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Unfortunately, no. Shift is a massive improvement over the three games from the Need for Speed series that came before it (although that’s not exactly hard to accomplish). But while it does a lot of things right, it does an equal number of things wrong or inadequately.
Let’s get to the car handling first. The racing simulation club on consoles (especially this generation) is an exclusive one, and one where it is nearly impossible for a new entrant to gain acceptance, with Forza and Gran Turismo bullying away anyone else that tries; just ask SimBin or System 3. So the folks over at Slightly Mad Studios have been very clever in not using the S-word. Instead, they call Need for Speed: Shift a ‘realistic action racer’. But they’ve made their intentions and their target audience very clear over the last few months by calling out Forza and Gran Turismo for their apparent lack of realism.
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That didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do at the time, and it seems even more foolish now, because in terms of realism, it doesn’t come close to either one of them. Instead, it tries to toe the line between arcade and simulation, which the PGR games did brilliantly in the past. Shift offers various levels of driving assists that will either make driving very easy or quite challenging. But at the easiest setting, it won’t win over those who loved recent Need for Speed games, and at the hardest setting, it won’t impress the hardcore. It falls uncomfortably in between, where it’s too much of a grind for the Burnout lover, but not true enough to entice the purist. It isn’t bad by any means and most people who spend enough time with the game will really start to enjoy it. But it doesn’t play like the Need for Speed games we’re used to so it will alienate a few people.
In that sense, it is closer to a simulation than an arcade racer, and everything else in the game backs that up that façade. There are close to 20 locations to race in and they’re comprised of mostly real-world circuits like Spa and Laguna Seca, with a few fictional tracks and city circuits thrown in for good measure. There are about 60-70 cars to drive in the game, and barring the Ferraris, there’s pretty much everything you could want. You also have the options to fit your cars with performance upgrades and customise their look with vinyls, custom paint jobs, and rims. EA have come out of their The Fast and the Furious syndrome, so there’s no sign of a poor story with a wafer-thin plot and talentless cast. Shift is all about the racing. You buy cars, upgrade them and compete in races around the world. Performing well earns you money to buy more cars and upgrades, and advances your skill level to unlock more events.
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There’s also the driver profile, which starts out as a really cool feature, but a few races in, it exposes itself as nothing more than a superficial representation of your driving style. Essentially, it aims to, based on your driving style, identify you as either an aggressive or precise driver, and the AI supposedly, but not really, alters its behaviour depending on which side you fall. There’s also a levelling system, and as you level up, you gain perks like extra cash, bonus cars, and garage space to buy more. What makes the system ineffective is that whether you stick to one driving style or keep switching in every race, you will level up just as fast, because even if you’re billed as a precise driver, you’ll still get rewarded for driving dirty, which makes the driver profile feature largely useless.
Career progression is done through tiers. You start out in Tier 1, where the tracks are simple and the cars less powerful, and things get more complex as you progress through the tiers. You also unlock invitational events that let you experience cars and tracks that are higher than your current tier. It keeps you hooked for the first few races, but its ruined by the fact that you get rewarded way too much too early on, so before you even complete the Tier 1 events, you will have already unlocked Tier 3 cars and events. The career mode structure is a simple event list, so there’s no real incentive to play through a tier when you’ve already unlocked the next one, as well as enough dough to buy a car (or two) good enough to compete at the next level. You will soon start to miss the shallow storylines and hammy acting of NFS games past.
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Before getting to the event types, there’s something peculiar about the way cars handle that needs to be mentioned. They drift. A lot. Even when they shouldn’t. It’s clearly a game design decision taken by the developers to keep the player in the game, so to speak. While in most simulations, turning or braking too late will send you onto the grass and/or into a barrier, here, the cars drift at the slightest provocation, sacrificing speed to keep you on the track. In practice, however, it’s very disconcerting, because there are times when you could do everything right and the car will still oversteer, and doing away with assists doesn’t change matters either. What makes it worse is that the AI will drive flawlessly, making you feel quite helpless because the only way you can avoid the excessive oversteer is to go into a turn very slow, allowing the AI to easily overtake.
