Need for Speed SHIFT Review:

Holiday 2009 promises to be one off the best ever for racing game fans, particularly for Xbox 360 owners. With Codemasters' solid Dirt 2 already on store shelves and Microsoft and Turn 10's highly-awaited Forza 3 hitting stores in just over a month, the sim-racing genre just became a little more crowded with the release of EA's latest NFS entry, Need for Speed SHIFT, and quite frankly, the release window could not have been better for a new racing title with a lot to prove. In fact, long before the lame undercover cop plots lifted from the Fast and Furious films and the rise of tuner culture, the Need for Speed franchise was originally a simulation racer that focused solely on letting players drive exotic dream cars, and many that have been following the development of SHIFT see the game more as a return to form than a new direction for the franchise. Nevertheless, SHIFT's new emphasis solely on professional racing and car customization rather than joyriding has placed it in direct competition with its sim-racer contemporaries such as Gran Turismo 5 and the aforementioned Forza 3 (and anyone who does not believe so need only Google recent comments comparing the latter game and SHIFT made by EA Games Europe's Senior V.P. Mr. Patrick Soderlund to see that the battle lines have been drawn) So the question is: Does SHIFT indeed deserve a place on the podium?

Gameplay:

Now for those of you dreading and/or hoping that the release of Need for Speed SHIFT has signalled the end of the action-oriented, story-based NFS games such as Undercover and Most Wanted, don't panic or celebrate just yet, as EA still has two other games on the way in the form of the Need for Speed NITRO and Need for Speed World Online (for PC). However, what SHIFT does represent is the simulation branch in a bold, three-pronged attack by EA aimed at diversifying and revamping the NFS brand, and from the minute the player presses the start button and watches the opening intro, it becomes immediately becomes clear that developer Slightly Mad Studios has crafted a very ambitious title.

As with most simulation-racing titles, the objective of SHIFT is to become the world's No. 1 professional racer, which means to stand the tallest atop the podium at the fictional Need for Speed World Tour. In order to accomplish this feat, players must conquer a Herculean roster of over 200 events (all variations of Race, Drift Challenges and Time Attack modes), broken down and organized into 4 tiers of competition, with each tier giving players access to even faster and more exotic cars. Of course, each successive tier can only be unlocked through amassing a required number of "Star Rewards", which much like in the highly acclaimed Burnout series are given out like an addictive drug in small doses, usually five or six stars per event. In the case of SHIFT, however, stars are not only awarded for the top three places or times, but also for completion of particular objectives during the event, such as performing a 3-second slide around a long curve or achieving a given top speed on a straightaway. A 1st Place finish plus the completion of all secondary objectives earns the player a perfect Star Rewards score on that event. This clever gameplay mechanic alone guarantees plenty of repeat play for perfectionists and "Achievement Junkies" on the game's harder tracks and difficulties, but is still forgiving enough to allow less hardcore players to advance with a moderate amount of practice on lower difficulties. But wait, there's more.

SHIFT also boasts another interesting feature called the Driver Profile, which can best be described as a dynamic player avatar, a morality system and the NFS version of the "Madden Coach" all wrapped up in one. The first event that every player must participate in is a one-lap qualifier for an upcoming race, which is really a "player skill and play-style" analyzer in disguise. Based on a player's performance in the qualifier, the team's race engineer (i.e. the computer) makes recommendations as to what A.I. assists should be turned on or off (e.g. braking and handling), what visual and performance assists should be in effect (e.g. whether the preferred "racing line" should be visible on the track or whether car damage should be hindering or simply cosmetic) and finally what the ideal opponent A.I. difficulty should be. Naturally, players can choose to go with the recommendation or tweak it to suit their tastes at any time via the Options Menu.

Another crucial piece of data that is analyzed during the qualifier (as well as for the duration of the game) is the player's precision and aggressiveness on the track, which the computer assesses by tabulating and comparing the total number of "precision driving actions" (such as clean overtakes, taking corners at proper speed and staying on the road throughout a sector of the track) versus the total number of aggressive actions (corner slides, trading paint, spinning out other cars) performed by the player. Players who perform more aggressive actions are labelled "Aggressive Drivers" while players who perform more precision actions are labelled "Precision Drivers", but the beauty of this system is that just as in real professional racing, there is a time and place for both types of racing (often simultaneously) and SHIFT rewards and encourages both play styles equally through a secondary points system called Driver Profile Points. The benefits of Precision and Aggression points are multi-fold; They give the player constant feedback as to what kind of driver he or she is in both skill and attitude, they in turn unlock minor and major badges when milestones are achieved (e.g. 100 clean overtakes, trading paint with 50 opponents, driving 5 miles in a Japanese car, etc.), further defining that player's driving style, and the accumulative total of Aggression and Precision points contribute to the player's overall Driver Level, which is also represented visually in the form of a dynamic Aggression or Precision crest (depending on which of the two attributes are more prevalent in the player's driving style). Finally, the player's driving style also determines some of the special Invitational Events he or she will be able to join. Precision racers will be invited to special Hot Lap events where they must beat top times using a sponsored car, while aggressive drivers will be invited to Eliminator events, where just like in the Burnout mode of the same name, the objective is to stay out of last place to avoid getting eliminated . So it is entirely possible to have a significantly different player experience in SHIFT based on your style of play.

