Just simply pass on this average racer.
Shift 2: Unleashed
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Platform: Xbox 360
Rated: Everyone 10+
Released: March 29, 2011
Visuals:
Well let me talk about the visuals for Need for Speed Shift 2: unleashed are not that great so keep in mind that I have played the first shift and visually that one is far better looking than this one the detail to car were a good but not as great the first shift and the detail to the surrounding environments are just plain nasty and in fact I could not stomach the look of this game it just simply looked horrible and maybe it was just because I have a t.v that is a standard definition, so I could not check this game out on a HD t.v. The visuals from the cockpit and the new helmet cam looks great but I just don't like playing in that view but it still looked good and I this game had a lot of frame rate issue and bugs so in short this game was just a disaster in the graphics department and it was simply bad.
Audio:
Now the audio in Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed was not bad but the audio in the first shift was a lot better but still I think it was one of the few high points in this average game. So the sounds of the cars sound just as great as the they did in the first shift but not that great they did not sound that authentic as the cars sound in Forza 3 but still they were still decent and good enough and even really loud. Now the one thing that I personally found annoying was that professional racer guy that they used to be pit crew manager and just like in Pro-street and shift I just found that really annoying and yes I do realize that pro-street's voice was the event's announcer which was absolutely horrible and with the pit crew voice in the first shift got annoying after a while and now here in shift 2 and I do realize once again that they are trying to go for authenticity so you actually feel like a real life racer but still I had to turn off the voice so I can just race in peace and other than that the audio was pretty good.
Gameplay:
Now the gameplay on this game was ok they made some improvements in the handling of the cars in this one compared to the last shift game and what I'm talking about is in the first shift you would go and try to take a turn and every time you try to take the turn nice and smooth you for some reason get pulled in to a power slide which was just terrible in stead of taking the turn nice and smooth, so in this you can take the turn a little more smoothly in this but not that smoothly and fact in some parts it felt like the car floating on air rather than driving on concrete so basically what I'm saying is that the handling as been improve but not for the better. Now the a new feature to this series is more of a updated feature to the cockpit and it is the new helmet cam and I personally do not play in this view it was a good feature for a lot of player's that like to play in that view but it a good new feature but it is also a useless feature in some event's in the game. So just as I said with the visual part of this review where I could not stomach the visuals, well the same can be said about the gameplay I just could not stomach playing this racer at all and in fact with the terrible A.I and the damage to the cars are not what it could've been and what I'm talking about with the terrible A.I and the bad physics is for some reason every time I would make a move pass an opponent or just simply tap the other racer's car it would either pull me off the track or even pull you into a very bad spin just from a little tap and that is just plain bad physics in this game. I can not say much on the multiplayer cause once again I personally could not stomach this game and I did not even use the vip pass that came with the game so I'll say this I'm pretty sure the on-line for this game is pretty straight forward and I'm going to apologize for not properly playing the on-line portion, but simply after playing the average single player I personally felt the on-line was not worth trying.
Overall:
So the overall point for Need for Speed Shift 2: unleashed is simply not worth picking up for the $60 dollar price tag and if you the player really want to play this game it's simple just rent it first cause this game really suffers from lack of development and I would like to point that I do know I'm calling the game by it's full name of Need for Speed Shift 2: unleashed and that's because I'm not that stupid I can properly read the box art/cover and the game's box has the Need for Speed logo and it fully say's Need for Speed on the bottom of the box art/cover so this is basically a NFS game not just shift 2, so on this rant here just pass on this game and rent before you buy just simply don't waste your time and money on this average racer until it drop's in price.
5.5 out of 10