Need for Speed Heat introduces new black market trader

New content and earlier updates bring new reasons to get back into the driver seat.

Electronic Arts has recently transferred the responsibility for the Need for Speed franchise from Ghost Games to Criterion Games, but the current part of the series is unlikely to be affected by these changes. We know this because a major update for Need for Speed Heat has arrived on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 today. You can also read the entire list of patch notes with information on several hundred bug fixes at Reddit, but we also offer you an overview of the most important things below.

The big feature of this expansion is a black market that allows us to buy two new cars. The Aston Martin DB11 Volante is free, for the McLaren F1 we have to pull out our wallets (however, the price is not yet known to us). Ghost Games served a couple of side missions and fresh sets of challenges to both vehicles, and according to the company it can last "three to five hours of play". After you are done with that tuning parts and customization options are your price. To unlock them, you must have played Need for Speed for quite a bit already and spiced up your REP-rank up to level 20 (for the paid version up to level 30 even). Ghost Games prescribes this so that the cars won't be available until the later half of the story.

And said before, other than that Ghost Games revised many problem areas and implemented some quality-of-life improvements, too. It starts with the notifications on the HUD, runs through the tuning workshop with neon lights that pulsate to the rhythm of the music, and ultimately ends in expanded control options. In addition, hundreds of bugs were removed.