Competent, but seriously lacking in imagination.
Need For Speed: Shift marks the first game in EA’s Need For Speed series reboot, leaving behind the street racing titles that have been the mainstay of the series for the last five iterations. Shift sees the Need For Speed franchise attempt a more simulation style racing game to more directly compete with some of the heavyweights of the genre, namely the Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing franchises. However, Need For Speed: Shift falls short of the mark in this regard. While this entry into the series has made a clear shift away from its roots as an arcade-style racer, it seems to still be clinging on to that heritage. The result is a game with a serious identity crisis that’s too ‘simmy’ to really be enjoyed as an arcade racer, and too simplistic to be enjoyed by fans of simulation racers.
Being stuck between arcade and simulation racers doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. The Project Gotham Racing series for example definitely has trappings of the arcade racing genre surrounding it. But the problem with Shift is that there’s nothing particularly special about it. There are things that this game does do well, but a very small percentage of those things set this game apart from other racers.
One of the few unique things Shift does try and do is a focus on precise driving style against aggressive driving style. This is implemented by rewarding you with points for performing different driving maneuvers that are categorised under precision or aggression. For example following the racing line, performing clean overtakes or taking corners correctly are all precision maneuvers. Alternatively the aggressive maneuvers involve things like power-sliding around turns, bumping up against opposing racers or even pushing them off the road completely. At the end of each event, you are given a summary of your precision or aggression moves throughout the race, and points are awarded to you accordingly. However, all of the points you earn are then dumped into one pool of points that contributes to your driver level. It’s all well and good to reward different driving styles, but they render the notion ultimately pointless because there’s no benefit to driving one way or the other. If they just gave you generic points for all the different maneuvers without dividing them into two categories, there would be no difference in the result ultimately, and this is disappointing.
Probably the greatest indicator of the lack of imagination in Need For Speed: Shift is clearly on show in the game’s career mode. This mode essentially takes the form of a checklist of races for you to go through. As you complete races, it unlocks more races for you to cross off the checklist. Probably the most interesting thing that happens is the invitational events, but even these boil down to “Hey, Manufacturer X wants you to drive Car Y in this race at Track Z, go for it”. The game throws insane amounts of money your way through the career, and it basically ensures that as soon as you reach the next tier of race events, you can practically afford the best car in the next tier almost immediately. This removes any real sense of achievement in acquiring the more expensive cars. And this doldrum continues throughout the entire career mode until you’re crowned champion of the Need For Speed World Circuit.
Cars you purchase throughout your career are kept in your garage, and you are able to upgrade and customise them as you see fit. The upgrade paths feel really dumbed down, like they don’t want to scare off the more casual audience or something. There’s little-to-no explanation about what you’re actually upgrading in the car other than vagaries, and it just feels more like “buy this to make your car faster”. However, for the racing fan who does know about the mechanics of their vehicle, there are full tuning options available in another menu to hone your vehicle however you see fit. The customisation options are good, letting you place your own decals and paint jobs, but don’t come in expecting any Forza-esque levels of customisation here.
The multiplayer is essentially what you would expect it to be. You can race against up to 8 players over Xbox Live in regular races, one-on-one driver duels, time trials or drift events. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the online racing is that the game will punish you for cutting a corner (even if the move gives you no advantage) but it doesn’t punish you at all for slamming into an opponent at 200km/h and putting them into a wall. So what this leads to is everyone you face on Xbox Live being more concerned about smashing into you as hard as possible to take you out, rather than trying to beat you with superior racing skills.
On a technical level, the game is reasonably good. The cars all look slick, and each car has it’s own individually modeled cockpit view. The tracks also look good. The fault there though is that there’s not enough of either. Shift has some 67 cars and 18 tracks represented (some real, some fictional), which seems seriously meager in comparison to Forza Motorsport 3 which is boasting over 400 cars and over 100 real-world tracks for when it comes out next month. The cars that are there though all sound great, and the sound is probably one of the best technical aspects of the game. This solid technical package however is let down by the loading times. Even with the game installed to a hard drive, this seemed to have minimal (if any) impact on the long load times.
So while for the most part technically proficient, ultimately where Need For Speed: Shift suffers most is in it’s complete lack of imagination. While it is an entirely competent racing game in and of itself, when you compare it to other games in the genre it just seems uninspired and lacking. If this is one of the new branches this franchise is going to be taking, they need to decide if this is an arcade racer or a simulation, and once they’ve decided that do something to make it stand out from the crowd. As it stands, there’s almost no reason to own this game over a Project Gotham Racing or Forza Motorsport title.
