it! Custom schedule was my favorite part of the games

For me, with the name, I still prefer the early 2000's NASCAR Heat series over the recent releases. Mainly, because, in my opinion. The replay system is far better, you can switch to other cars. The recent games, close enough to those early games. Is the highlights. In "full replay", it's just the player car.

The devs have actually taken time away from Ignition to work on a dlc for Heat 5. Now you can drive the next gens for 10 bucks on console.

I wound up liking Heat 2 more than Heat 3, and then Heat 4 was and still is one of my favorites of all-time. Dirt to Daytona was the blueprint for Heat Evolution and gets looked at with rose-tinted glasses.

Haven’t played or bought a console Nascar game since I started iRacing in 2010. Never looked back

The problem is that you can only do so much with the Unity game engine. Unity is just not that good. One thing people overlook is that the Cup cars, Xfinity cars, and Trucks all handled exactly the same except for the speed difference.

I only played Heat 2 from the Heat series. I've played NASCAR games on and off throughout the years from the N64 games, Chase for the Cup in 05. A couple in the 09 - 12. Heat was okay? Honestly with seeing what Heat 4 ended up, maybe picking that up now that it's probably on sale doesn't sound half bad. Great video!

Heat 4 is what got me into nascar along side watching in 2020 for the first time. I have a love for it but again don’t really have the previous to look at this with next to. To me they’re fine they do the job and are playable. Obviously plenty of room for improvement, but I still play 5 to this day and never bought ignition

As a 14 year old, I loved all of them besides Heat Evolution. I NEVER understood the hate Heat 5 got. I LOVED Heat 5 and easily put 100+ hours into it. It is 1000000% better than Ignition 21 could ever dream of being. I loved Heat 2 especially, as it and Nascar 15 were my go-to as an 8 and 9 year old. Exploited the heck out of the pause button glitch in Heat 2 as well.

Loved it! I wish they kept making them, so fun, every track with trucks, Xfinity, and cup. Amazing series! NASCAR Heat evolution was really good I thought

4 I think was the best. 4th gear for custom setups at super speedways could be adjusted. Where on 5 it is fixed to 1.00

I want the NASCAR heat game that came out in 2017-2018 when Lowe's was a sponsor

The only Heat game I have is 4, and that was because the season pass had Jeff Gordon in it. I play it ever once in awhile, but it really doesn't compare to the old EA Sports NASCAR games I grew up playing on my PS2...

Granted the Heat series aren’t really my cup of tea since I’m more for full on sims than the sim-cade the Heat games r. But my time playing em, I only played Heat Evolution and then 4 and 5. I played Evolution quite a bit when I got it, I think it was a Christmas gift, but then just put it down completely after thinking this just garbage. Plus I was slowing on my journey of becoming a Sports Car after watching IMSA quite a bit and was addicted to the Project Cars games. Didn’t even touch and 2 and 3, and then later on bought Heat 4 and that was main NASCAR game I played since all I had was a PS4 and Xbox One, but couldn’t play any of the older games on em. Though 4 still had its ups and downs for me playing mainly solo. Was still fun to play but also very frustrating, I think AI would do some weird things if I remember, wasn’t completely immersed with it, physics were just eh, plus running dirt late models you’d just be able to completely dominate the race a lot of the time. I remember racing Charlotte Dirt Track and just lapped the entire field on max difficulty. Heat 5 came out I was hoping would be a lot better that 4 and in some cases it was, but it was just 99% just copy and paste and then eventually got away from NASCAR gaming, cause again I’m more of a sports car fan. I’m basically the meme of (looking at NASCAR) “this is great and all” (looks over to IMSA, WEC, ELMS, ALMS, GTWC) “but I like this.” Played the hell out of Project Cars 2, then when I got a proper GAMING PC I slowly migrated from console to PC gaming and once I finally got a racing wheel I got addicted to sim racing like Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, and of course iRacing.

