An insightful First-person driving perspective delivers a scary sense of speed, authentic crash physics and intensity!
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GAMEPLAY - 4/5
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Need for Speed: Shift approaches the style of its predecessors slightly differently, and turns out to be a gripping circuit racer with simulation elements thrown in for good measure. It shifts up a gear from previous games, and the highlight of the racing is the First-Person behind-the-wheel cockpit view perspective that adds intensity to the driving experience and is no doubt the best way to experience and play Need for Speed: Shift with large amounts of high-octane racing.
In career mode your ultimate goal is to reach the NFS Live World Championship and claim a respective podium place to prove you're the best driving talent around. To get there you'll need to progress through various Tiers by earning stars. The great thing about earning stars is that during each event you are rewarded neatly with profile points for met requirements during the event regardless of your driving style. Whether you want to be dirty and aggressive to reach the finish line, or pass the line with confidence by driving clean and using precision, you are rewarded equally for your efforts at establishing that positive position you achieve.
There are up to 3 stars for each event for your podium place, and typically another 2 stars available for reaching experience point score thresholds. Then an extra bonus star is rewarded if you complete the bonus objective for a race which can vary from spinning out a certain amount of opponents, reaching a certain high speed and mastering every corner. These provide enough variety throughout each event to keep you concentrating on the final result along with all the profile points you gain along the way, making every corner one that you'll aim to master each time you encounter it to get more points for your efforts. Objectives are a neat feature because they encourage you to focus on different aspects of your race craft and it's great that you can return to any event after completion to acquire any stars you previously missed.
Profile points are awarded for precision actions like performing a clean overtake, mastering a corner, and also for committing dirty actions such as making contact with another competitor or corner sliding. They all add up during the event and fill a score metre. Once filled it turns yellow and every action you do that nets profile points multiplies it by 2 until the bar has fully depleted and regained its natural colour. The presentation at the end of an event is nicely done and is displayed in a simple yet effective manner that shows you the stars you got, the profile points you gained, and any rewards you achieved by earning enough profile points to level up therefore increasing your potential on the track with the possibility to add a new car to your collection. During an event meeting a certain amount of actions earns you a minor badge. Earning enough minor badges within a specific category over the course of your career and you get awarded with major badges such as bronze, silver, gold and finally epic for earning all minor badges in that category.
In each Tier is a wide selection of multi-challenging events, such as the standard race where you strive for a podium finish, Time attack which is all about shaving seconds off your lap time to beat the other competitors, drift events that seriously challenge your ability to be skilled around corners to earn points and dual events which face you against a more aggressive driver in a one vs. one dual to the finish line. These (and others not mentioned) are then incorporated into other events, such as a US series where you'll only be able to use an American car on limited American tracks, and also Endurance events that test your mentality to maintain concentration for a gruelling race including many laps and many more that keep the gameplay fresh and the variety intense. As you advance your career you'll get invited for an opportunity to participate in international events which are beyond your career and cars capabilities, where the competition are at their best and the prizes are big. The game also acknowledges your racing style, and so if you are more aggressive you will unlock eliminator events, whilst if you are a clean driver you'll open up opportunities to test drive new cars in a hot lap event, and your style is also reflected in the driver profile icon you have.
The game proves a bit too forgiving with the Tiers though, since it's very easy to unlock entry into the NFS Live World Tour long before you've completed all the events in Tier 2, and so the score margins for stars could have been lengthed a bit more just to force you to consider every star as an important valuable on your path to success and fortune. With over 60 cars that slowly become unlocked as you progress that are within specific Tier categories to use for relevant events, you'll need to earn money to purchase and upgrade your vehicle of choice. Turn your highly tuned street racing car into a quality racing machine with plenty of performance upgrades to choose and install from, customisation options to achieve the look of your choice, and highly accurate tuning equipment to get the best performance out of your chosen vehicle for a desired activity.
The modest car selection are all reasonably detailed when you take in the sights from the driver's seat, and the sense of speed borders on scary at times, and an impressive selection of tracks to race on, and in time, master completely ensure the realistic racing experience of Need for Speed: Shift is one that thrills every time you hit the gas to earn a respective position where you can show off to your friends and the world.
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GRAPHICS - 4/5
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The frightening sense of speed when playing from the driver's perspective will grant you not much time to admire your surroundings unless you crash into them, but despite the blur of the environment because of the 200kmh motion you are travelling, you can tell that the detail of the tracks true-to-life and great, while the sharpness of the graphics are ideal for a track racer such as this. Car models are replicas of real sports cars and the customisation options have a suitable amount of depth so that you can create the car of your dreams by using all sorts of colourful paints and styles to show off, and even if you wreck it during an event by turning aggressive it will always be fixed and refined for your next event.
Collisions are accompanied with a realistic reaction of metal fragments that break off vehicles, aswell as crash physics that give off the correct sense of nervous adrenaline that occurs soon after with a high-speed collisions to other cars or off track. Being inside the car makes the crashes even more intense and the shards of car flying off in random directions all the more effective to see, and the visual effect that propels the driver in his seat when a head-on crash occurs is genuine and believable.
