[h1]Hard to hate Street Heat, but too simple to satisfy[/h1]
[i]Street Heat[/i] has a slick UI, and is simple but effective in design. The art direction of it is something I respect quite a bit, and it complements the gameplay considerably. The edges of the tracks are overcast in shadow, drawing your attention towards the track itself. The tracks are contrasted in white, with a few primary colours distinguishing one course from the next. Your vehicle is easy to keep track of against the spotless road beneath.
The controls feel refined and the gameplay is engaging enough. The AI is definitely challenging (apart from when they get stuck of objects), and I could see it taking a reasonable amount of time to get good enough to consistently win against them. The courses are nothing particularly complicated, but the game-feel itself makes up for this, as its satisfying just to drift around the circuits. I'd expected some kind of weapons to be available, seeing as the title [i]does[/i] claim to be a 'combat racer', but such a feature doesn't go much further than trading paint and occasionally pushing opponents off the edge of the track to their untimely demise.
The thing is, the game doesn't provide much in the way of content. There are only a handful of tracks which don't do much to set themselves apart from one-another, and beyond racing circuits in a 'first to 20 points' scenario, there's not a whole lot to do. On top of this, even though I only played the game for roughly half an hour, I still encountered a number of glitches. They were;
[b]G L I T c h E s[/b]
[list]
[*]Upon starting one of the races, all of the AI immediately veered to the right and into a wall. They proceeded to drive into the wall for the remainder of the race, giving me a free win.
[*]At the beginning of another race, all of the opposing cars spawned within each other on the same space in the starting grid. They were all locked in place for the duration of the race, and droned a deafening tire squeal until the race was over.
[*]Booting up the game seemed to give me 80% of the achievements. I don't know whether or not this was a glitch or a gift from the developer, but it certainly bypassed having to grind for some of the more time-consuming achievements, so I'm grateful for that.
[/list]
I'm yet to try out 4-player couch competitive, but the game didn't seem to be accepting my keyboard as a valid input. Seeing as I don't own multiple controllers, I'm not sure whether I'll get the chance to try this mode out anyways. It would likely be fun for a little while, but after a few rounds we'd probably switch to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/302710/BlazeRush/] BlazeRush [/url] anyways, which - unlike this title - is a game I can wholeheartedly recommend. With the bugs and minimal variation, Street Heat just ends up being a below-average title.
3.5/10
