Game Informer: First Details & Look at NASCAR Heat Evolution
The NASCAR license has ping-ponged around, from EA having the license for a time to then Eutechnyx. Now it's in the hands of Dusenberry Martin Racing, who've renewed a partnership with the old NASCAR Heat studio Monster Games. The pair resume their partnership for NASCAR Heat Evolution (PS4, Xbox One, PC), and today the developer has released the first behind-the-scenes developer diary talking about this momentous return.
The title moved into full production on March 1, 2015. At first, it was going to use Eutechnyx's code, but it took about a month for Monster to figure out that it would be better to start over from scratch. "It was really a sports-car game not designed for NASCAR," Garcia told us when we visited the studio. "They just started gluing on NASCAR-y stuff." While Garcia says that there were definite benefits from scrapping the code and starting at zero, considering the last title Monster made was a 3DS game with Nintendo and now it would be working on new platforms, the task was a little daunting, albeit exciting.
The game attempts to straddle the line it's not a hardcore sim, but it's not without its challenge, either. While it has simulation tuning available, it also has an adaptive A.I. system (in race now and season modes) based on different track types that will ratchet up the ability of the A.I. cars as you get better. This is expressed in a Speed Rating. Monster says that the A.I. cars have been taken off of specific racing lines and have a natural racer's mentality on the track. How this meshes and behaves with the situation at hand the end of a race, going three-wide in the right corners will be a big challenge for the title. In general, the drivers will be tuned to how they perform on certain kinds of tracks in real-life road courses, superspeedways, etc. although there is a randomization quality in there as well, so A.I. drivers won't always perform the same.
Click here for more on career mode, DLC, plans for future versions of the game, as well as the first look at NASCAR Heat Evolution.
