Hotshot Tales, Part 11: Hell on the Heated Highway

Hotshot Tales, Part 11: Hell on the Heated Highway

Of the 20 map variants in Hotshot Racing, none give the AI more trouble in Drive or Explode than Heated Highway (the third variant of the Coast map set). Much of this stems from the AI's behavior shortly the start: they tend to take the second turn (a left-hand hairpin) too tightly, and end up slowing to a crawl as they hit the inner wall. This causes them to lose a lot of speed (enough to drop them below the minimum threshold), and if they don't recover in time, they will end up being eliminated, sometimes due to contact with another car (which may be your own). This makes the first sector of a Drive or Explode race on Heated Highway the best opportunity in the game to score a melee kill (whether by direct contact or indirect means). In fact, the tight, technical nature of this track configuration will cause a lot of early eliminations among AI players (and even unsuspecting human players), even on Expert difficulty. To prove a point, I'll show you a recent extreme example, in which I ended up being the sole survivor after just two laps of a seven-lap race.

Above, from top: A Drive or Explode race on Heated Highway is generally attritional, but this is one took it up to eleven - all of my opponents were eliminated within two laps.

At the start, I sideswiped Viktor's Blade to soften it up, and when he took the hairpin abnormally slowly (as the AI often does), he was eliminated seconds later. However, by that time, I'd already taken out Toshiro's Wild Line by bumping into it just before completing the second sector. Unbelievably, Xing and Mike had made the same mistake as Viktor, and bit the dust shortly afterwards. I then put paid to Alexa's hopes of victory by slamming into her Stallion from behind - she'd lost a lot of speed, time and health just by taking the last left-hander before the tunnel leading to the start/finish line incorrectly, which made her a sitting duck. On the next lap, I squeezed Aston's Shadow against the outer wall near the bottleneck before the second checkpoint; he dropped out of contention almost immediately. Finally, I pushed Keiko off the track at the second turn of the last sector, and from then on, all I had to do was survive for five more laps - which I somehow managed to pull off.

Above, from top: How my opponents met their end in this seven-lap massacre at Heated Highway after just two laps - some of the eliminations were self-inflicted, but for the others, I had to literally push them over the edge to their doom, leaving me all alone on the track until the end.

So if you want a real grade-A challenge, try an 8-player, 7-lap, multi-player Drive to Explode race on Heated Highway, with the difficulty set to Expert (to allow players to reach the highest possible speeds), to see who can truly master the art of survival. Expect the players to fight to the death for the top spot - with the tricky layout of this track, the eliminations will come thick and fast, more so than any other track, and you'll most likely find yourself down to just one player within three to five laps; even if that player doesn't make it to the end, he/she will just win by default.

In short, Heated Highway is the most difficult track for a Drive or Explode race, but also the most fun if you know how to survive long enough to be the last player standing.