Decent Series. This should be at least a Blueprint for the Next Companies who want to buy the License. Until then, we can always use those GOATed NR2003 Mods…

Heat 4 was something else 🔥🔥

While Nascar Heat 4 and 5 weren’t exactly great games, they’re far from the worst Nascar games to ever be released (especially compared to games like NTG2011, Heat Evolution, and 21 Ignition). But it’s just unfortunate that the games never caught up to our standards. Especially since the emergence of iRacing and NR2003 modding blew the Heat games out of the water

Rating every nascar heat games by 704 Heat evaluation: 6.5/10 I enjoyed it and I thought it was a decent start. Heat 2: 10/10 I personally loved the fact how they said let’s add the trucks and the xfinity series to the game, I think they had a lot to improve but it was still enjoyable. Heat 3: 3/10 it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t fun as the previous two but reason why I gave it a 3 is because they actually remember that Johnny suater existed and it was Ryan reeds final game appearance. Heat 4: 10/10 I loved this game, it was good, fun, enjoyable, the challenges would give you race wins to use in races, I’d say they really topped it. Heat 5: 10/10 It was amazing, it’s another masterpiece like heat 4 and 2, I like the idea of customizing your own schedule for cup, xfinity, trucks, and for a nonexistent series. I personally think this game was well made.

I think it’s a big red flag (ha), that the best Madden and Nascsr games were made over 17 years ago now. Honestly, most companies would probably face some kind of class action lawsuit for destroying their own product this much by now.

IMO Heat 5 is probably the best NASCAR game from the past decade, even though it did take 1-2 years too many to get there. The only real issue I have with the series is the driving physics, especially on road courses. I have genuinely played 3DS games that have more realistic driving physics than the Heat series ever did. Granted, I know Unity is not meant for sim racing at all, and I know that the Heat series was never meant for super ultra realistic physics, but it gets very tough to overlook sometimes.

I still play heat 4 to this day, I didn’t want to waste my time buying 5 which is almost the same. I will play it until a new, actually decent game comes out

I really cant say much about the heat games because i dont really have much time in them. I played 14 and 15 and now thst im on pc i play nr2003 which i absolutely love

Never forget the Nascar Heat 4 trophy when you won in Nascar Heat 5 the first few weeks after launch.

I worked at GameStop when the heat games were coming out. I rented evolution, 2, and 3 after preordering a copy and I canceled my preorder after trying each one for only an hour. Heat 4 was the first one I actually purchased and my wife bought me 5 after I left GameStop. I still go back and play 15 though on pc for the paint booth.

I still play the old EA NASCAR games including Dirt to Daytona on the ps2... I have the NASCAR Heat Ultimate edition on the Nintendo Switch and my biggest flaw is that you can't adjust your car like wedge, camber, springs, gears you name it and I rarely play it because of the stages and the playoffs... But playing the old NASCAR games on the ps2 still gives me great nostalgia!

Not really a nascar fan, but i've always been atracted to it, and bought a force feedback steering wheel setup, then bought a lot of games compatible with it. And already had a ton of fun and thrills with nascar heat 5, dunno if there's still multiplayer u can do w it it. But so far, when i feel the nascar itch i can tons of joy still to get out of it. Think of getting the iracing nascar stuff, which is expensive, but why bother if i have nascar heat 5. So I think that can wait for now, i'll get it when i finally feel like trying nascar multiplayer and with max realism settings.

I only joined with Heat 5 after playing several sims, including the F1 series, Project Cars, Assetto Corsa and others. While not a deep sim game, I liked the simplicity of it and it gave me just what I was looking for. Slightly simplified, action packed oval racing, and I was absolutely content with it: There may be better games out there and I never played iRacing, but I am content with what I got.

I remember when everyone hated heat and played nascar 15 instead, and I remember when those Eutechnyx games were out everyone liked the EA games.

