Need for Speed: Shift (360) Review
Posted by Jordan Williams on 10.05.2009
A 'shift' is just what this franchise needed after of being 'undercover' for too long.
Title: Need for Speed: Shift
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Genre: Racing
Players: 1 (with Xbox Live Support)
Rated: E for Everyone
Gran Turismo and Forza. That is usually the first to things that pop into your mind when you think of simulation racers...and with good reason. Those two games are pretty much the pinnacle of simulation racing when it comes to this generation. They have all of the bells, whistles, and gear head car porn to keep anyone with deep interest in man's REAL best friend interested. So how does a game that has always been known to be more of an arcade racer fare when it starts to slide over into the simulation world?
Surprisingly well.
Need for Speed: Shift is the newest game in the long line of Need for Speed games, but unlike the more recent entries this game doesn’t focus on street racing and undercover cop work. This is a strict simulation track racer in which you earn cars to move up in the standings to eventually make it to the Need for Speed World Tour. From there on you are going up against some of the toughest racers in the world in events that range from simple lap races to things like head to head battles and drift racing.
The word 'Shift' in the title should give away that EA is definitely trying to distance Need for Speed from his arcade-y cousin Burnout, and if this is what they plan on doing here they might have a great franchise reboot on their hands.
Graphics
You've come to expect high quality graphics when it comes to any simulation racer and NFS does not disappoint. One could make the argument that once you've seen one car in hi-res you've seen them all but it never ceases to amaze me just how realistic and fluid they can make these cars look.
Even when you get down to the nitty gritty and start the customization options there are tons of vinyl and decals you can slap on the car to make it your own. While you won't find the level of customization that you would find in a Forza game, you should have no trouble playing around with this game long enough to create your own paint style on your car to take online and race against other players.
They also make it very obvious that they want you to play the gaming using the cockpit view seeing as they spent a ton of time recreating the cockpits of every car in the game. There is just something wonderful about playing the game and watching your hands frantically fly over the wheel and shift gears. Even when you get into a hard crash your face will actually ratchet forward and hit the steering wheel. While some may not be able to play the full game using this view (I personally couldn't.) for those who can it's a real treat.
The cars also smash up real nice, while they don't get completely demolished it is enough for you to wince when you see your poor baby crumpled up like a soda can after a hard collision.
If there are two downsides to the graphics it would be that the tracks themselves do seem a little bland. Since the game is going for a more realistic feel, the tracks don't have much of a life to them. Some are green. Some are gray. Some are in cities. That's pretty much where the differences in the tracks start and end. There are some tracks made specifically for drifting but you are concentrating more on the car at that point and won't notice. There are also some weird graphical glitches in the game. Some of the more extreme ones I have seen are people appearing inside of cars and sometimes you will see cars driving into the ground like they are stuck in quicksand. But overall the graphics in this game are what you would expect from a simulation racer. Very good.
Gameplay
See, I am one of the people who like my racing games like a pimp love his 'employees'. Simple and full of mushrooms. With that being said I found myself actually enjoying the simulation racing style of Need for Speed Shift only because it doesn’t go balls to the wall into simulation like Forza and Gran Turismo do. The game works in a way that is very simulation based in its progression, but arcade in its execution.
You start out on the bottom, with a bad car. You must complete tiers to move on to the next tier (five in all counting the NFS World Tour) to progress. To progress in a tier you need to get the right amount of stars. To get those stars you need to win races an other optional objectives.
But when you actually get into the races themselves you get the more arcadey feel of the game. There are two meters to represent your overall driving style. Precision and Aggression. During the races if you do things like cleanly pass an opponent, stick to the racing line, or do a clean turn around a corner you get awarded Precision points. However if you do thinks like ram opponents, run them off the road, drift into turns or draft an opponent you get aggression points. What it does it begin to tailor the game to your personal driving style and since these points are effectively your experience points for leveling up your driver, you are not forced to play a certain way to win. A minor downside to that is that once you get to the head of the pack you really lose out on earning any aggression points because at that point the only aggressive actions you can do are drift around corners and block opponents from passing, which means that in the early portions of the game your driver begins to get lopsided over to Precision side although you might me a crazy fucker who just ran everyone off of the road to get to first place.
