Last year, after the financial disaster of Need for Speed Undercover, nobody thought that EA would continue this long series of racing games. It seemed like the popular series would be forgotten forever. But EA decided to reevaluate the situation and to bring back Need for Speed series into a new light by introducing the best elements from their former installments. This is how the thirteen Need for Speed game called SHIFT made its debut this month promising a lot but somehow causing a general dispute regarding its true value.

The ones responsible for the new look and feel of Need for Speed: SHIFT are the developers from  Slightly Mad Studios, who helped develop sim-racing masterpieces like GT Legends and GTR 2 together with SimBin Studios. In this way, the street racing style was abandoned, therefore the core of the game being focused this time on the simulation aspect showing the sporty facet of this discipline. Without featuring any puerile story or other cinematic extravaganza, SHIFT puts you immediately at the wheel of a brand new BMW M3 to run a test lap at Brands Hatch Indy. On this lap the game will analyze your driving style and will purpose a scheme of handling settings which can be modified afterwards as you wish.  After you have decided which settings to keep, you will be thrown in the first race using the same car on the same track. Here you will feel the aggressive A.I. which doesn't hesitate to push you away if you stay on its racing line, but also its uncommon behavior of slowing down when it is in front of you. It's like the A.I. is giving you a second chance if you are overtaken by any virtual opponent.

Getting used with the game's handling system can become a little trickier, if not frustrating, as it turns out that the simulation aspect is actually faulted on lower difficulty settings by arcade elements. It is obvious that by activating the handling assistance, the A.I. will take care of the more sensible parameters of the control system, by helping you to brake much easily, by correcting the wrong trajectory of the car, etc. But the car in general tends to slide too much, giving you the impression of losing the control all the time. It's interesting how easily you can get out from these types of situations, due to the forgiving physics system, which stops the pendulum effect of the car immediately.  At the same time when playing the game with an appropriate wheel controller, the travel angle of the controller doesn't match the virtual travel angle as seen in the game, which is a minus when playing in full simulation mode. I felt always a lack of precision while playing with the wheel controller, or even with the gamepad on assist handling level. Not to mention how hard is to handle the car in a drift event. At least the award system in drift events is quite limited and has no special requirements, so a couple of slides, even if not performed in special regions of the tracks, can earn you some extra points in order to help win the events.

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After finishing the first race, you will have access to the Car Lot from where you have to buy your first car. While the shopping process should be relaxing and fun, in fact it turns out that it can become annoying, as you have to wait seconds for every car to be displayed as you browse the list. Also there is no option to rotate the car and the HUD which displays the technical stats covers partially the car's image. You can choose from 72 fully-licensed cars classified into 4 tiers, such as the exotic Pagani Zonda, Lamborghini Reventon, Bugatti Veyron, or the imports Mazda RX-7, Nissan Skyline GT-R 34 or Toyota AE86. Not to forget the classics such as BMW M3 E36, Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R or the McLaren F1. Every car can be upgraded technically and visually, except the exotics. If you apply the complete pack of upgrades on some cars, these cars can be completely upgraded to their racing versions.

On some cars, nitro system cannot be applied, and some of them are not suitable for drift events. These limitations are forcing the player to try out different models, and to acquire along the game at least three different cars in order to have access to all events. I almost forgot to mention that you can also upgrade the interior of every car by applying special kits which will change the wheel, the dashboard and will also add a steel cage. Every technical upgrade will unlock new settings parameters and will allow you to set more deeply the handing and behavior of every car. Also you can apply liveries on your cars or even create your own. Despite this customization option, the vinyl editor is nto very comprehensive and requires a lot of patience to actually create combine or apply something. The good part here is that the default liveries are looking good and are enough to make you car look better.

