Totally realistic or arcade material it's hard to see which one this game wants to be.
User Rating: 8.5 | Need for Speed: Shift X360
Need for Speed: Shift is a racer that doesn't know what it wants to be. The control scheme is arcade-like but the physics and mood that the game portrays gives a realistic vibe (feel). When you first start out you are told to do a practice run on a track, how you do on that track determines how the game judges the sort of racing you'll be the best at, whether it's assist-heavy Easy, or totally real Hard with no assists, but they also give you the option to change the settings the way you like regardless. When I first did the practice run and the race afterward I was very surprised. The way my cars rear end swayed every time I turned right or left was horrible, and I thinks that is the biggest "thumb downs" of this game, the fact that I had to test and re-test and tune and re-tune each car to stop this swaying was disappointing and shouldn't even have had to be a problem in this game. The customization in this racer was disappointing also, you could only choose preset upgrades and the vinyls are ones that I have seen from at least the last four games. In the game there is a good addition that urges you to drive smart or plow through other racers in order to get to the finish. Your "driver profile" labels you as either a Precision or Aggressive driver based on certain things you do like trading paint is Aggressive but a clear no-touch overtake is precise. The second to last bad thing about this game is definitely the way the career mode works. You earn stars unlocked for doing certain things within races and earn enough to unlock tiers unlocking different cars and more difficult races. But the way this works is almost do this and do that, sort of demanding you. You only get a choice to do this race or that race once in a while and it doesn't give you a lot of freedom. The last and most frustrating thing about this game is drifting, I had done drifting in NFS: Prostreet and kicked-butt but in this game the realism is over-done to a again frustrating scale. Overall get this game, it may have done alot of things wrong but it's really addicting and the cockpit view mode is beautiful and personally I can't get enough.
