Almost, but not quite there yet. That's right, the new Need For Speed: Shift is a great game to play. Yet, there are...
In this game, you are allowed to customize part of your car, but nothing too special. Mostly, you Nitro (can't really use it), Wings, Wheels, and a few other stuff. You can increase you top speed, acceleration, breaks, and turn. Though, a very cool feature is the ability to tune your engine. You can play around with the engine to either give you specific boost in performance.
How is the game played you ask? Well, there are 4 tiers of race. Each Tier has a specific amount of races, maps, and events. You also got a driver level(up to 50), and you got tiers of cars. You can't used Tier 4 car to race in Tier 1 map. It's too easy and ruins the fun.
You unlock start by wining races and accomplishing specific scenario like mastering all corner, or spinning out a opponent, or being in 1st place. You also unlock, or earn money on race to buy upgrades, cars, garages and a few other minor unimportant stuff.
That's about it with game play. The graphics are awesome. I don't have any problem (I used Gtx 260, 4gb, and 2.6 quad core). The difficulty can be VERY VERY challenging. This all depends on the setting. You can set it, so that breaks are automatic on turn, so you don't have to worry about it. Though, it can ruin the fun of the game. The computer by itself can be challenging on easy.
The bad sides about this game are that there aren't enough upgrades. The cars become very cheap( one race earns you 100,000 and cars are 300,000[tier 3]). Then there is the fact that the Tiers are unlocked very fast. Another bad reason is that there aren't a lot of maps. Finally, the game isn't good with controllers like dual shock 2 (logitech)