Review of Need for Speed: Shift

I just received the game this morning (thanks amazon for the release date shipping!) and installed it in the evening to test it out. I obviously have not gotten far into the game, but once you play a racer for an hour+, you've played 90% of the core features of the game, so I figure I can safely write a review for it.

Unlike previous titles, there is no cinematic storyline that tells of some bad guy who hates you for some reason, and how you have to climb the ranks of some underground racers to one day best him in an epic race. Also, unlike a titles way back ago, all these races are legal and done on tracks--No intense police chases here. The basic premise here is that you start off at the bottom rung of an enormous ladder tournament that one day leads you to a world championship race with some of the most exotic cars on the planet. Sounds good, lets get racing!

You start off being put into the seat of a BMW that you only get for 1 day before you start off your career. You do a test lap and the game will offer up some suggestions on difficulty level settings (turning traction control on, ABS, etc). It did a pretty good job at guessing the settings I would have picked, so I liked that feature. You can tweak it as necessary, so this isn't a one time only thing.

The racing itself is incredible. It is a huge departure from the previous arcade style racing games that the NFS titles seemed to focus on. With max simulation on, it races like a car would race. You can't take 90 degree turns at 190 mph, you can't smash into a barrier wall at 140mph, backup and still win the race, etc. To help those of us who have a true "need for speed", the game does offer a racing line with speed indicators that change dynamically as you race (for example, it'll turn red as you approach a hard turn, indicating you should slow down.)

The game also has a system of style points, which you get for things such as tightly following the racing line, passing people, drafting, etc. One thing I did like is that these style points is not just for those of us who play 100% "nice". They have split up style points into "precision" and "aggression." Precision points are for those who like to finesse their way to 1st (drafting, passing politely, nice cornering). Aggression points go to those like me, who basically smash their way through cars until I'm in 1st place and half the group is totaled. You can even get points for spinning people off the track! Awesome.

These points go towards winning stars, and stars increase your driver level, and increasing your driver level unlocks more cars, modifications, etc. Like I said earlier, it is a pretty large ladder system of unlocks and races. I am incredibly impressed so far with how the game feels and runs.

A few final thoughts:

The interior mode of racing (which I highly recommend) puts you as if you were actually inside the car, and the details are INCREDIBLE. They really spent the time to actually copy what the car interior should look like. The BMW has the iDrive system even. Also, the graphics (when played on high) are unbelievable. There is unfortunately a significant loading time between races, but that might be because I set my settings to max on everything.

Also, it is clearly a port, because it tells me not to "turn my system off while saving." When was the last time I reached for my power button to turn my computer off, mid-anything? It's not like I'm sitting there, getting impatient mid-game while it's saving ,and then flipping the switch on my surge protector and being like, I'm outta here! Oh well. Despite that, everything else runs smoothly. (I'm running it on Windows 7 and there weren't any hiccups in the install.)

So overall, I am incredibly happy with this purchase. I'm also happy to see a real racing game from the NFS guys--it's about time they get back to their roots of simulation racing. The arcade stuff was fun, but this is what I'm really interested in. If you've played NFS before, buy this title. You won't be disappointed.



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