I hope Slightly Mad continues to work on the NFS series. The game is fantastic, but it's not for everyone.
Carbon: After playing the game, I found out why it was called Carbon. It was just a carbon copy of Most Wanted. The only differences are that Carbon was set at night, canyon races (which was the only distinguishable and good thing about the game), Autosculpt (which was functional but insignificant), crappy drifting, and a god awful tier system.
Prostreet: A great and original concept that simply fell short in execution. Also the game was too easy. Well at least it was better than Carbon.
Undercover: Utter sh*t! Enough said.
Will Shift break the flop streak? The answer is yes and then some. I was very skeptical of this game when I first heard about it. Later I started to think that it was the NFS Edition of GRID. However, when the time came the game proved to have an identity of its own. People like to compare this to Forza and Gran Turismo, which makes no sense. Other than the fact that it's a sim racer and it has cars, it's nothing like either of those games. Which bring me to another point, this game is clearly not for everyone. People like to say that the handling of the cars is bad, but in reality it's just the players treating the game like an arcade racer or simply sucking at the game period, i.e. Justin Calvert. Also, you can adjust the controls to your liking and fully tune your car, so these people really have no excuse. This game's major focus is on the racing and the upgrading of the cars, and it is very obvious. The menus have very little flash and visual customization is fairly basic, especially compared previous Need for Speed games. However, the cars and tracks are incredibly detailed. The cars' exterior and interior are simply amazing. The tracks are very stylized to create a festive atmosphere. The cockpit view is without a doubt THE BEST in the racing genre right now. What makes it even better is the fact that you can actually upgrade the cockpit to make it more race worthy. The racing itself is great, the AI drivers are very competitive and can be very precise or aggressive. The career mode very straight forward with various types of events to compete in. It's nothing really spectacular, but it's alright. However, Car Battle suffers from having rubberband AI so bad that the game is literally cheating which ruins it. No matter how good of a driver you are and far superior your car is to your computer opponent's, he would always be on your back bumper and if you so much as leave an opening or hit a turn too wide, your opponent will slingshot pass you and be next to impossible to pass. People gripe about the drifting in the game, but it isn't that bad. Sure it's difficult at first, but you'll get a hang of it soon enough.
Sadly, the thing that keeps this game from being near-perfect are the alarming amount of glitches. None of which ruin the game, but they shouldn't be in a finish product Thankfully EA has released a patch for the PC version and from what I can understand, there's going to be a patch released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions in their respective marketplaces.
Overall, it's a fantastic game, and easily one of the best of the entire series, that can be enjoyable to anyone who is willing to approach it with respect.