Next page: Race modes, online, and IVG verdict
So with cars drifting around corners without even trying, one would think that a drift mode is just what the doctor ordered. But Need for Speed: Shift has one of the worst implementations of drift racing I have ever come across. The drift events are like an entirely different game and none of the rules of physics that apply to the rest of the game matter here. One may argue that drift vehicles are tuned and set up specifically for drifting, so they’re bound to handle differently, but it’s just unmanageable here. It is a serious challenge to even successfully perform a proper drift around one corner, let alone chaining drifts together and making it around the entire track unscathed. Thankfully, the game doesn’t force you to compete in all events, because if I was forced to compete in drift events, I’d stop playing the game right there.
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Another new race type is the head-to-head face-off. You have a choice of two very similar cars, like the Ford GT and Dodge Viper SRT-10, for example. You can choose either car to compete in a best-of-3 event. Races are won by either taking a 5 second lead or being the first to complete a lap. It’s a nice concept, but severely flawed because all it takes to open up a 5 second gap is to knock your opponent off the track at the very first corner.
Elsewhere, the standard lapped races make up the bulk of the career mode, which really won’t hold your interest for too long. There’s a Quick Race option outside the career that lets you race or set lap times on your chosen car and track. Online, you can either participate in standard ranked or unranked races, or Driver Duel, which is similar to the one-on-one best of 3 face off from the career mode, except now, both drivers have the same car. You start in round one, and each win moves you to the next round in a knockout format. If you keep winning, you move to the final, but lose, and you’re back to round one. Since it’s a one-lap race, the players that usually end up winning are those who drive dirty, because being knocked off the track will lose you too much time. So while Driver Duel is a good idea, it doesn’t quite work out because it rewards players for driving dirty.
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As I mentioned at the start, the game does an amazing job of making you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat. This is achieved thanks to the great driver perspective that uses camera animations to mimic the effects of g-forces. So when you brake hard, the camera will move forward, and it will sway from side to side through a high speed S-curve. The camera will also violently shake and the screen will blur and lose colour when you crash. Further, as you gain speed, everything but the track ahead of you becomes a blur and the corners of the screen start to lose colour, ensuring that your only focus is the track ahead of you. It’s unnerving without being prohibitive and makes the racing greatly more immersive. This game is designed to be played from the cockpit view, and it’s easily the most enjoyable way to play.
Engine sounds are a pure delight, especially in cockpit view, as are the various other sounds of crashes, twisting metal and gear shifts. The soundtrack is a broad mix; what you would expect from any EA game. Nothing really stands out as awful or outstanding, and it’s best to have music off during races so you can hear the engines roar. There’s both visual and performance damage in there as well, and you can bang up your car pretty good. Crash it badly enough and you will lose the hood and the trunk, while the rest will get pretty severely deformed. Performance-wise however, damage is a bit forgiving. Even with damage set to full, it’s impossible to total the car and the worse that will happen is the car will lose some of its speed and the ability to travel in a straight line. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, damage is identical on the PC and PS3 versions, and the Xbox 360 version can’t be much different.
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Shift is also a massive improvement over past NFS games in the visual department, thanks to Slightly Mad’s brand new engine. It isn’t the best looking racing game around, but its close enough and it can certainly hold its own. The game looks equally good on PS3 and PC. With all settings maxed out on my 8800GT rig, it managed a steady 30 frames per second, and dialing a few details down made for a much smoother experience without visibly lowering graphical quality too much. One thing that does need work for the likely sequel is the HUD. If you’re smart, you’ll switch it off altogether, but for those who like to have all the information on-screen, the HUD is extremely cluttered. The mini track layout is quite poorly designed and hard to decipher, especially with one eye on the road.
Conclusion
Shift has somewhat stopped the Need for Speed franchise’s sharp downward spiral. Considering recent NFS games, we’ll take what we’ve got in Shift, but only as a statement of intent for what’s to come in the future. On its own, it fails as much as it succeeds. The brilliant driver perspective and the renewed focus on racing above all else is welcome, but it falls short in its attempt to appease both casual and hardcore racing fans. Its simplistic career mode won’t hold your attention for too long, and outside that, it’s a little short on things to do. So enjoy the ride till something better comes along or just stick to Grid or PGR4 instead.
(+) Best cockpit view in a racing game yet
(+) One of the better looking racing games around
(-) Career mode gets boring fast
(-) Cars over-oversteer
(-) Shockingly bad drift mode
Title: Need for Speed: Shift
Developer/Publisher: Slightly Mad Studios/EA
Genre: Racing
Rating: 3+
Platforms: PlayStation3 (Rs 2,499), Xbox 360 (Rs 2,499), PC (Rs 999)
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