NASCAR Heat: Alright, but that's it

I'm a big fan of racing games and the selection of good racing games on mobile devices is very limited. At the end of last year, I found out about a NASCAR game, named NASCAR Heat. It felt very decent to start with, but there are a few things missing or wrong in the game for me to enjoy it 100%. Here are 4 things I dislike about this game.


1. The upgrades are worthless :(

One of the main things I felt disappointed about, is how disappointing the upgrades are. I don't really feel any improvement in the car (Level 0 -> 9/10). For example, I've tested a slow ride against my own ride. Both are limited to 195 MPH on the first Daytona event (No slipstream, no pushing), which seemed awkward with the presence of a level 10 engine in my own ride, compared to the #00 Landon Cassill 2019 ride with level 0 engine. How in earth does that make any sense? What is the value of the upgrades if there isn't any clear benefit of doing it?


2. AI is worked out weird

The AI seems to be worked out in a weird way. The leader breaks away from the pack in a 2-lap Daytona event very frequently, which doesn't make sense at all. On some other tracks, they have no speed at all, which makes it easy (and difficult to complete the missions).

Especially the speeding leader is a bit of a let down. The leading car should not be able to break away that easily, in a way you can never catch up on it.


3. Game relies heavily on gold

Another thing that disturbs me, is how much the game relies on you spending gold. If you are a big fan of a big NASCAR driver, you'll need gold to buy one or more liveries of him/her. It's a shame, as the amount of gold in-game is very limited and you will need to rely on luck getting them. The cars you can buy with in-game currency are limited, but not too hard to buy.

For example, buying a level 10 part will cost you 490 gold coins. To instantly install that bought part, will cost another 1.000 coins. That would mean it would cost you an easy €/$60. In-game currency will put you down an staggering 367.000, with an installation time of 24 hours.


4. What is the purpose of shuffling missions if you get the same ones?

One of my biggest frustrations, is how repetitive missions seem to be. Especially ones combining high and low passes in one race, is somewhat too much. But the biggest frustration I've had, is getting the exact same missions after a shuffle. Some tracks are easier to race on than other tracks, so I'd like different kind of missions on different kind of tracks.