I have Heat 5, and for the most part, it's a fun game, except for the fact that if you have the damage turned on full and you nose into the wall, it's pretty much insta-death. Also the Superspeedway racing is incredibly difficult! It's not the fact that I don't like a good challenge, but you have be just right in the draft or they run off and leave you and it just seems the A.I is WAY over powered at those tracks! Plus, if you enrage the competition, they seem to care more about wrecking you than actually racing and they seem to get these weird speed boosts when they're rivals as well! I know it sounds like I'm complaining alot, but they're actually minor issues, most of the tracks are really fun to race on, especially Michigan, Auto Club, Homestead, and Kansas, heck even the road courses are fun, so long as you mind your P's and Q's!

NH2 was tolerable and NH3-NH4 was enjoyable enough to run about 7 seasons in career. The barebones features, shotty damage model and rubber banding of the pack did limit it. NH5 was kind of copy paste but I still played it. Evolution I don't need to comment on lol. I'm waiting for the community modded Nascar 2024 floating around online.

At the end of the day, which NASCAR PC game would you suggest to someone mostly interested in physics realism of the simulation? Thanks!

The main thing I hated was crash physics. The way you would hit a wall and then just snag on it looks super unrealistic and uncool. The same goes for when you do a blowover, hit the ground, and do flips that aren’t close to believable. I think I would have loved these games if the physics were a mix of nascar 2011, nascar 2015, new 2003, and dare I say some of the crashes weren’t to bad in nascar 21.

I think the heat series was just straight up underwhelming. 21 Ignition on the other hand is awful

I played evolution 2 or 3 years after it came out and I didn’t think it was that bad. The worst part was the pinballing in between the Ai. but other than that it was totally playable. The Ai was better than the demolition derby of NASCAR ‘15

Well... i would agree with you on heat 4 & 5 except this last update on 5 (the game i played the most) completely ruined it for me... i can't even play... it crashes immediately after launching.. redownloading doesn't help...

The 704 Games logo is elite. It incorporates all three numbers while repping the Charlotte area code

I would LOVE to see code masters give nascar a try

I can’t speak to 1-4 but I picked up heat 5 a couple years ago. I still like to play it now when I’m not iracing. I really enjoy doing the online lobbies

Still run a league on heat 5. League racing has been great with some connection issues here and there. Just wish the career was more worth it

Also, IDK why after Heat Evolution, they don't have a few NASCAR drivers in their ads.

What i really liked on nascar 21 more than heat series games, on replays you can switch to other drivers on heat games you cant. i really liked that feature to the game.

I feel like the NASCAR heat games got a little better after each game like the first one wasn’t really good but four and five are actually really enjoyable

I enjoy Heat 2-4 the most and still play them wish they didn't have auto baking in Heat 2 and 3. Motorsports Games killed Heat 5 if you got the Ultimate Edition like me on console. The 2022 season patch destroyed the game with all the 2020 skins that got delete HOW do you take away payed content. For what Monster Games had and work with. I'm glad IRacing pick them up and still making great games.

