Written by: Ian

 

 

 

The Need For Speed (NFS) series has been in the doldrums for a few years- will this new title be a successful SHIFT in the right direction, or does the series stay rooted in reverse for a fourth consecutive year?

 

Carbon started the downfall, ProStreet was ill-advised rubbish, and Undercover was a poor man’s rip-off of Most Wanted,, but not as good, despite it being the same developers and with more experience on the hardware. Now, with a new internal development team, with experience on the GTR series, can the series survive yet another shift in direction towards a racing simulation?

 

Clearly EA have been envious of the success of Dirt and GRID, and gone for a similar approach- have they pulled it off?

 

 

As with most of these racing games, the story is basic and unimpressive- and NFS is no exception, and is probably a little worse than many of the other current offerings. There are some nice constants- like your manager/ chief engineer doing all the encouraging voice work during the races and introductory videos, and all the fluff about getting more experience until you finally get to compete in the NFS World Tour.

 

However, what it boils down to is earning some stars, until you unlock more powerful vehicles and more difficult series, until you finally get to that world tour. The videos and little chit-chats are nice, but ultimately the presentation is pretty mediocre, and the career is ultimately quite unstructured.

 

 

Shift starts you off with an excellent tutorial mode. They whack you in a car with all the assists off except the driving line, and let you loose for a lap. The game then decides what aids you probably need on. You then get thrust into a race, and your performance there lets you select AI difficulty and tweak the aids available to you. It’s a good system that seemed to find the right balance for me without much playing, and should really help novice drivers decide where they want to start out. Be warned though- your final position affects how much cash you start with, and thus, what car you can afford to buy for your first real races.

 

 

Races are split into four main categories in Shift- Race, Hot Lap, Drift & Invitational. The first three you can probably guess what goes on, but the fourth requires a little explanation. By driving well and levelling up, you unlock special events which can win you some great prizes- like extra money or a new car for your garage. Normally a single event, you will be given a car and a set of conditions to win. Sometimes it may just be a race, or sometimes it will be a driver duel- a one on one with another opponent in the same car. These races can be pretty fun, although you should note that they are normally more difficult than the standard fare!

 

The other interesting thing in Shift is your ‘driver level’. It works in a not dissimilar way to Dirt, although a little more arcadey, and really seems to reward everything you do on track, not just particular quests. You get either ‘precision’ or ‘aggression’ points depending on your style. Examples include trading paint for aggression, or a nice clean overtake on the racing line for precision. Get enough combos and you can unlock a temporary multiplier. Levelling up also has its benefits too- so it’s worth getting every point possible out of a race, as you unlock achievements, cars, and loads of cash this way. It’s not perfect, however, as generally, you’ll always have more precision points than aggression, and no matter how dirty they were, I’m yet to race against anyone online that had the aggression tag.

 

There’s other objectives in race too- through the form of ‘stars.’ There’s normally between 3-6 for each race, with 3 for a win, 2 for second and one for third. There’s then additional stars for further objectives, such as a clean lap, or spending a whole lap in the lead. Normally, these can be pretty challenging- so don’t expect to get them all! Thankfully, though, you don’t need to in order to progress.

 

In fact, you could argue that progression is too easy. You only need 300 stars to unlock the final events, but there are well over 500 available in the game, so by the time you reach the world tour, you’re presented with a baffling array of races to choose from. In fact, I tended to ignore many of the tier 4 races completely- as they were way more challenging, safe in the knowledge I’d never need to race them unless I wanted to. Still, very thorough drivers could ‘complete’ the game just by racing through the entire tier 1 & 2 races, plus a few of the easier invitationals. It’s this slight lack of focus and peddling towards the casual crowd that annoys me a little, but not enough to put me off the excellent driving model.

 

 

Obviously, what counts for most in a driving game is how everything feels, and whilst the career menus may feel a little sparse and uninspired, the action on track is anything but. I’ve never got such a fantastic feeling of being in a race. Having done a lot of kart racing in my past, Shift is full of the raw aggression, emotion and action you expect to feel in these kind of races. Everything, from the blurred vision and heavy breathing during fast sections, to the grunts, head bob and screaming brakes during a crash is spot on. Whilst occasionally the physics may let things down a little, the masterful AI, that behave more like actual racing drivers than any other I’ve ever experienced (including moving over to let me lap them during an endurance race, which was a particularly neat touch) more than makes up for any oddity.