Honestly, there's not too much to say about this one. It's really fun. Personally, I think I had a more fun with Unbound and I would say that is overall the better game, but this one isn't too bad either. I got it for really cheap, like $5, but I wouldn't have ever paid more than $25 for it. If you like arcade racers, you're bound to enjoy it.

Unbound had better gameplay, graphics, and customization in my opinion, but Heat definitely has the better story. The story isn't even anything crazy, but the characters are actually likeable, unlike in Unbound. I had to turn off the voices in Unbound but here, I actually enjoyed what was there and found myself getting lightly invested in the story.

The things that really drag this title down are the cops, which are absurdly intense and pretty much require getting a mod unless you know where all the jumps are, and the weird issue with HDR that results in causing a black screen on some systems. Thankfully there are workarounds for both of these issues, but it's really unfortunate that they exist in the first place.

There was hardly any stuttering. After a driver update there were some shader compilation stutters, but the experience was mostly very smooth which is PARAMOUNT for a racing game.

The soundtrack is ass, just like pretty much every modern NFS game. I would highly recommend just playing your own music in the background during gameplay instead. Sometimes, when the weather in-game was stormy, I would just keep the music off and listen to the sound because it was pretty nice.

Got a good 15 hours out of it, which is just about all I need from a racing game every now and then. Had a good time! There are plenty other races to do and collectibles and cars to collect... I'm far from 100%. I feel like I got what I needed out of it by completing the main story, though.