Need for Speed: Shift

 My first review for this site so be nice.  I write reviews to help my writing skills so don't take it so seriously. I have also played the 360 version a lot at my friend's but this review is based off my experience on the PC.

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+ A great new direction for the series

+ No attempt on a story

+ Cars feel great to drive

+ Great motion blur that makes racing intense

+ Best cockpit view yet

+ Interesting driver point system

+ Not required to do every event

- Hard to get Aggression points

- LOOOONNNNGGG loading times

- Needs some more cars

- Drifting is extremely difficult

- Limited car customization

- Annoying British guy

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 Need for Speed Shift is a turn away from the previous NFS games. The game goes towards a more realistic racer but still maintains the intense sense of speed that the series is famous for. Although with faults, Shift is a great individual game by itself and gives the NFS series a promising future.

STORY – Unlike the past games, Shift doesn’t try to have a story. Simply, you are a recently turned professional driver and your goal is to win a ton of races, buy and upgrade cars, and eventually enter the NFS World Tour. While you are doing so, your friendly neighborhood British man would constantly remind you that your ultimate goal is to enter the NFS World Tour and to have fun!

GAMEPLAY - You are a professional driver. There is no street racing nor cop chases. Since the game is going towards a realistic direction, you WILL have to break. However, the game doesn’t have the “strictness” of Gran Turismo but still has a little arcade racing feel like Grid.   There are 3 main types of races.   Racing is well…racing. Time Attack is where everyone is on the track and your goal is to have the fastest lap time by the time limit. Drifting is where you are scored based on your drifts on each turn. Each type can have its own minor variation such as everyone is driving the same car or Japanese cars only. No matter how much I try, I can’t do a proper drift without spinning out. The small number of tips the game gives me is not enough to teach me how to drift in this game. Apparently, I am not the only person in the world that has this problem. Thankfully, you can advance through the game without entering any drift competitions.

Depending on your racing technique, you can earn driver points that level up your driver level. Leveling up your driver levels give you rewards such as sponsorship money, a new car, or more garage space to hold more cars. Driving points are split into 2 sections, Precision and Aggression. Precision points are awarded for good clean racing such as clean turns and following the racing line (By the way, I want to thank Forza for starting the racing line trend. Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!). Aggression points are awarded for “mean racing” such as playing bumper cars and letting your tail stick out in turning corners. Drafting for some awkward reason is considered aggressive but whatever.

By winning races, you earn stars. You earn stars by getting enough driver points in that race, finishing in the top 3, and completing a bonus objective in the race. When you accumulate enough stars, you unlock the next tier of events and/or more races in the current tier. Unlocking the early tiers also unlocks the next tiers of cars and the next tiers of car upgrades. Saving up for a new car or upgrading your current cars is up to you. You do not have to do every event to get enough stars to unlock the next tiers. Just doing the ones you want should just be enough to get you to the NFS World Tour.  

Thankfully, there are good amounts of driving assists to help those that still don’t know there is a braking pedal in every car (hopefully). The very first race the game makes you do is an evaluation lap to see which setting of driving assists works with your driving skills. You can change these at anytime in the main menu. You can even set it to that the game brakes and turns for you! The driving assists plus the great feel of the cars make racing an enjoyable ride. In addition, there are tuning options for you crazy, hardcore racing players out there.

GRAPHICS – The car models aren’t the best we seen but nevertheless, they are great especially in movement. The motion blur and the cockpit view combine to make an intense, heart pumping racing experience. In the cockpit view, you race through the eyes of the driver. When you are going top speed on a straightway, your vision goes blurry and when you crash hard, the screen turns black and white and your vision gets hazy. You can look around the cockpit view as you’re driving to see if any car is behind you on your mirrors. I truly recommend driving in the cockpit view unless there is a race you have trouble on and you really need to use the third person camera. This is truly an example of graphics enhancing the gaming experience.

SOUND – Umm…cars going “zoom zoom zoom”??? Yes there is a soundtrack but the game defaults it to having it turned off in order to have the “ultimate driving experience”. Don’t worry. It’s nothing special. The main menu music is a huge mess of car sounds. I am not joking. If you like the sound of cars, you’re good to go.

CON – Let’s start with the big one. The loading times are hideously long. Even on the PC version or on a 360 where it has been hard drive installed, the loading times reach in the 15-30 second mark. This greatly hurts the Car Battle events where it’s suppose to be quick 1 on 1, 2-3 one lap races on the SAME track! As of this writing though, there has been a patch for the PC version that cuts the loading times greatly. There are 72 cars in the game but I wished there were more since some are basically newer models of the other (I don’t need 4 different Nissan Skylines, thank you very much.) Outside of paint, rims, and vinyls, there isn’t much in customizing the look of your cars. There are only 1-3 body kits for each car and you can’t buy individual parts of a body kit. Not all cars get a fair amount of upgrades. For the cars in the final tier, this is understandable. However, there are cars in the lower tiers that you can’t works converts, which is the ultimate upgrade to transform the cars into racing machines. This makes them useless in the late tiers and the NFS World Tour where all your opponents are driving supercars or cars that have been works converted. And lastly, it is nearly impossible to get a lot of aggression points. The best way to get aggression points is to play dirty racing. However, it is extremely tough to do so if there are no cars in front of you…

Shift is a nice change from the past NFS games and is a direction that I wish EA will continue to follow for this series. Fans of the Codemaster games such as Dirt and Grid should pick it up since the car handling is similar. If you need a game to fill up your professional racing needs till Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5, this is a great choice.