Only complaint I have for these old NFS games really is the implementation of analog throttle. It doesn't map just power to input, but also revs. So if you hold it, say, halfway, you gain revs more slowly, but stop at the middle of the rev range, and it just stays there, in an unnatural way. Don't remember if it was like this on PC aswell, but I think at least III was. High Stakes I barely played on PC.
This game's soundtrack and atmosphere are just about unmatched[...]
I just think they shouldn't have gone full electronic with the soundtrack. Every NFS before had a mix of Electro and Rock, which is better for suiting different tastes. I like the electronic music in other NFS games, but on High Stakes there aren't many I like, and with nothing but them it's a problem for me. Still playable, but I think if I go back to it, I might make a playlist to play in the background, with some songs from previous NFSs, and a few from High Stakes too, but not many.
[...] It's a big turnaround from NFS3, where the PC version was vastly superior.
Except for the reflections. I think they were too specific on PC, where it's obvious it's static and reflecting some stuff not correctly, like for instance as if there's trees in the road right behind you.
On PS1 it was more generic, just some lights, similar to Gran Turismo, but as your car sped-up it started moving. It's still just a static image, but as it moves back lenght-wise on your car it creates a nice illusion and improves the sense of speed.
Shame they scaled that back on High Stakes... it still did that on tunnels, right? But I think not on the rest of the track. Although I guess that may work better, as there's nothing on the rest of the world that matches the reflections right that would move like that.
Not some Toyota's CM. Very recently one of their accounts said the brand wasn't on Heat because cars do ilegal things there. They took no time deleting the tweet.
We seriously need a nice retro inspired racing game with FICTIONAL cars, like GTA, or the first two Midnight Club games. Just so the game could have any car it wanted. Fictional tracks too, but inspired on real tracks and tracks from popular retro racing games.
If I had time it's definitely something I wanted to research, but my biggest worry would be the physics, because that is the most important part of it and I have no idea how hard it can be to properly program it. It could be simple, but should be convincing, like the PS1 era NFS and Gran Turismo games. If it was like those, it would already be better than modern NFS games at least.
I really wanted to play Heat with the Unite and handling mod, but for some reason it doesn't work, it doesn't open the game, just opens the Origin window. I bought the game on Origin even though I have Game Pass Ultimate, I uninstalled EA Play I even have a new NVMe with a fresh install of Windows, never having installed EA Play, just to be sure. I took ownership of the Origin folder, the game folder, the Frosty Manager folder, nothing works.
