Need for Speed Shift Review

Over the past years the Need for speed franchise has had a lot of flops to its name. In these times it has shifted from the realistic racing to the arcade like display in Most Wanted. It’s no secret that ProStreet and Undercover were not great hits, which is why EA sports decided to give game developers Slightly Mad Studios. This got a lot of simulation racers excited. Even though Slightly Mad Studios was only founded back at the start of 2009 the key personal is very well known way back to the Simbin Development Team that earned a reputation for making awesome mods for F1 in 2002. This team had just one aim which was to completely revamp the Need for speed series from the one which had moved away from being a classic driving game to over extensive tuning and police chases.

The Need for Speed: Shift has up to 70 cars right from regular front wheel drive care to hardcore racing machines. Almost all the major car makes are represented. This gives the user a wide variety of cars to choose from. Cars can be equipped with turbo kits, body kits, roll cages, turning a regular car into a racing machine. All of these will cost you money that will need to be earned in the game’s career mode first. A lot of people will be cribbing as you can’t modify your cans head lights and other style related parts to make it look fancy. This game has been focused on more real world performance tuning.

This game centers on the career mode. This mode starts of with a driving test which is to evaluate the player’s skills. This is relatively simple, once you’re done with that you will have 3 options which are to start your career, play a quick race or start a time attack. The latter two are kind of useless in the beginning because you won’t have any cars to drive. Career mode features a lot of events like normal races to time attacks, drift events etc where you have to beat another driver. Participation in the events will reward you both with money to spend on new cars, upgrades as well as points to raise your driver level. The graphics f NFS shift has set benchmarks for motor sport games. The lighting and reflection effects are eye catching. The circuits where you race are also pretty alive as well with a lot of activity going on. This does cause a distraction when you’re driving at high speeds with motion blur enabled.

Shift when played on a Sony Playstation with a Playstation 3 steering wheel is out of the world. The force feedback and sensitive controlling add to this realistic driving game .Slightly Mad Studios has made sure that Need for Speed franchise is right up there with its competitors.
If you ask if this game matches the likes of Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, I would say not yet, but its sure is heading in the right direction

This game scores a 3.5 out of 5

Guest Blogger:Anil