Just a fun racing game.
You can drive however you want in Need for Speed Shift. You will get all kinds of rewards for precision or aggresive driving, which makes the game really fun. You will earn stars for doing things like spinning out opponents or performing clean laps. Earning stars will help you unlock more tiers. When you unlock tiers, you will have access to more high end cars like a Lamborghini or a Bugatti. You will also earn badges for doing things like mastering all corners on a race track or dirty overtakes. You earn profile points by just doing anything cool like drifting around corners or trading paint with opponents. Profile points will help you rank up your driver level and you can also buy new cars with your points. you will unlock more upgrades and invitational events when you rank up.
In the career mode you start off by taking a quick lap at Brands Hatch in a BMW, this is so the game can adjust the driving settings to work best for you, you can change them if you want. After this race you will actually be racing with opponents, where you finish will determine how much cash you have to spend on your first car. You start off in tier 1 with some pretty low end cars and some easy races. Your goal in the career mode is to make it to the NFS World Race. There are many different types of races in the career mode like manufacturer races and car battles. In manufacturer races every one has the same car. In car battle mode two different manufacturers go head to head (BMW vs Audi etc...). There are also drift races, which are hard at first but fun once you get the hang of it.
You can customize your cars too. You can choose performace, aerodynamic, racing parts, and visuals. After you upgrade your car to a certain point you can purchase the works upgrade. The works upgrade makes your car into a race car, it also adds a lightweight body kit and doesn't give you a choice of any other ones, which isn't a big deal to me but it might be to some people. There is less visual customization than previous NFS games, the only things you can choose freely are paint, vinyls, and rims.
The online mode is a lot of fun and it is perfectly smooth, I've never had any lag. The only thing that sucks is that people don't know how to drive so they crash into you purposely so they can win, but there's nothing you can really do about that.
Overall, Shift is a pretty decent game if you're into racing, but if you're looking for cop chases this game isn't for you.