Heat: Pedal to the Metal

I’ll say the quiet part first, racing as a theme does nothing for me, I don’t watch it, I don’t care about it, and I went into Heat expecting to be lukewarm at best. Instead I’ve played it more than almost anything else I bought last year. The heat management deck, where pushing your engine too hard now costs you cards you need later, is the kind of push your luck system that actually rewards planning instead of just rewarding luck.

The rubber banding is real and I won’t pretend it isn’t. The first couple laps of most races end up not mattering that much, because slipstream and the way heat clears keep everyone bunched closer than a “pure” race would, and the whole thing gets decided in the final stretch more often than I’d like. That’s good for drama, bad if you wanted your early strategic choices to carry real weight the whole way through.

Box is bigger than it needs to be for what’s inside, I’ll agree with whoever pointed that out first, it’s mostly cards and a handful of dashboard boards and dice, and the empty space in there bugs me a little every time I pack it away. Doesn’t travel great as a result either, it’s not a small box, though the components themselves are light enough that if I did throw it in a bag it wouldn’t be the weight that’s the problem.

The dashboards have a nice tactile flip mechanism for tracking your gear and heat, satisfying little click when you slide the marker, and the cards have decent stock, don’t feel like they’ll go limp after a season of shuffling.

Four stars. Not the racing game I expected to love, but the one I actually do.