The South African sun beats down on your car as it emits a thunderous roar, turbocharged engine shrieking as it skids round a corner over dangerous gravel. You feel the wheels loosen their grip on the road’s surface below. A rival car tries to use your slipstream to overtake on the bend and spins out wildly, their race over. Luckily there is only one corner to go and you know the road surface is firmer and gravel free. You shoot round it into the final straight in pole position determined to take it home.
The South African sun beats down on your car as it emits a thunderous roar, turbocharged engine shrieking as it skids round a corner over dangerous gravel. You feel the wheels loosen their grip on the road’s surface below. A rival car tries to use your slipstream to overtake on the bend and spins out wildly, their race over. Luckily there is only one corner to go and you know the road surface is firmer and gravel free. You shoot round it into the final straight in pole position determined to take it home.
Heat: Pedal To The Metal is back… Now with gravel! 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 three (so far) available expansions, then this could be the best one yet depending on how many players you play with typically.
So What’s New?
Rocky Roads is the third expansion in the Heat: Pedal To The Metal franchise. It comes with two new full size course maps to go with the original four. South Africa is a brutal no holds barred race where some bends are covered in gravel (more on the gravel mechanic later). Deutschland is a slalom of back to back treacherous turns and includes a dangerous chicane bottleneck halfway through. 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 white one, complete with a little white gear stick, a set of white basic cards and the white game mat. This adds an extra player to take the total to 7 if this is your first expansion or 8-9 if you already have both the base game and the Heavy Rain/ Tunnel Vision expansions. The color on the new white car and gear stick is pretty cool but the white car on the player mat has a red stripe on it that looks awesome and it’s a shame it’s not on the car that goes on the track. It’s always great having the option to play with larger player groups though.
Rocky Roads also comes with some extra heat cards, some extra stress cards, and a load of new upgrade cards and sponsor cards that contain a new mechanic called sliding skirts that allow the player to double slipstream. 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 gravel and chicane mechanics.
How Well The New Stuff Works
The gravel mechanic on the South Africa course makes heat management for your engine much tighter and trickier. It’s definitely one for advanced players looking for a brutal challenge rather than a fun casual party game group. Whether this suits your needs is going to vary with who is reading this. At the end of your turn, if you are on a space covered with gravel, you lose one heat from your engine. Thankfully, if you have no heat to give, you can ignore it, but still it drains a lot of heat over the two laps that could be used for taking corners too fast or turbo boosts, making plays of this course less varied compared to other levels.
Gravel gimmick aside, the level is really interesting and unique with great twists and turns and lots of ways to use the power ups in the garage module that comes with the base game to break the course and attempt multiple turns in the same turn etc… much more so if you choose to ignore the gravel mechanic and treat it like any other course, which you can do of course, it’s your game after all.
The chicane feature isn’t in the base game but is in both expansions. It’s back for the other course, Deutschland and it works really well here as it did in Heavy Rain and Tunnel Vision. 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. This particular chicane is brutal as it’s in the middle of a straight so you have to go up 2 gears, down 2 gears and then up 2 gears shredding the heat from your engine to maximise turn efficiency.
The new double slipstreaming is an interesting concept. If you’re playing 2 player with the legends cards controlling the other cars, you will probably not be picking these cards as you’ll normally be in 1st and second place anyway. But in 4-6 player games these could really shift the tide and deliver some exciting wins from what looked like a hopeless position half a lap ago. Essentially you can take an extra slipstream after your first slipstream. Combined with cards and weather effects that increase your slipstream efficacy and you could be slipstreaming for 5 X 2 spots potentially and leapfrog the whole pack.
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. This can help you do just that if the stars align and the other cars are in positions that let you do 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 of the three expansions because you can only afford one, this is my personal comparison on the three expansions.
Colour of new car and cards: Purple is the best so that’s a point to Tunnel Vision
New Track Mechanics: Chicane is in all three, but I prefer Gravel to Tunnels and Standing Water mechanics as they are both a little fiddly to remember to do, while gravel is punishing in a way that I find really fun and is just straight forward so that’s a point to Rocky Roads.
New Card Mechanics: Supercool and Drafting are both really useful and fun but I think that in the right group of people, double slip streaming and whizzing from the back to the front would be insanely satisfying and be a big talked about gaming moment so another point for Rocky Roads.
New Courses: Personally I think it goes Tunnel Vision > Rocky Roads > Heavy Rain
So that’s Rocky Roads the overall winner, closely followed by Tunnel Vision and then Heavy Rain last but I still really rate that one too.
Final Thoughts From Me
If you love the original, there is enough new stuff in this to make it 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.