I played the ever living heck out of every game until the newer one released, so here are my takes: Heat Evolution: 5/10. Worst for the first, but it was sort of expected knowing we had a newer license. Of course there was many issues with it, but i think if a person just wanted to walk in and maybe spend a few hours on it, the only issue Id tweak would be the physics (sense it felt like a high-speed tank). Though one thing that Id like to mention is even how bad the career mode is, it was actually the only Heat game to have a pre-race intro; never understood why they didn't use it for the future titles. Overall, an okay start. Heat 2: 8/10. I loved playing this way too much and is therefore one of my favorite not only Heat games but Nascar games. I honestly dont know what it was. Maybe it was the awesome soundtrack, or the colorful visuals, or the additions with Truck and Xfinity, the best damage model of the series, the popping liveries of the cars- I just dont know! But honestly, idc. I loved it. Of course it had some issues like the ping-pog and the apron, but they never annoyed me that much. Well....that was until... Heat 3: 6.5/10. Holy s### this thing looks ugly as hell. Heat 2 may have been more pixelated but even then it still looked better than this. Nighttime was better but the daytime just looked so dang dull. Enough with the visuals, this was the game that where the pingpong and apron glitches started to frustrate me- even as a kid I wondered why they didn't fix it. Which also hindered a ton on the new dirt series to which I thought it was okay........... when I wasnt getting slammed by the pingpong. Of course it still had positives like another great soundtrack and 360 cam, but other than that the game was just decent imo. Hopefully the next one will be bette- Heat 4: 9.5/10. ..oh Dale yeah. This is as close as to a Nascar game from the early 2000's can get, and it's fantastic. The best visuals in a Nascar game up to date, the racing, the sounds, the career mode, multiplayer (ESPECIALLY at the superspeedways), the extra content, no more pingpog or apron glitch etc. It's just so dang good! This was the time people were getting fed up with the amount of mediocre games Nascar was releasing, even if thebHeat series was steadily getting better (well...to most people), and I think everyone was very blinded by that frustration- sure it was another improvement but it didn't seem to do much justice to people. Though im very glad to see people recognize Heat 4 being much better than most thought it was. Though it wasn't perfect, and maybe a possible hot take here cuz I dont know anyone else who have gave an opinion on it, but the soundtrack is probably the weakest so far. Maybe ill re-listen to it but I probably know only 1 or 2 songs that I actually enjoyed from it. So... that means Heat 5 just needs to learn from it and try their best to improve on it without screwing it up! .....right? Heat 5: 8/10. I mean... It's not a screw up but I didn't mean to copy the dang thing. Now I haven't played any of the older games like '07-'08 or Nascar '13-'15, but one thing that always irritated me the most was how to visuals were always the same. Though Im sure those games were at least decent (def not '08 though), but Im only going off of observation. However, if the game looks and feels the same yet it improves on other aspects from the previous title, then ill let it slide. So does Heat 5 accomplish that? Ehh....nahhh. Again, it still has the great gameplay, visuals, and other great aspects, but outside of it.... feels like empty space. The title screen is just confetti that goes away every minute, the main menu background pulls something from Heat Evolution with instead of cool clips it's back to just showing cars every 10 seconds but with a less appealing background, I actually dont think any song from the soundtrack stood out to me this time, etc. But why was everything so lazy and boring to look at no- *oh...* *it's the company that likes to cut costs...* Now of course it was MG's first try at a Nascar game just like 704 with Heat Evolution (which is why I like to call H5 if Evolution was good), but we'd come to eventually know that 704 were the ones to actually manage to succeed for their future. Honestly the only addition that of course Heat 5 does have is the custom schedule for championship mode which was cool, though it was more of a cool addition rather than something that completely changes the game. Overall, by far the weirdest game of the Heat series. Im actually going to put this under Heat 2 because at least that game improved upon everything the original had. Heat 5 may still have the feel of Heat 4, but it was still a copied and lazier version of it.

I very much enoyed the heat series The addition of a full truck and xfinity field unlike the ea games is great I think they produced the best arcade super speedway racing i belive theyre the only games to have side drafting and of course the crash physics they werent realistic at all but damn sometimes its fun to have a car flip 90 times Then heat 5 came out and was a total fail heat 4 had its problems and none of them were fixed and even felt worse for heat 5 it constantly froze up you didnt have any speed on restarts especially on superspeedways and EVERY time i was leading a race a phantom yellow would come out late causing me to loose (guess thats pretty realistic) and everytime i would hit the brakes the car would shoot to the right leaving short tracks and road course unplayable really the only thing i could play were the cookie cutter tracks And of course all of this was made even worse by the fact that 704 said they werent going to change much from heat 4 to 5 to focus on the next game heck we didnt even get a next season dlc like all the other games did In short the heat series was a series that started bad got good in the middle starred to decline by the end and then just gave up at the end

As being a former league racer in Heat 3 and 4, I feel that right now, that this series ranged from meh to pretty bad but when I had these games as a early high schooler, I was hooked on the online mode despite the amount of bullshit it usually produced especially in live streamed lobbies

