Product Description

Need for Speed SHIFT is an all-new simulation racing IP that combines the true drivers experience with real-world physics, pixel-perfect car models, and a wide range of authentic race tracks. Need for Speed SHIFT takes players in a different direction to create a simulation experience that replicates the true feeling of driving high-end performance cars. Players are thrust into the loud, visceral, intense, athletic experience of racing a car on the edge of control from the drivers perspective through the combination of perception based G-forces, the hyper reality of the cockpit view, and the brutal experience of a first person crash dynamic. Need for Speed SHIFT features an accurate, accessible physics-based driving model that allows you to feel every impact, every change of track surface and every last bit of grip as you push yourself to the edge.

Need for Speed SHIFT is being developed by Slightly Mad Studios in collaboration with Black Box and senior vice president Patrick Soderlund at EA Games Europe. Slightly Mad Studios includes developers and designers that worked on the critically acclaimed games GT Legends and GTR 2.

• True Driver's Experience A variety of visual cues delivers the true driver's experience including a three-dimensional HUD that mimics driver head movement, inertia and G-forces. The depth of field also adjusts based on the speed of the car
• So when the car is travelling at high speeds the perspective will shift to the distance putting the car/cockpit out of focus
• Enhanced AI A sophisticated AI system will mean that your races are more exciting than ever before. AI opponents will react and perform based on the player's aggression and overall driving skill thus creating race experiences for all skill sets
• Dynamic Crash Effect - When the player hits a static object or opponent car, the player will feel like they are

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2009-09-18
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Format: Unknown format
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Need For Speed is one of the best-loved and most successful driving game franchises ever – but you can forget everything you knew about it, as NFS Shift – the clue is in the name -- takes a radical new direction. You could argue that it has grown up – it has moved, by and large, from the streets to legendary race-tracks like Spa, Donington and Laguna Seca (although there are street circuits, too), and gives you the chance to pilot drool-inducing machinery like the Pagani Zonda and Koenigsegg CCX.

The shift in emphasis becomes immediately apparent when you start a Career in the game: there’s not a cop-car in sight, but instead, NFS Shift assesses your driving skills by putting you in a BMW 3-series and dropping you into a short race around a gloriously detailed reconstruction of the legendary Brands Hatch. Buy a car and you instantly have a choice of five races. What initially strikes you are the stunning, mega-crisp graphics, best enjoyed through NFS’ famous cockpit view, which now has a level of attention to detail that beggars belief.

You swiftly come to appreciate the structure of Need For Speed Shift’s Career Mode, which sounds complicated but has been cleverly designed to work in your favour. To progress through the game, you must win stars, which are given out for finishing on the podium (three stars for a win and so on), but also for passing thresholds for Profile Points in each race. Profile Points are awarded for two opposite aspects of your driving: aggression and precision, and the balance between them defines your driving style. This system works brilliantly, as you actually get awarded for indulging in driving that would be frowned on in real life, such as punting opponents off the track or four-wheel slides. Those who fancy themselves as budding pros will undoubtedly want to earn more points for precision than aggression, though.

There are four Tiers to negotiate before you even get to the NFS Live World Tour, the two-series culmination of the game, in which you compete in the world’s most exotic cars – to move up the Tiers you need to collect specified numbers of stars. And your Profile Points let you level up as a driver, to a maximum of Level 50. Each time you level up, you get rewards like sponsorship, new rims and vinyls, plus invites to extra races.

NFS Shift boasts straight Races, Time Attacks – in which you get a certain amount of time to post the fastest lap – Eliminators, Drift events, Driver Duels – in which you pick one of two cars and must defeat the other over three races – Endurance races, Manufacturer races – in which you’re given an identical car to everyone else on track – and Hot Laps, where you have three target times to beat in order to grab the stars on offer. You earn plenty of Invitational Events along the way, and you can see who out of you and your Friends owns each event in Career Mode. NFS Shift is sure to be a big draw online: up to eight players can compete in Races, Time Attacks and Drifts.

Factor in realistic handling with bags of feel, AI that makes rival drivers improve steadily through the game and extensive customisation of both mechanicals and bodywork, and you have what must be the most complete, best structured and best-looking racing game ever, whether you’re a serious petrol-head with dreams of becoming the next Lewis Hamilton, or an enthusiastic amateur who tends to favour arcade-style racers. With Shift, Need For Speed has stepped up several gears at once.

