It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a sport that has seen as many changes to the overall rules as NASCAR has introduced for the 2018 season. Sure, the NFL may have modified where fair catches are spotted, and the NBA will most likely change the way the shot clock works this year, but none actually have gone so far as changing the way a game is structured and scored like NASCAR just did.
NASCAR races are now quite different than they have been for the past 5 decades. Gone are the days of hours-long snooze-fests, with only the last 30 minutes really meaning much to most folks – NASCAR has effectively broken each race into three (and in one case four) “Stages” which have their own winners and points within. This is like breaking each Sunday football game into four mini-games in which each quarter’s score is recorded as a win or a loss. 
As you can imagine, the change in race structure adds a great deal of excitement to what was the long doldrum period that existed between the starting line and the checkered flag. That, coupled with the adoption of F1-style engine reuse requirements (at least 13 engines have to be used for at least two race weekends, and if an engine has to be replaced at any point during a race weekend, the car will start at the backmost position for the main race), is forcing teams and drivers to be a bit smarter about how they drive a car around the oval.
Like NASCAR the sport, the video game NASCAR Heat 3 has seen some significant changes over the past year, while still retaining the core oval track racing experience we have come to expect (for better or worse). Monster Games once again finds themselves being the wheel, and for their third iteration they have decided to address issues behind the scenes rather than on the track.
NASCAR Heat 3 delivers a beefed-up career mode, which not only has players signing sponsorship contracts as in NASCAR Heat 2, but now allows gamers to actually helm their own team and use the money earned for R&D to better their vehicles in any of the 4 racing classes. The new career adds a bit more depth to the typical tediousness of slogging through a long NASCAR season, although the storyline they have included is a bit too much.
NASCAR Heat 3 also introduces a new racing series called the Xtreme Dirt Tour. And by new, I mean that this is a totally fictional series featuring mostly teenage drivers, in big modified dirt-racing cars, on big-name NASCAR speedways (Bristol, Charlotte, etc.) that have had their asphalt surfaces replaced with dirt. It’s the natural successor to last year’s inclusion of the Eldora Dirt Derby in the Camping World Truck Series, and it is really the highlight of NASCAR 3. I absolutely dug the combination of big-spectator event feel wrapped around the folksy, drift-heavy dirt racing. It takes the typical NASCAR fare and amps it up a notch.
Monster also included a nine control setups to give gamers a true range of control options, with three degrees each of the sim-like ‘Tight” the more standard “Neutral” and the arcade-like “Loose”. This makes NASCAR Heat 3 far more accessible for more casual gamers who simply want to bust out a few top-speed laps at Daytona and then thread the needle on a tough road course like Watkins Glen, without pinballing their way along the walls like a driver’s ed student.
Visually, NASCAR Heat 3 looks just like its predecessors, which means that it’s quite unimpressive. It has a very dated look overall, with the cars looking almost superimposed on the track, with lots of textures and scenery pieces drawing-in as the car goes around the track. Granted, there can be a couple dozen cars in view at any given time, so I’m willing to give some leniency, but compared to the likes of Codemasters’ F1 series, NASCAR Heat 3 has a lot of work to do.
The audio is interesting – It’s pretty hard to mess up the rumble of a high powered V8 and the roar of a capacity crowd, and NASCAR Heat 3 delivers in spades. The music is fantastic; all has an edgy garage-like feel that is energetic and pumping, perfect for a down and dirty driving game. There is a pit leader who speaks through the controller, constantly commenting “Clear on the Left” and “Clear on the Right” and so on. To be honest, it’s a neat gimmick, but I was more than ready to turn him off 10mins into the game.
NASCAR Heat 3 delivers a handful of noticeable improvements over last year’s model. While it still has a long way to go to appeal to the larger racing audience, NASCAR fans are sure to find a lot of enjoyment with Heat 3, especially in the new Xtreme Dirt Tour.
