NASCAR Heat 2 Career Details Revealed

[BurghFan]

GameInformer has posted full details on Career mode for NASCAR Heat 2, which includes the addition of rivalries and momentum. Make sure to watch the new Developer Diary video while you're there.

• The career mode starts in the truck series. As you go through your initial season you'll get Hot Seat Race offers in the next series. Meet the criteria in these and you could get an offer to jump up to Xfinity at the end of the year. When you accept a contract with a team, you take over one of their cars and replace that driver. Overall, there are no driver retirements, and the other drivers will stay in their series and do not migrate up with you.
  
• You can race in multiple series at once, and even do a multi-series race weekend if the schedule aligns.
  
• You can stay in the same series if you want.
  
• Brad Keselowski stopped by the Monster Games office and helped the team with one big aspect of NASCAR Heat 2: Driver rivalries and friendships. Both are naturally formed by how you treat drivers on the track.
  
• The rivalry system has a ramp-up period so you're not going to see a driver go crazy if you have one run in. Tempers will boil over, however, the more you go at it. Driver relationships cool off somewhat between seasons so rivalries and bad feelings between drivers are not permanent. The studio says it wants to also make it so large wrecks at a plate track, for instance, don't make you a bunch of enemies just because you got caught up in The Big One.
  
• You also get driver feedback from Keselowski and others via a message system, both as a way to help you and give some driver flavor to the mode. Messages about your rivalry status with a particular driver pop up after races.
  
• Monster is currently working on other ways to involve the drivers in your career.
  
• Team momentum is earned by strong finishes at the track from week to week. The idea is your strong performances lift your team members and crew ultimately giving you stronger, better performing cars.
  
• In general, the longer you stay with one team, the better that team gets. This allows you to build and improve one of the lower-ranked teams in real life. This replaces the last game's facilities upgrade function.

Click here to view the article.

[Godgers12]

Only thing I don't like is that drivers don't migrate up the ranks with you.

[Turbojugend]

I like this. On the surface it sounds a lot closer to 06, which is one of the best NASCAR career modes out there.

[brandon27]

This sounds promising. I'll give them that.


Love the addition of the rivals. If executed properly, it can add an awful lot to career mode. I LOVED this feature back in the old EA game.


Career progression or team building seems... odd to me. Last year we spent race winnings on upgrading the team. It wasn't perfect by any means, no doubt. This new system of progression and team momentum though seems even stranger of a choice. So, basically the game dictates progression now based on your results? No control or input from the user at all? Not so sure I like the sounds of that. I guess it depends how it all works. Looks like you're still going to earn race winnings and such, but it just does things on it's own? Surprised they didn't really elaborate on how that works a bit more.


I like the new paint scheme creator. While it's not a full blown paint scheme editor, it's at least some custom creation options to style your car a bit. Looks a bit limited to certain stripe patterns, logos and such, but something basic and still customizable is better than nothing.


Also like that you aren't forced to progress up to Xfinity, or Cup. If you want to be a career truck driver, do it. I like that. I hope however, that once you do jump up to say... Monster Cup, you can at least drop back down to Xfinity or Trucks the following year. Hope it doesn't stop you from going backwards if you chose to. I have hope that it will let you do that though since the article said you can still run truck and Xfinity races from Cup if the weekends align and you have an offer. I do though hope that you can take a contract in a lower series at the end of the year if you so desired.


I see that Brad is back helping again this year, and if IIRC he helped last year too. I'm surprised he agreed to come back though considering the game had him last year always finishing in the back of the pack it seemed, especially after the 2017 update. lol


All that being said, sounds and looks like a nice set of additions to career mode. Career got pretty boring last year once you leveled yourself up and maxed out upgrades, so this stuff should really help in that regard I'd think. However, they've got to get the game running and performing better on track visually (framerate needs to go way up, consistently), and the handling needs to be much better with the controllers, in addition to customizable driver aids, not having them locked to a preset "normal" or "simulation" driving style. That's the stuff I'm still waiting to hear.

[IceyJester]

So pretty much they are copying nascar total team control from 06?


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[brandon27]

Quote: Originally Posted by IceyJester

So pretty much they are copying nascar total team control from 06? Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

In a way, yeah. That's not a bad thing though. I was a big fan of how that game worked with the Whelan modified cars, trucks, busch, cup. Rivals. It was pretty damn awesome structure to a career mode.

[pk500]

Quote: Originally Posted by IceyJester

So pretty much they are copying nascar total team control from 06? Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

Let's hope not. Total Team Control was an absolute joke, a arcadish, WWE-style "feature" that ruined NASCAR 06. A shame, as NASCAR Thunder 2005 was an outstanding game with a superb career mode.

[mdiggitydawg]

I look forward to seeing how this career mode plays out, what I am very nervous about after just watching their Twitch stream is that damage doesn't cause the cars to be effected much at all and that the player driven cars can simply motor past AI too easily.
Granted I joined the stream late and they did not answer the question regarding which settings they were using, but looked troubling.

Hoping very badly for a great game to warrant me purchasing a T150 and playing