Review: Need for Speed: Shift

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Paging Dr. Cooper, Dr. Sheldon Cooper...

The physics engine was alleged to have been as difficult as another, unmentioned, title well-known to the community if you turned off the assists and cranked up the difficulty levels to the max.

Well, I’m a well-hung billionaire Norse god with wings who can see through women’s clothes and impregnate them from 300 yards. This just goes to show you that anyone can claim anything, it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Car Difficulty Settings

NFS: Shift has a physics engine much more complex and difficult to master than any other NFS game. But that’s not saying much. It is not even close to the difficultly level of another FIA-themed motorsports title. I was doing things in Shift that would immediately and summarily punished me in other racing simulation titles. To say that it is as difficult is to say that other gMotor sims encourage bad driving.

Late braking? Not a problem. Absolutely and positively destroy the front end of your car in a 150-mph header into a concrete road divider? It’ll still run. Sort of. The physics engine allowed me to powerslide through corners with complete impunity. Sure, I probably looked like a racey driver, but in that other, unnamed racing sim title, the AI would have taken that golden opportunity to suck the silly little spoiler and vinyls right off my car with their wake turbulence.

An unforgivable omission in NFS: Shift — the lack of TrackIR™ support. If you’re planning on billing yourself as a simulation, you better offer everything other simulators have already done, and done well. If there is support for head tracking hardware, I cannot find how to activate it. This leaves you with the option of using a second analog stick on a gamepad if you plan on looking around in the cockpit. This is hardly acceptable and it’s something Simply Mad Studios just should have known to do.

Online Racing

Online racing is usually where a title has more legs. I can’t even make that case here.

Online racing is best not attempted unless you make it a private race with your friends. This is not one title I’ll be suggesting guod make a separate TeamSpeak channel for. Online mode is full of wreckers and the usual dolts, although you can be thankful it’s more sparsely populated than the Xbox servers.

At least since it’s not Xbox Live, I don’t have to listen to squeaky little prepubescent clods tell me to go scru myself.

In Conclusion

NFS: Shift meant to mark a departure from those previous releases we sim fans loved to hate, a return to what was good and holy in what was the earlier games, real road course racing. It doesn’t help that during its absence (while it was making things like NFS: Underground) real competitors have come along and blown their doors off.

Despite EA bringing in Slightly Mad Studios to remind them how to make something resembling a simulation, and whose pedigree includes employees that were directly responsible for things like GTR2 and GT Legends, I don’t think the PC market is even a factor in EA’s game plan. What a waste of good talent.

These guys are going heads-up against Turn 10 Studios and the Forza Motorsport franchise. Good luck. Having played FM2, I can tell you that with Turn 10 now adding a cockpit, the playing field just got a hell of a lot tougher for the NFS line. For that matter, Dan Greenawalt shouldn’t miss an evening of sleep.

I cannot recommend this title to the serious sim racer, no matter how pretty it is. And it is pretty. There are just too many other titles out there that get the job done properly and really give a good idea of what it’s like to be in a real road course racing experience at a much cheaper price point.

For that matter, I can’t even recommend it to the casual racer for the exact same reason. ISI's rFactor or a Simbin title (pick one) will give you a fantastic racing experience. In either, you can adjust the settings to any level of play and there is oodles and oodles of free content out there to download.

There are much better bargains to be had in this day and age. Wait for this one to hit the bargain bin, just like you have with all the other ones since Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

Pros

• It’s pretty.
• It sounds great.
• Did I mention it's pretty?

Cons

• A physics driving model that simply doesn’t measure up to the competition, not even from fellow console denizen, Forza Motorsport 2…
• …with a difficulty curve to match.
• Short, unfulfilling races in unchanging weather against a paltry field of competitors.
• Weak garage tuning, and purchasing upgrades defeats the purpose of increasing the difficulty.
• No TrackIR™ support.
• Expensive price point makes the competition even more attractive.

Reviewer's System Specs

• Intel Q6600 processor
• 6GB Corsair XMS PC6400 DDR2 RAM
• ATI Radeon 4870 video card
• Creative Audigy2 ZS sound card
• 300GB SATAII HDD
• Saitek X45 HOTAS
• CH Rudder Pedals
• Windows Vista

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