Okay, hands up who’s been let down or disappointed by a Need For Speed game in recent years. Alright put your hands down. It’s no secret that the NFS franchise, although reasonably popular with the masses has lost the faith with some in the racing genre community. Full credit to EA for evolving the series and trying new things with their NFS releases. But they’ve been missing that ‘wow’ factor, that special something that makes it hard to put the game down. Enter their newest title, Need For Speed: Shift.

I’ve been struggling a bit trying to identify how you would classify Shift. Arcade or simulator? I believe it slots somewhere in the middle. There are enough options and settings to adjust the assists, difficulty and even the controller sensitivity to mould the game to suit, therefore hopefully appealing to a much wider audience.

Gone are the open world environments and street wise crews,  in are the proper race circuits, with proper race cars. Instantly once you start the game your thrust into the action, a couple of quick laps to customise the car control settings and you’re away. Standard assists like traction control, stability management and ABS breaking are all available, as well as the ‘racing line’ indicator which has become so popular in games to date.  To be honest my first impression of the car handling wasn’t good, it didn’t feel instantly natural. Gamers who are more arcade biased probably won’t mind or even notice. But for me it took a few laps/races to come to grips with. But once I did, it was enjoyable. You get a good sensation of speed in game, the screen shakes and the edges blur. But step off line and onto the grass at speed and it’s usually pretty unforgiving, generally ending in disaster.

The crash physics are really quite impressive, it can be an eerie feeling clipping a wall at speed, or even a full head on into a barrier. The screen jumps and shakes violently, you can hear your heart beat loudly, the screen changes to a dizzying grey and then slowly fades back into colour. It really feels like you’ve had a huge disorientating whack and have lost your bearings. Also it’s nice to see the cars are not only destructible, but can flip over on their roof’s. The Ai offers varying competition. Depending on what the settings are obviously determines their speed. Most of the time I was impressed with how the Ai hustled, but sometimes it just feels like they have no awareness of you on the track, either that or they’re just occasionally overly aggressive.

The career mode of Shift is split up into tiers, each tier is separated into different series of events. Ranging from circuits races, drift challenges, driver duels, endurances, manufacturer series, time attack and hot laps. This is standard fare for most racers now days, but I felt the scale of difficulty varied a lot between these events. Events like driver duels and drifting seemed considerably harder than circuit races and hot laps. Progressing through the tiers is accomplished by accumulating points which in turn earn you stars. Points are awarded depending on your driving style, either aggressive of precise. Not many games reward you for spinning out the opposition. Perhaps that’s why I had issues with the Ai, they WERE trying to take me out.

Multiplayer features the usual suspects, ranked and unranked, quick match, create match and custom match. Games seemed quick and easy to find, and although I was mainly playing against Americans, I noticed little or no lag. Plus what I did like, was the Driver Duel Championship. Much like the Driver Duel in the career but with real time opponents and leaderboard. Win duels and work your way up the leaderboard, loose and you tumble back down.

Graphically the game looks amazing, the car detailing is beautiful inside and out. The tracks are well designed and gorgeous, although some do look a little bit tacky and feel too arcadey, with flashing arrows and far to many advertising billboards. Moderate vehicle upgrades are available with customisable settings, as is a full livery editing tool. It’s reasonably easy to master, those familiar with the Forza Motorsport 2 editor will come to grips with it quickly. Featuring just over seventy cars it is somewhat limited by today’s standards, then again it is a fine collection available. Modern day supercars and a few sexy  classics.

Closing Comments:

It’s hard to talk about Need For Speed: Shift without comparing it to the other racers that are currently available. Personally I feel it’s a much better game than what we’ve seen from NFS in recent years, but is it better than other titles already out there? Possibly not, but it is a good fun game. A good career mode and solid multiplayer mode will keep most console racers satisfied. But if you’re a racing simulator fan, holding out for one of the big two ‘coming soon’ titles  might be a good idea.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Feature, Games, Playstation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.