Customer Reviews

A very good game, but perhaps not for some NFS fans
This game is very similar to the likes of Race Pro, Grid and most of all; Forza 2, it's perhaps even more realistic than any of them, so if you are the typical NFS fan who likes the previous easy handling style games, and doesn't like your racers too realistic this may well be frustrating.

At first I found the game a little unexciting, it has all been done before with Grid and Forza, but I have to say it does grow on you hugely the more you play.
The career is pretty pointless unless you like that kind of thing, the only purpouse of it is to get the BMW M3 GT2 which the game gives you when you have completed and beaten the very last NFS live tour race at Brands Hatch, apart from that all the tracks and cars are already available to play in quick race mode right from the off, and if you find this sort of mode tedious, it gets worse, as it gets tougher the further you progress into the career, the easy mode here is most definitely not for absolute beginners new to racing games and is challenging at first, especially with the new tracks.

Graphics are good and although the aren't mindblowing I have to say that the game leads the way in trackside detail and objects, there is just so much more stuff around the tracks that you just don't see in other games, Donnington for instance, has been done dozens of times in other games, but here you will find yourself noticing new things all around the track.

I have to say I don't like the gimmick of blurring the cockpit when the car goes above 100mph, since when do drivers get blurred vision inside their cars when they go this fast? it is the one chance you get to have a look around the cockpit when you are on a long straight and you can't beacuse the whole thing has blurred away, even the ai's cars blur at that speed, but not the outside world, I don't know whose stupid idea that was to implement this but it was a ludicrous one, especially as the game is trying to be realistic. Another thing is when you crash the screen goes black and white, something you'll either like or loathe. The AI aren't all that either, they make Michael Schumacher seem sportsmanlike, as they will ram you like demented loons for no reason, in reality they would be disqualified for such behaviour, and if you have it set on hard, they seem to get even more agressive, too much to be honest, which can spoil the racing, it seems EA has modelled the Ai not on real life race drivers, who would fear for their own lives and their fellow drivers at such speeds, but on the people who race online; who as soon as you overtake them, will try and ram you off the track, but this isn't Burnout Revenge, its a racing sim. Another complaint; only 3 difficulty levels to choose from, medium is too esay and hard is a tad too hard, of course that's just me, but EA need to take into account that 3 difficulty levels doesn't cover all the different kind of gamers skill levels out there, and if a game is either too easy or too hard it doesnt give much of a challenge. I do wish they would include a custom creatable tournament in the game, where you can create a tournament with any amount of tracks you choose, career tournaments are pathetic with their handful of races, it would be far better than racing 'quick races', not enough racing games offer this and they should. Those gripes aside, I would say everything else is perfectly good.

On a final note, the game has very likely saved the NFS franchise, the in car dashes are fantastic, and the cars handling is great, and whats more the game grows on you, but if you are of the view that you preferred the old games and hate this, don't despair as there are a couple of games out early next year that are similar to the old NFS arcadey games, called 'Split Second' and another called 'Blur' which is made by the guys who made PGR, check them out, there are videos on amazon.

TRACKS: the game does offer mostly new tracks not found in other games, I am so sick of racing silverstone, laguna seca, etc because they are in so many games already, but that aside there are some great new tracks to get stuck into, the track list is as follows:

Alpental
Ambush Canyon
Autopolis GP/Lakeside
Brands Hatch GP/Indy
Dakota Club/GP/National/Tri Oval
Donington GP/National
Ebisu Circuit South/West
Glendale Club/East/West
Hazyview Eight/Oval
Laguna Seca
London River/Royal Mile
Miyatomi
Nordschleife/Aremburg/Karussell/Nurburg
Road America
Rustle Creek
Silverstone GP/International/National
Spa Francorchamps
Tokyo Circuit/Club
Willow Springs GP/Horse Thief Mile

and CARS:

