Your car emits a thunderous roar as it enters the tunnel, the piercing whine of the turbocharged engine shrieking. You hear the cars behind you enter the tunnel now too, hot on your heels. The concrete walls trap the sound, bouncing it into your ears from every direction. The chorus of the engines becomes a blanket of noise, sitting heavy, claustrophobic. Then suddenly you burst out of the tunnel and into the glorious sunlight. You feel like you can breathe again and you might just win the race if you don’t spin out on the last bend.
Heat: Pedal To The Metal is back… Now with tunnels! And a few other cool things too which I’ll go into more detail on later in the review. But spoiler alert for those of you in a hurry: If you loved the original, you’ll love this. And if you’re trying to choose between the two (so far) available expansions, then this is the superior one.
So What’s New?
Tunnel Vision expansion is the second expansion in the Heat: Pedal To The Metal franchise. It comes with two new full size course maps to go with the original four. Spain is a long, single lap race through tunnels (more on the tunnel mechanic later) and is the very first track to only be recommended for just one lap. The Netherlands is a three lapper with a mix of open straights and a slalom of back to back treacherous turns. Both the maps are great fun and may be two of the best courses in the whole series.
Also included are a new car, the purple one, complete with a little purple gear stick, a set of purple basic cards and the purple game mat. This adds an extra player to take the total to 7 if this is your first expansion or 8 if you already have both the base game and the Heavy Rain expansion. I really like the colors on the new purple car and gear stick. I think it’s a nice shade of purple and having the option to play with larger player groups is always fun.
It also comes with some extra heat cards, some extra stress cards, and a load of new upgrade cards called Front Wings that contain a new mechanic called drafting. Lastly, included are extra sponsorship cards and extra event cards for more Grand Prix fun, as well as a simple to follow instruction manual explaining drafting as well as the tunnel and chicane mechanics.
How Well The New Stuff Works
I’m going to get the only negative in this review out of the way first. The tunnel mechanic on the Spain course is hard to remember to do. We’ve been playing a lot of Heat and you get into a rhythm with it. At the end of your turn, you discard as many discardable cards as you like then draw back up to 7. It’s a reflex, almost second nature. We all found it was a little bit hard to remember not to discard when in the tunnels because our muscle memory kicked in and we just did it on autopilot. Maybe we’ll get used to it but it feels like a slightly less fun new mechanic because it goes against the flow of the game to always check and see if you’re in a tunnel or not.
Other than that, the actual Spain course is awesome fun. Doing a giant single lap is really interesting and unique because all of the other tracks in the base game and expansions are multi-lap. I hope that in future expansions, they do the same thing again, maybe do the Nuremberg Ring or other long race tracks just as a single lap because it really worked well.
The chicane feature isn’t in the base game but is in the first expansion. It’s back for the other course, The Netherlands and it works really well here as it did in Heavy Rain. Chicanes are 2 corners right next to each other that both have the same speed limit. Corners create some of the most tense and exciting moments in this game so chicanes work because doubling the corners doubles the fun. It’s simple maths. It’s just a generally fun course and often one we’ll find ourselves picking.
The new drafting is a little similar to streamlining, it’s for closing the gap between yourself and the player in front. It can be used in conjunction with streamlining to really shift the tide and deliver some exciting wins from what looked like a hopeless position half a lap ago. This adds a lot of drama and excitement. Sometimes in the base game, you can get very unlucky earlier and fall a turn or two behind, it becomes very hard to catch up because you’re nowhere near other players in order to slipstream. They’re all slipstreaming each other to get further away from you while you’re at the back on your own with not a lot you can do. This can help eliminate that.
Is It Good Value For Money?
It isn’t a bargain, but it isn’t a rip off either. It is about the right price for what you get and if you’re a fan of the original and trying to weigh up the pros and cons of each because you can only afford one, this is my personal comparison on the two expansions.
- Colour of new car and cards: Purple > Orange so that’s a point to Tunnel Vision
- New Track Mechanics: Chicane is in both, Tunnels and Standing Water mechanics are both a little fiddly to remember to do so they cancel each other out making it a draw.
- New Card Mechanics: Supercool and Drafting are both really useful and fun but drafting just takes it for me so that’s a point to Tunnel Vision.
- New Courses: Personally I think the ones in Tunnel Vision are better than Heavy Rain as well as being more varied so I’ll have to pick Heavy Rain again.
So that’s Tunnel Vision the overall winner
Final Thoughts From Me
If you love the original, there is enough new stuff in this to make Tunnel Vision worth buying IMO. It’s just more of a good thing, but the new content adds variety. If you can only afford one expansion, this might be your best bet.
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