Heat 5 with the 2022 update is pretty good. But just what we got to play because ignition should be criminal to even sell

when it comes to nascar and american racing whether it be dirt or pavement we need a grand trismo type of game a good well known company that takes in all forms of racing like trismo does can you imagine the graphics, playability, online play ,coop, features ,tracks, cars, series the ability to do a single race or season, career from the starter dirt track or legonds pavement to cup one to compete with iracing but on concole that is when i would be willing to buy another nascar game the last one i got was ignition 11'

Didnt have Heat Evolution 2 was okay. I mainly bought it because Derrike Cope, Joe Nemechek and Morgan Shepherd were in it 3 was better than 2. 4 and 5 were the best, but the main bummer of 5 was that it was basically a copy and paste of 4

Damn I’m so out of the loop now :( last console nascar game I played was nascar inside line 😯 then I moved to iracing and nr2003 because I moved to PC

I honestly didn’t think the heat games were that bad. Yes Heat evolution and heat 2 are the weakest but I had good times with them and still do to this day

The reputation in NASCAR HEAT was kind of messed us, for example: I pushed Ryan Blanely to a 3rd place finish and he was mad with me, I think that was dumb.

I played a ton of 3 and 5. Honestly never saw why people didn’t like them. I had pretty much been playing dirt to Daytona up until 3 came out.

I played NASCAR Heat Evolution all the time. Never really got into Heat 2 or 3. Then picked up Heat 4 at the start of the pandemic, played it a ton then enjoyed Heat 5 and still do

With the game engine that they had, the later games were decent overall with some good spots but it could’ve been so much more. As a game series, it had a lot of wasted potential.

They weren’t that bad. Obviously Heat Evolution and Heat 2 were busts but at least the games got better over time with Heat 4 and 5 being the best. Up until Motorsport Games got their grubby hands on Heat 5 and completely botched it to the point where it’s borderline unplayable.

Still playing heat 4 from time to time, either need to get heat 5 or break out the ole PS2 for some classics

I think of MSG never bought the rights to the game heat 5 would of been a improvement and heat 6 would of been fantastic. But ig we will never know

I'm so glad I still have my Dirt To Daytona because Nascar games haven't been good for nearly 20 years. (Yes EA had some playable games but still not up to what Nascar should be). Also I've been filling my racing gaming needs with World of Outlaws and I love it! Forza next month will probably have better Nascar racing than anything actually put out by Nascar lol

For good or for bad, with the recent news about the awful new Unity Engine user agreement, I don't think we will se any game like this coming ever again, even if Monster Games (aka iRacing now) gets the license back.

Whenever I want to play a Nascar game I boot up my 360 and play Nascar '14 lol. That game (and '15) are my favorite games from the last decade they aren't great by any means but better than the Heat games imo.

I never thought that there could be a worse game than Heat Evolution until 21 Ignition came out. At least Heat Evolution was playable.

I’d be lying if I said I didnt enjoy heat 2 I was also young and that was the year my guy MTJ won it all so I’m biased.

i personally and currently am playing nascar heat 5 that's my favorite one since the EA but i respect the Nascar heat Series they had to live up to the nostalgia that was nascar EA days they did a good job but was bad at times

It’s like 20% good. Honestly Nascar 14 and 15 weren’t bad. AI just needed some TLC and some other small things

After playing The World Of Outlaws game, I hope iRacing/Monster tries its luck with NASCAR games.

It was what we had and still have and we have made the best of it. It may not be the best NASCAR game series but I’ve had so damn good races, some heated moments, met a lot of trolls and met a lot of friends too.

Can you rate the previous series please. I'm not trying to spell it

I didn’t buy 5 because the reviews complained of a lot of bugs but I really liked 4. Simple but the racing could be really goodb

Compared to MSG with 21 Ignition, the Heat games were the greatest games ever.

