The modern videogame landscape is one that is particularly hauntological, wherein the flagships of publishers are remakes of games, or ones which aim to recapture the essence of previous titles. Too, the indie world is led by titles inspired by Y2K, turn-of-the-millenium culture, replicating the graphics of early PlayStation titles down to things like vertex snapping. Racing games are unique in the manner that the genre is essentially dead in the AAA space, between dry sim-racing games and the periodical Forza Horizon release, the only source of interesting titles comes from the Indie space.

For many, the summit of racing games came in the 2000s, and more particularly, from the Canadian offices of EA Black Box, producers of Need for Speed, when it was the single most popular racing franchise in the world. There have been a number of Indie titles which have attempted to recapture the atmosphere of such games, but none have brought upon so much buzz as Heatwarped. I must admit that I initially groaned at the existence of such a game, recalling the numerous disappointing titles which have come from the Indie space and which rapidly died down whilst in early access. Yet, unlike in previous cases, I continued to hear from it; I read praise from people whose opinions I respect; all things which eventually led me to install the little hour-long demo and try it out.

The game doesn't shy away from its influences, menu environments are inspired by NFS Carbon, UI is an amalgamation of ideas from games such as NFS Underground 2, Midnight Club, and Juiced, its open world is clearly inspired by aforementioned Underground 2, and so on. With nearly every element in the game you can find a source of inspiration that is clearly referenced. Perhaps this is why I first wasn't interested in the game, when a piece of media holds its source of inspiration so tight and continually references it, even replicating it, the question that springs to my mind is: why bother? Why should I play something so clearly derivative when the original source material is easily obtainable? An answer that springs to mind is that it being derivative isn't the problem, but instead its when it derives uncritically from its influences.

Something I've noted throughout my time playing videogames, is how the primary objective one has is to make systems feel organic, to remove the feeling of there being a computer underneath it all. In racing games, particularly arcade racing games, it is to hide the underlying scripts and approximations that make up the handling of a car, to ultimately make it "feel right", to not have anything that jumps out. Take for example Race Driver GRID, a fantastic game which is dragged down by the quirks in its physics system, which, despite being tipped towards oversteer, greatly punishes going over the limit by making oversteer beyond a certain angle entirely unrecoverable, causing the driving to feel like you are constantly tip-toeing around a blurry limit. In contrast, driving in Heatwarped is a particularly fun experience. Between grip and drift, floaty-ness and snappy-ness, vagueness and precision, Heatwarped hits a fine balance between all of them. Whilst the overall feeling is one not too dissimilar to the aforementioned Black Box titles, unlike such titles, where car steering was fairly snappy, here the car has a defined steering envelope, it takes a while for steering to come into maximum effect, as the car gradually rotates mid-turn. There is less grip available overall, the car slides a fair bit, but they are slides that are born from tyre grip running out, not drifts. Where other games which have long steering envelopes, such as late Criterion titles (Most Wanted 2012, et al.), have a feeling of there being a delay to your inputs, here the car is always ready to respond to your most minute input, something helped by the camera which slides around behind the car to the inside of a given corner. Too, the game rewards good driving, the car is fairly slow at getting to high speed, so you have to maximize throughout a race, which makes driving fast a riveting experience, stakes become naturally higher as the punishment for crashing rises as you go faster. The handling of the game doesn't come from copying its source material, replicating it uncritically, funnily enough, it's also its most notable asset. My main gripes with it are the brakes, which feel mushy, strangely delayed unlike the rest of the car, and are easy to lock up; and the drift handling, which feels like constantly trying to correct a pendulum as the car rides at low RPM, it doesn't feel like actually sliding a car, you simply swing the car until momentum runs out after a bit.

Of course, the driving experience of a game goes far beyond the simple driving physics, and Heatwarped delivers in this aspect as well. "Sense of speed" has been a contentious affair in the world of racing games for a while, with the consensus being that modern racing games suffer from a lack of it. They feel slow, making the experience of driving slower cars be one that is agonizingly boring. Here, the cars feel really quick, between the dozens of light streaks present on screen at any time, motion blur covering your peripheral vision, grip becoming more limited at high speed, it is truly enthralling to drive cars fast, as your momentum mounts up, and the time to react to traffic becomes shorter. Though, one of the finest bits of the Underground duo was its sound design, the sound of wind blowing as you passed by streelights, being something sorely missing here.

Racing is fun as well, the dumb AI is charming in the way it crashes into things while also being quite fast without having to stoop to rubberbanding, you are always at risk of doing a mistake and being caught up, which makes the racing feel particularly gripping.

Customization is one of those things people continually argue about, I recall most of the discussion around Need for Speed post-Most Wanted 2012 until around 2015's reboot was continual wishes for customization to come back, while criticising competing titles such as Forza (Horizon and Motorsport) and Gran Turismo for insufficient customization. Here, it is very much in line with NFS Carbon, essentially, it is nearly exactly the same as that game, even down to its UI, with new additions such as mirror customization and bringing back custom headlights and taillights. It's very decent and fun to play with, but that's because the original source material was. Whereas the driving physics of the game were the product of influence, in this case customization was something derived from its influences uncritically.

In terms of the intangible thing that is "atmosphere", the game does well, the phone UI is nicely integrated and things like forum messages are charming and provide a decent amount of world building, the map is well designed and feels alive between the neon lights and animations of its decorative buildings, it all feels correct, it's all very appealing. The UI too, while a bit flat (biggest gripe is the generic sans serif font most of it is set in), captures the 2000s essence fairly well, even if it tries a bit too hard between its background graphics and its square display font for titles.

Really, this is the main problem with many of the derivative decisions in the game, they miss an intangible sense of completeness to them, the UI is fine, but it lacks something, an amount of taste that separates it from its original source material that it so desperately attempts to recapture and replicate. The least interesting parts of the game come when it simply copies, it loses its identity and sense of taste. There is very little worth admiring about its customization because it simply copies NFS, despite it being one of the game's draws. When it doesn't flatly copy its influences, and instead is simply informed by them, the game demonstrates an exceptional level of taste in its systems.

Something which detracts from that atmosphere is unfortunately the music, it is not very good. Featuring such things as attempts at making nu-metal, very flat jungle (close to Atmospheric Drum and Bass), a single fairly decent electro track (Liberation by vertver is a pretty fun track), some decent techno (Midnight Stage by Delta B is a decent track which is reminiscent of Underworld), all suffering from the same flaws of being shapeless tracks that don't really go anywhere, that take a while to get to the point and their point doesn't hit particularly hard, none of them really have much substance, which is a bummer. I understand music is a fairly hard thing for Indie games, musicians are expensive, music licensing is even more expensive, and you are left with either hobbyists, or youself, but it detracts from the atmosphere by feeling particularly amateur in its quality.

Ultimately though, there is promise in the game, the most important bit for a game is to be fun, and this game is very fun to play, for the hour or so I spent going through the entire contents of the demo, I was entirely immersed in the title. Yes, it is incredibly derivative, it doesn't really do anything new, but what it does, which is to unify loads of ideas from different 2000s racing games while being led by a single primary influence, it does very well. For an Indie game, it manages to capture a period surprisingly well. Though, unfortunately, it doesn't carve out its own identity, it will always be shackled to its original influences. The game can wave towards where 2000s racing games could have gone, but can never reach it, it isn't a continuation of that scene, just a recreation, a facsimile. Of course, games like that no longer exist, but when I first saw it online, I didn't think "cool new racing game", I thought "cool new Underground 2".