The singleplayer career will be completed when you will win the Need for Speed World Tour. In order to get access to this final tour, you have to compete in every tier's event (classic races, elimination races, record lap time race, and drift races) which can take place on real but also imaginary tracks. You will have the pleasure to race on legendary tracks from America and Europe such as: Laguna Seca, Road America, Spa Francochamps, or the old Nordschleife. If you earn enough stars and manage to complete all the objectives along the way, you can unlock the final tier and the World Tour after completing only a quarter of the game. This means that you can achieve the game's goal much earlier than expected and therefore you will probably skip the other events. Stars can be earned by wining events, reaching a number of experience points through acts of "precision" or "aggression"  and completing race objectives: from beating the lap record time, staying on the racing line for a period of time, drifting for a limited period of time, spinning a number of opponents, performing a clean lap, reaching a certain speed, etc.,. It's unfortunate that the game actually encourages the player to cause rampage and not only in single player, but also in multiplayer, where again the player will win stars when crashing into others. For the 'victims' it's a frustrating moment because a trip into the 'wilderness' costs the player enough seconds to be the last driver in no time.

You can choose from a visual damage or full damage impact. It's up to you if you want to play like in a real racing event or not. The only problem here is that even with full damage system activated, the handling of your car won't be extremely affected. Bu tany crash will definitely affect you race result, as every impact will cause shaky camera effect and a blurry image for a few seconds. While crashing, the sound reproduces in detail the impact moment and also simulates the breath of the driver affected by the shock of the collision. For a realistic feeling the game is set to deliver all these effects from the cockpit view by default. And I recommend trying playing the game from this view. The detailed interior of the car is amazingly rendered including shadows and lighting effects caused by the front windshield. You can see how the driver is changing gears and moving his feet on the pedals, but you can also feel how the car is fighting to stay on the tracks while running over some bumps. It's an impressive experience which has been delivered amazingly.

Online mode can be fun if the races wouldn't be so chaotic. And all these thanks to the same experience points which are offered for the player exactly like in the singleplayer mode. You will earn points for "precision" but also for "aggression". If you have the bad luck to play with people that have a different opinion of how this game should be played, you might end up washed away immediately from the track. If you cut a corner you will be instantly slow down, for a few seconds. In this way you can become an obstacle for the pack behind you which most of the time can cause a big crash.

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Conclusion

Although the officials have told us that Need for Speed: SHIFT is a racing simulation game, you cannot overlook the arcade restrictions implemented in the physics engine. This caused the handling of the cars to be unbalanced and imprecise even when you choose to play on 100% realism. Taking in consideration the fact that Need for Speed franchise still has an imprecise future; SHIFT will probably not become a milestone in the series.

Gameplay: 80

NFS SHIFT is not necessarily an addictive game, but its various car's collection and real tracks makes you play it for a while. The simulation aspect is there, but the developers unsuccessfully combined it with arcade elements in order to make it more casual. Another uninspired combination is the game's menu design, that 'street racing' feeling from former installments of the series, which doesn't express the actual sporty facet of the game. 

Graphics: 86

The whole graphics have been concentrated on the cockpit view, from where the developers actually want you to play the game. If you still want to change the playing view, the tracks and their surroundings don't look so detailed as you might have expected. Everything looks sharp and real, without any stylish exaggerations, but still it cannot be compared with the photo-realism level achieved in Grand Turismo 5. I was hoping to find a much more detailed damage system.

Multiplayer: 78

Playing in online mode can be frustrating especially for the sim-racing fans because the awards system follows the same formula from the singleplayer recompensing the player equally for his precision and aggression showed on tracks. Therefore the races can become chaotic with lots of crashes. A 'trip' into the grass will cost you important seconds, recovering from such a crash being dramatic sometimes. The good news is that you can use all the stock cars available in the game plus the ones upgraded in the singleplayer career. The online sessions are lag-free. In its original version the game does not feature LAN support which has been implemented lately in the first patch.

Sound: 83

The game features a soundtrack with 24 titles from various known artists. Still the quality of the sound doesn't stand in the soundtrack but more in the environmental noises. Again, the sound of the engine is top quality and different from car to car. It can be modified again on each car if you install a new upgraded exhaust system.

Hardware: 77

The game renders very slowly any car model in the car lot menu. The loading times before each race are unreasonably long. I felt some glitches while in the races without recording any dropping frame-rates.