Heat: Tunnel Vision Review

If starting locations for cars 9-12 are any indication, Tunnel Vision is the second, but not final, Heat expansion. Broad strokes, it does a lot of what Heavy Rain did: add a player's worth of components, introduce a new garage mechanic, and drop a double-sided track with a new feature. It's a good formula, and Tunnel Vision improves upon its predecessor in every way, including the player color (everyone knows purple is better than orange).

The garage cards are clearly the apex of Heat power creep, but I have trouble finding anyone that's angry about it. Drafting gives you an extra 1-3 movement that has to end in a spot you can slipstream from—obviously up to 5 extra moves (speed-free to boot) is one of the best things you can grab in Heat, but it's such a comparatively minuscule part of the deck that you're only likely to see it in a championship campaign, where it'll get snagged by somebody in the back of the pack. I'm here for anything that elevates the butt of a 4-hour experience.

That's all well and good, but you're buying Tunnel Vision for the new Netherlands and Spain tracks. Netherlands gives Heavy Rain's Mexico but with a standard heat and stress setup—chicane, turn, and straightaway, with everything rearranged in an order that justifies its existence. Spain is just madness, a 109-space single lap with a bit of everything except Heavy Rain's water, but most notably the tunnels that prevent end-of-turn discards. The sheer volume of information it asks you to parse without an initial lap to refine your approach will kick your teeth in if you're not an aficionado, but I love it as a real challenge for … heatheads? metal pedalers? … to throw down on. Just like in Heavy Rain, I'm torn on the tracks—on the one hand, I wish I had two maps with the headline feature, but I get that some people are only going to get one expansion, and it's nice to include a track that's a change of pace from the base game without adding the extra overhead of a rules-changing effect.

My (albeit minor) issue with Tunnel Vision rears its head when you try to run the AI Legends cars. We didn't get cards that include the purple and orange cars we got in the expansions.  Okay sure, so you just have a person use the expansion cars, no big deal. The big problem is how wonky they are on these maps. They do absolutely insane stuff with the aggressive Legends taking 2 or 3 corners at a time, with the opportunity to take them at 3 over the turns' limit. I loved the Legends module because it easily simulated the people you were short to make a full track while still acting within the bounds of believability, but when you get them going through turns in a way that'd take a full engine of heat and properly timed tires upgrade, I have Mario Kart AI rubberbanding flashbacks. Let's not even mention ignoring weather on top, and instead leave it at me telling you weather and Legends are mutually exclusive on these. Does it kill the expansion for me? Of course not. I just wish we got a disclaimer that said such.