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SOUND - 4/5
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Need for Speed: Shift despite a rubbish soundtrack which is largely nonexistent until after a race is complete, is a foundation for some truly excellent gameplay sound effects that are authentically replicated for all manner of collisions, corner sliding, accelerating through the gears and driver emotions. Minor collisions will disrupt your concentration, and high-speed crashes will completely disorientate you, combined with the thud of your frightened heartbeat that signifies just how close you were to a critical casualty. This feature is not only unique, but it's a realistic representation of what a driver may possibly endure during an aggressive racing event such as the ones presented within NFS: Shift. The revving of your personally tuned racing machine differs slightly in each vehicle, and so the effects are all authentic for the make and model of specific cars, and the developer's haven't just simply cheated and created the same sounds for completely different classes of vehicle.
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CONTROLS - 2/5
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It takes several races to get used to the controls and the feel of certain cars, and so the pre-race event trial which you are immediately thrust in to upon choosing career mode will feel unbalanced and inconsistently difficult. The main cause of this alienated feeling is the strange vehicle handling and default steering which is overly sensitive to the analog stick, which lacks a sense of balance and cohesion. Drifting is prohibitively difficult and therefore should be avoided from being attempted during races and only tried out during the mandatory drifting events which are considerably difficult, time consuming and frustrating.
But once you learn how to control the car and have understood the basics; mastering corners and beating lap times will be improved over time with ease and you'll gain much needed experience to progress through the Tiers and eventually to stand on top of the most appreciated podium in world racing.
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ATMOSPHERE - 4/5
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Adrenaline is constantly pumping through you in-game and in real life, and the scary sense of speed that borders insane and truly makes you want to slam on the brakes because of that nervous feeling enhances the overall atmosphere in the racing world and environment. Energy thrives among each driver and the conflicts that augment as you try your best to overtake opponents in any way possible make some situations really nerve-wracking as you draw closer to the finish line which you simply must win to ensure progress towards future success of the World Tour championship. The first-person perspective behind the wheel is the best way to experience these tensions of battling energy for the first place position, and is the intention of the developer's to keep you in that perspective for the rest of the game as it is the only way, in my opinion, to feel fully engaged with the racing action happening on screen, where the immersion is difficult to break. The dynamic crash effect system that allows you to feel the full effects of G-Force crashes makes the driver experience as close as you can get to the real thing, and you'll feel like you are strapped in to the driver's seat and witnessing all the effects you'd expect to from that dangerous, risky position.
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ENEMY AI - 2/5
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The AI opponents are aggressive towards you, and always look to end your race at every opportunity given, but are never influential to their other AI competitors and show no aggression towards them. They also are extremely good drivers even on the easy difficulty setting, and will stay to the racing line almost throughout the race without ever showing signs of skidding off the track. And if they do, they seemingly move faster on the gravel and grass than you, and so you can't take much advantage from their brief track pattern disruption, and they regain their constant rhythm instantaneously. While you'll quickly establish a gap between the opposition at the start of a competitive race, you can rarely ever increase it by more than a few seconds, and so one mistake can cause the entire race to be lost, and subsequently need restarting unless you don't mind losing an important event or relish in a steep, uphill challenge. Dual events are by the far the most infuriating for AI drivers. They pit you one vs. one against a more skilled aggressor that require you to reach the finish line first or establish a 5 second lead, and while the first 1 or 2 are genuinely fair, the latter duals are ridiculously difficult and the only way to actually beat your opponent is to be extremely dirty and completely take them out of the equation so you can quickly establish that 5 second margin for victory. And even using this technique will take many restarts to get the result you want because, like I said, unless you completely cause them to barrel roll off the track, they'll quickly regain control and will catch you up in a matter of seconds, and constantly prove almost indomitable.
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LENGTH - 5/5
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Need for Speed: Shift provides a long-lasting racing career that constantly expands with every demand you meet, and the huge range of events that mix old and new styles to formulate new events will keep you busy for a long time. Frequent and long load times in-between races force the game to last longer then you'd like, but the addicting gameplay that commences after the loading screen is often worth it.
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REPLAY VALUE - 4/5
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The many tracks are created in a way that encourages replay in order to understand how to approach each corner and obstacle threatening your podium position accurately, and how best to master them over time which you'll soon possess the knowledge of for each circuit. If you aim to strive for the world leader boards you'll need to return to previously owned events to elevate your position above the regular crowd and into a more respective place by earning every star and every badge whilst also improving your racing style that will get you that level 50 profile point score threshold that comes from dedicated track racers only.
Think of it as a watered down simulation racer which has shifted up a gear from previous games of the series that can be very addictive and time consuming. Need for Speed: Shift introduces a unique first-person driving perspective that enforces the belief of actually being in that drivers seat, and you can tailor the game to your driving style solo and online with the new Driver Profile, which evaluates your performance from race-to-race and impacts which cars you can unlock and how you evolve throughout your driving career. NFS: Shift has 72 photo-real high-performance cars and 19 beautifully rendered tracks you can race more than 50 different ways, and the competition to succeed is greater and tougher than you can possibly imagine.
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OVERALL SUMMARY - 8/10
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Good Points: Immersive first-person driving perspective that provides a scary sense of speed and realistic crash damage effects and simulation physics, Well presented reward system with a steady flow of satisfying rewards, Excellent variety of tracks and events, Good customisation options, Fine selection of racing cars to purchase and upgrade, Authentic sound effects.
Bad Points: Difficult drifting events because of strenuous drift mechanics, Frustrating duel events, AI opponents show no sign of aggression towards each other, Frequent and long load times, Vehicle handling controls take time before you feel comfortable with them.