2006 Aston Martin DBR9
2009 Audi R8 LMS
2008 Audi R8
2008 Audi RS 4
2007 Audi S3
2007 Audi TT 3.2 quattro
2006 Audi S4
BMW M3 E36
BMW M3 E46
BMW M3 E92
2008 BMW 135i Coupé
2009 BMW M3 GT2 (available in the 'Special Edition' version only)
2007 BMW Z4 M Coupé
2008 Bugatti Veyron 16.4
2006 Dodge Challenger Concept
2008 Dodge Viper SRT10
Vaughn Gittin Jr's 2010 Falken Tire Ford Mustang GT
2010 Ford Shelby GT500
2007 Ford Focus ST
2006 Ford GT
2006 Need For Speed Shelby Terlingua
1996 Ford Escort RS Cosworth
2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS
2006 Chevrolet Cobalt SS
2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06
2006 Honda Civic Si
2000 Honda S2000
2006 Koenigsegg CCX
2008 Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4
2007 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640
2007 Lamborghini Reventón
2006 Lotus Elise 111R
2007 Lotus Exige S
2005 Maserati MC12 GT1
2008 Mazda MX-5
2006 Mazda RX-8
1995 Mazda RX-7
1994 McLaren F1
2007 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722 Edition
2007 Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG
2008 Mitsubishi Lancer EVOLUTION
2006 Mitsubishi Lancer EVOLUTION IX MR-edition
2003 Infiniti G35 (V35)
1997 Nissan 200SX (S14)
2009 Nissan 370Z (Z34)
2006 Nissan 350Z (Z33)
2009 Nissan GT-R SpecV (R35)
2008 Nissan GT-R (R35)
2000 Nissan Silvia (S15) spec.R AERO
1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34)
1972 Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R
1992 Nissan 240SX (S13)
2006 Pagani Zonda F
2010 Pagani Zonda R
2008 Porsche 911 GT2
2009 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR
2006 Porsche 911 GT3 RS
2004 Porsche Carrera GT
2007 Porsche Cayman S
2008 Renault Mégane RS
2007 SEAT Leon CUPRA
2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STi
2007 Lexus LF-A Concept
2008 SCION tC
1986 Toyota Corolla GTS (A86)
2008 Volkswagen Scirocco
2006 Volkswagen Golf GT

Well, it looks nice...
There is no doubt that this game looks nice, but unfortunately it doesn't play nice!

First of all, the loading time for each of the tracks is excruciatingly long - even with the game installed to the hard drive. By the time the tracks load, I have usually lost the will to live!

The handling of the cars is terrible - the steering seems all wrong with the cars seemingly steering in acute angles left or right with the slightest touch of the controller. You can change the steering sensitivity but the process of doing this is terrible. You have to go all the way out to the top menu, change the controller settings (which are not documented) and then go into a quick race to try them out - due to the dire loading times actually getting this to a stage where the cars are controllable is a long and drawn out process. Even after this, the cars still do not handle correctly.

People may cry 'this is not a simulation!!!!', but I would argue that it has been presented in a way to challenge games such as Forza, which even in its previous incarnation was better.

I have played this all the way to tier 5 (I am level 21), so I have given it a chance, but in the end will be trading it in as it is such a frustrating game. I would strongly suggest that people rent this first and give it a couple of days before deciding to buy.

Dirt 2 is much more fun than this, and I suspect that Forza 3 will be miles better.

Need for Speed Drift!
I fear that my review may be glazed over as another crazed rant, however I also feel that I am obliged to tell people of this game's massive floor.

Let me start by saying that the graphics, the cars and the environments are superb. I like the feeling of speed and I think the crashes are brilliant. However, no matter how hard I tried to get into this game, I could not get past the fact that the cars drift all of the time. The level of oversteer on every car in every situation is just wrong. Take the Mitsubishi Evo 10, turning a reasonable hairpin at 30mph with very little throttle usage, ah, understeer and grip I hear you saying. But no, armfulls of oversteer, and not cure-able either, no matter how gentle, rough or anything you are, not even full downforce will help the problem. This even happens in a straight line.

I am not here to bash the game, only to warn others who seek something fun but also realistic. I am a big fan of the gameplay of Race Pro, floored as the game is, the realistic driving experience is superb, however I understand the need for pickup and play. That is why I would strongly recommend waiting for Forza 3 as it walks this line perfectly for 90% of gamers out there. It also will have a much better tool for editing car liverys, something that is not very good/flexible on this game.

Needless to say, I have never done this before, I traded it in and got ODST instead. Not the same genre, but miles more fun.