In the middle to end portions of the game though, EA's AI kicks in and the game begins to get too hard and cheap for its own good. You will routinely pass everyone only to have them come back on the last lap and master every single corner and hairpin turn and THEN run you off of the road inches before the finish line. You will also run into the problem in which your car, no matter how better than the competition will somehow never catch up to some of the clunkers the competition is driving.
Another thing factoring into the gameplay for the gearheads out there is the full host of tuning options. If you want you can turn your ride out to your hearts desire. However if you are pretty much as far away from a gear head as possible, they do offer very broad simple tuning options for you. Of course to get the full power of the car you need to use the advanced options, but you can still hand with the big boys if you use the simplified versions.
The one knock I have against the game play outside of the catch up A.I is that the drifting levels are a bit hard. Now for difficulty sake, but the game doesn’t give you a proper tutorial on how to execute a drift. Once you practice it and get the hang of it clicks and you get it, but the first couple of times you have to drift it's going to be rough due to the lack of knowledge there. But that is just one ding in the near-perfect balance of arcade and simulation racing that is in this game.
This last part is something that really doesn’t affect the game play, but I figure it's worth mentioning. For some odd reason you actually have the ability to buy cars in-game using XBL Points. I see no real use for this since money really isn't that much of a problem in game, but I guess if you want that high level expensive car and you don't have the in-game scratch you and lay down 160 points (roughly two dollar) to get the same car.
Sound
The cars sound like cars. The crashes sound like crashes. The announcer/narrator for the game and the game's (very limited) soundtrack is awful however. The aussie/british narrator voice rattles off some racing crap before and after races that is pretty uninspired and he sounds like he's asleep as he says it. And the music is actually only on during drift events, and the tracks are so mundane that you might as well just turn them off altogether. Racing games aren't usually known for its music backlog though so as long as the cars sound good then everything is else is gravy.
Fun Factor
This is fun. For the sim-lovers who want to tune a car to hell to make a true beast down to the people who really want to see how many people they can P.I.T in one race, there is something here for both camps. Throw in the fact that there are a TON of mini-achievements like drafting 50 cars, spinning out 4 cars in one race, and doing 4 second drifts and you have lots of other things to look forward to doing inside the races besides winning. It really does say something when you get rewarded for causing 50 drivers to collide with the wall and wreck out. Vehicular Manslaughter is fun!
Lasting Appeal
The game offers the usual array of online multiplayer modes, but at the time of this review it was actually hard to find a ton of people online and when I did the game seemed to be a bit laggy and glitchy. I don't know if this is from a bad net code or whatever but it is definitely something that needs to be patched in the very near future, especially before Forza comes out. In the mean time though there are a lot of cars, races, and a myriad of trophies to earn as well as driver levels to get to increase your customization abilities. It shouldn't be too hard to find something to do here while you are waiting for the patch to fix the online components.
The 411
Need for Speed: Shift is obviously a shift from it's on style a new one. While it is not perfect it is definitely the best first effort they could've hoped for. They moved to a simulation style racer without completely abandoning its arcade roots and it provides a nice little curve for a possible lead into a new genre. While the online play leaves a lot to be desired as does the amount of cars (Forza has set that bar very high) but if they plan on making this an ongoing series I am sure we have the next great simulation racer on our hands.
Graphics
8.5
The cars look great. The cockpit looks great. The tracks a bland, though
Gameplay
8.0
Being able to choose between driving sane and crazy is a great addittion, but gets lost early on.
Sound
7.0
The cars sound great, but the soundtrack and narration is pretty dull.
Lasting Appeal
8.0
A fair number of cars and other unlockables will keep you playing until the online is fixed.
Fun Factor
8.5
It's a nice middle road of those who want to crossover from the land of the Kart racer into the Sim Racer.