To be fair I play literally every sports game there is from madden to nascar. And tbh I’ve never played online on any sports game bcuz of how repetitive they r. I just don’t find it njoyable. Now with that said I don’t think the heat games were a bad series by a long shot but I wouldn’t hold it on a pedestal either. Every game is gonna have their bugs and glitches that wasn’t my issue. Heat evolution for starters, the cars felt like tanks on a battlefield. Literally so tight u axtually had to get off the gas at most tracks if u didnt run custom setups. The car sounds were unbelievably unrealistic, and u couldn’t look around in the game along with no track map. Heat 2 I didn’t think was bad. I genuinely had fun with it. Wayyy better than heat evolution. Heat 3 I thought was even better. Heat 4 I had a absolute blast with. And heat 5 was a copy and pasted version of heat 4 with the updated roster and a couple of changes. Would I go back and play all of them again? Absolutely. I would’ve loved to see another heat game especially compared to wat ignition is. I think we’re being too harsh on this series considering the fact that ignition managed to out beat evolution for the worst nascar game. I think 704 games without a doubt would’ve made sum good heat games if they would’ve had a chance with 6 and possibly a 7. I want them back before I would want back EA. EA made sum good nascar games, but in their current state the last thing I would wanna see from them is a nascar game. U would probably have to pay to race a 100% race in Nashville or sumthing☠️☠️☠️but in all honesty I axtually njoyed the heat games and kinda want them back.

Heat 4 was the peak. Not great but not awful. Still replayable.

To be frank, I was so frustrated with I think it was Heat 2 for having pointless resources, i swore off NASCAR games til Heat 5...I more genuinely play Thunder 2003 even more so than anything put out after 07/08. Heat 5 is great for a quick pickup and steamroll race but it lacks in every single category. Thats the problem with fans and gamers of my age (the millennials) we were spoiled ROTTEN with the early oughts bumping out banger after banger, made it worth investing in the new game each and every time. Now.... its just sad.

I could play heat 2... I was ok with heat 3, heat 4 was the best... heat 5 is good but I have a glitch in Texas where it doesnt save my career....I still play heat 3 and 4 once in a while... ignition made me go to iracing

Would argue that 2,3,4,5 are very playable games for a casual nascar fan.....yet because the games of the past wrre so good these just couldnt compare......4 and 5 in particular have decent replayability....with a very in depth career mode....

I still enjoy and actively play Heat 5

I have a group of friends on Xbox that consistently race online on heat 5. Super fun game

I was having fun in Heat 5 winning titles with scrubs (for example, Corn Cobb in Trucks, Starr in Xfinity, and WAS gonna go for one with Brendan Gaughan in Cup) until those damn Russians went and broke a game that, to me, didn't need fixing. Getting to race online with Mikey Moobs was a personal highlight of mine. Fuck MSG. They can't go under soon enough.

nascar heat evo was indeed bad nascar heat 2 was a fix nascar heat 3 was a great upgrade nascar heat 4 was a simplified nascar heat 3 nascar heat 5 is nascar heat 4 with 2020 cars so the heat series wasn't that bad it was just how it aged

I go back to nascar 15 because AT LEAST I can actually design my own car. Plus, I think the racing is much better on that game

The NASCAR Heat series may not be the best series in the franchise, but it’s not bad. The games slightly improved time after time until Heat 5 which is the most solid, but the games were very fun (except heat Evo) and that’s all that matters

Enjoyed having dirt on a game but now we have a world of outlaws game which is 10 times better so

I still play heat 5, it’s not the best game but I still have fun playing it

Honestly I just go back to playing Inside Line or Nascar 15.

It was "ok"; Single player modes got repetitive pretty quickly & racing online with friends was decently fun, once you dodged all the trolls..."serviceable" at best.

I got NASCAR Heat 3 and thought it was a pretty good game but no where near my favorite, NASCAR 2005 Chase for the Cup

I hope NASCAR 25 goes well with its IRACING partnership

No Heat 4 and 5 were enjoyable....... only gripe I had was there wasn't enough changes from Heat 4 to Heat 5 but I really enjoyed the game

I just hated getting tookened out all the time and people choosing the black car.

Ignition really isnt terrible in online, aside from all the glitches, the racing is amazing

Yes

I have fun with heat 5 I like it alot