Unfortunately, there are still some difficulty issues that hold SHIFT back from being more accessible to beginners and the non-hardcore, namely the Drift Challenges and Driver Duel race variants. For example, the Drift challenges lack any sort of visual assists (such as the aforementioned preferred racing line option) to help beginners learn the art of drifting, and there is no training mode to speak of other than the occasional tips peppered here and there during loading screens. When combined with the completely different feel of the rear-heavy drift cars (which can barely accelerate down a straight without spinning out), learning how to drift becomes a long process of trial and error, and many beginners will find themselves tearing their hair out. Likewise, the Driver Duel races, which in single-player are one-on-one, best-of-three challenges between you and the A.I., are almost completely unfair even on Easy difficulty, as your opponent always drives a perfect line, making it your race to lose. To make matters worse, Driver Duels are usually between two real-world manufacturers or two different makes of car by the same manufacturer, so the player never gets to use any of the cars that he or she has spent hours customizing and upgrading in this mode. Since the A.I. only needs to put five seconds between itself and the player to win a round, the only hope for anyone other than an extremely skilled player is to tap or spin out the A.I. car badly enough that it cannot catch up, and that is provided only if the player is good enough to catch the A.I. car in the first place. Of course, players can skip the Drift and Driver Duel events if they wish, but they will eventually have to master these events if they wish to enter the Need for Speed World Tour, where even more gruelling drift and driver challenges await. Make sure to bring plenty of patience.

Graphics:

Small gameplay complaints aside, SHIFT is a gorgeous racer that visually puts all previous console iterations of Need for Speed to absolute shame. Each of the game's 65+ cars look identical to their real-world counterparts, both outside and in, the latter due to an unprecedented focus by Simply Mad Studios to recreate the same cramped and claustrophobic driving conditions of a professional race driver. The interior of each car is meticulously detailed and realistically animated, to the point that they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing (right down to the placement of the rear and side view mirrors, which are fully functional when visible). However, once players start to get behind the wheel of the upper tier cars like the 2008 Bugatti Veyron or this reviewer's personal favourite, the 2007 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640, what they will really notice is how all the details of the cockpit melt away these mechanical beasts hit their higher speeds, realistically forcing the driver's depth of field further into the distance and blurring the immediate surroundings. Speaking of surroundings, there are over 18 real-world tracks featured in SHIFT as well as several fictional circuits, but all are highly detailed and fully believable.

SHIFT still doesn't quite have the visual polish of its contemporaries in certain areas. Its cities are not as photo-realistic as those in PGR4, it's framerate is still nowhere near the silky smooth 60fps of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (nor is any other game, for that matter), nor do the visual customization options hold a candle to that of Forza 2 or the upcoming Forza 3, but in all three cases what SHIFT offers in visuals is more than serviceable. In addition, the game sports some of the best looking, realistic crashes and car damage in a console "sim racer" thus far.

Audio:

As to be expected, the sound effects of SHIFT are equivalent to the excellent visuals, and the sound design of the game as whole has been placed primarily on the cars themselves, rather than a on a generic licensed soundtrack or sub-par voice acting. Fifty percent of the immersion of SHIFT's excellent cockpit view is created by the sound, from the roar of each vehicle's engine and the "thud" of the stick shift as your driver locks it into place, to the mysterious mechanical elements that you can hear noisily interacting under the hood at any given moment, reminding you that you are indeed driving a powerful machine that could easily slip from your control with one unnecessary pump of the accelerator or even disintegrate if you push the vehicle beyond its acceptable limits. Even the in-game soundtrack pays homage to the game's emphasis on racing themes, substituting experimental electronic mixes created with sound bites of your team engineer talking to you through the in-car radio, squeals of tires, crashes, audience reactions and other related sounds, with only an underlying synthesized beat or tone and the occasional female vocal to ground them as musical tracks. The licensed music is still there of course, but EA and Slightly Mad Studios have wisely relegated these tracks to race replays, where they are far less repetitive.

Longevity:

SHIFT promises a great deal of replay value for a committed player. In addition to the over 200 events to complete and nearly 70 cars to purchase, upgrade and customize, the game also offers an online mode where players can compete in Ranked and Unranked matches with up to 8 players in Races, Time Attacks and Drift Challenges, and players can also go head-to-head versus a friend in online Driver Duels. Also, Friend Competition Leaderboards allow players to see how their friends' accomplishments in career mode stack up against their own, making it easier for them to continually challenge each other's records for bragging rights.

Another plus is that regardless of what mode one plays in (Career or Single Race, Online or Offline, Ranked or Unranked), placing on the podium earns players cash that they can use to buy new cars for their garage as well as upgrades. Even after a car has been fully upgraded it can be upgraded one more time into an uber-machine through an expensive "works convert", which apparently is necessary in order to compete at the highest levels of competition, so players will have even more reasons to keep earning cash so that they can upgrade every car that they own.

Overall:

Simply Mad Studios has impressively managed to bring the Need for Speed franchise back to its sim roots yet has merged it with an incredibly immersive, modern game engine, all while cleverly integrating several of the addictive elements of its arcade contemporaries. Beginners and casual gamers with little patience will likely be turned off by the difficult Drift Competitions and Driver Duel races (when playing against the A.I.), but otherwise, SHIFT offers a highly customizable and engaging player experience that is welcoming to both racing-sim lovers and arcade racers alike.