As we sat down with the developers, we were introduced to the prologue and beginning race of Need for Speed Heat – detailing the Speedhunter Showdown, establishing Lt. Frank Mercer’s role in the game and setting up the main storyline – however for spoiler purposes, that’s about as much as we can disclose on that front.

After a few story cutscenes and the initial introduction was complete, we were put straight into the garage with none other than Polestar One cover car. Not much was new in this preview build for us to do, performance customization was there however we had no parts to through on, same with Visual customization. Much like various cars currently available on the NFS Heat Studio app, the cover car variant of the Polestar had very few customization options, most likely due to being specifically designed by Vehicle Artist Khyzyl Saleem himself.

After we were done messing around in the garage, we were dropped into the world of Palm City during the day time and given full freedom to explore the entire map without any boundaries. We spawned atop a bridge up in the hills, coated in puddles in the late-afternoon lit up by a glary orange sky that oozed Miami vibes but also of older NFS games akin to Most Wanted ‘05 and Hot Pursuit ’10.

This hillside area inparticular was very reminiscent of the hill areas of Need for Speed 2015, with a huge valley in front overlooking Palm City in the distance, with a swampy Space Station area much further out to the right. Trust me when I say the draw distance in this build of the game was insane, covering what felt like miles worth of map on screen at once, and this was all running on a PS4 Pro much like the public demo.