Need for Speed: Shift
Imagine the experience of being a race driver. The adrenaline rush of driving at breakneck speeds, the pressure of fierce competition, the fear of losing control, the intense concentration and athleticism needed to harness the power of speeding chrome and steel. This is the True Driver’s Experience of Need for Speed ™ SHIFT. Through the combination of perception-based G-forces, an ultra-realistic first-person cockpit view, an accurate, accessible physics-based model and the all-new, brutally disorienting crash dynamic, you'll be thrust into the driver’s seat amid the chaotic noise, intensity, and physical and emotional demands of the race.
Need for Speed: Shift Features
- A wealth of highly tunable cars available in an equally diverse range of events including: quick race, standard races, manufacturer races, time trial, online options and more.
- Developed by the world's best racing game talent and real race drivers, including: the team behind critically acclaimed 'GT Legends' and 'GTR2' games and VP of EA Games and race car driver Patrick Soderlund.
- All-new 'Need for Speed' release that combines the true driver's experience with real-world physics, pixel-perfect car models, and a wide range of authentic racetracks.
- A combination player tier and achievements system that ensures that drivers are matched against those of similar experience on the track and that rewards for victories match the win.
$29.56
The graphics for this game are great - I have it running HD 720p from my computer to my plasma (will try 1080p, but not sure if my CPU and GPU can keep up...). Unfortunately, it took all day to get this working. Here are some tips:
- Pay attention to the minimum requirements - a lot of people in the forums had issues if they didn't have the right CPU or especially graphics card
- Get the latest "PhysX" driver from NVidia
- Get the latest drivers for you video card
- Download the patches from EA's website. Especially if you have an ATI video card. This is what caused the most pain as the game would crash right as the test lab run would start. It got really irritating as I had to keep going through the intro (no way to skip it) after every crash and attempt to fix.
- Play with the controls settings - the defaults are really loose with some pretty big deadzones - this translated into some really bad left/right steering for my controller until I got it dialed in correct.
-- Was a pain to get going, but starting to get fun now
I had a really tough time finding a reason to enjoy the game at first. It seemed ridiculously slow to install, I could have copied five data DVD's to my computer in the time it took to copy this one game. Plus my normally quiet DVD drive was making some really awful noises during the install. A half hour later it was done and I boot it up just to find I could not exit out of the game. Seriously, what EA project leader was so spaced-out that he forgot to include the 'quit' option in the game (or the manual)? I'm looking at you QA Department. Talk about an unfinished game; this has to go down as one of the most wtf moments in gaming history. In any case the only way to get out is to ctrl-alt-del and end-process as attempting to close the game window doesn't work. The solution to all this aggravation is to go to the needforspeed website, search for nfs shift, click 'support', then download and install the patches to this game. Perhaps as compensation for the aggravation, they even included some additional cars with their patch at no additional charge. Once this is done the 'QUIT' option will be available; in rather large font I might add.
Once you get past the initial hassles, the game is actually quite fun to play. I question the purpose of doing this but they start you off in expert mode with what is probably the most difficult race on a track that has to be covered in butter. Suddenly the act of driving a car, even at slow speeds, becomes an almost impossible experience. After being thoroughly humbled, it will recommend some easier settings for you. I recommend you start with ALL settings on easy until you get used to driving as you can increase the difficulty at any time in your career. You may notice that for a 'speed' game the cars seem quite slow compared to other racers. Don't worry folks, this is just the beginning. As you win races, your opponents become much faster and more aggressive. Upgrades to your vehicle and proper tuning will become a must and you will see a dramatic improvement in both speed and handling as a result. Before long the action on the track will become quite frenetic.
Like others have mentioned, you will probably need a wheel controller for the best performance. Using a Logitech Rumblepad and a standard Logitech USB controller, both admittedly dated, I can't seem to get acceleration anywhere between 0 and 100. In spite of the ability to customize settings, both for a wheel and gamepad, I can't get the joystick controls in the middle of the pad to register at all. There is support for a Logitech G25/G27, Driving Force EX/RX/Pro/Momo, Thrustmaster RGT FFB Pro/Ferrari GT/F450 & Fanatec 911 Turbo so hopefully you'll have better luck with one of those. Sim fans will find plenty of challenge but casual racers like me who just want the thrill of the race will also find a lot to like in the casual settings; even with just a keyboard. Don't mistake casual for easy, though. This is a tough game! Fortunately, people who aren't into car-culture will see what various upgrades will do to their vehicle before buying so they don't have to wonder if they bought the right part. You earn money by winning races, but unlike other NFS titles, this is the first of the bunch that makes the process of buying a top-tier car difficult. Money is tight and even if you're a god among racers, you'll still find the opponents are too tough to beat and the parts you need are locked away until you have leveled up enough to unlock them. Fortunately you earn points to level up whether you are in career mode, a quick race, or even in multi-player mode. Depending on your skill level, it's quite possible you will need to step out of career mode to continue your career. Like I said before, this game is pretty tough.
The cars also have their own personality too. My Honda S2000 zips through the track but tends to oversteer a lot. If I take the corners too fast it'll understeer. Meanwhile my Dodge Viper feels like a cruise ship. For all its power, it's almost impossible on the corners unless you take them reeeal slow. As other reviewers have mentioned, the constant tire squealing gets rather grating. Even when the race is finished and you view the replay, you find little to justify all the squealing happening during the race. Minus one star for the broken eardrums. I'm knocking off another star because occasionally, not frequently, I run into problems loading the different levels. Either the screen goes black after a level or the level gets stuck while loading. These are usually fixed after a game restart but it's still annoying when it happens.
You're going to need some recent hardware to keep the frame-rates at an acceptable level. The minimum settings are dual core, so plan on needing a quad and make sure your video card came out within the past year or don't bother unless you don't mind the settings turned way down. (I'm guessing a Geforce GT/Radeon HD at minimum) Even if the digital download is selling for a lower price, I'd still recommend this higher priced disc version. I range from no trouble at all to excruciating hassles using EA's download manager and their tech support is useless.
Arcade racers will have a lot more fun playing Dirt2 and I think that's a better title to use to show off a new computer system. Still, NFS Shift isn't bad once you get used to it and sim racers are in for a treat. Hope the review helped.
-- A fun game but you MUST install the patches!
