The Need for Speed franchise has made quite a name for itself over the years with its emphasis on street racing and cop chases. The attributes have made the series one of the dominant names in the racing genre. Now the series has moved on to the race tracks once more but does this jump offer anything new or has the series run out of road to play with?

Your ultimate objective in the game is to compete in the Need for Speed World Tour event. As soon as you begin the Career Mode you will be thrust into the seat of a BMW M3 and do a test lap. The game will then assess your skill level and style of driving and match up the game’s AI accordingly. The actual Career Mode consists of a large variety of challenges including, standard races, drift races and time trials. The Career mode consists of 5 tiers which allow you to purchase some of the better vehicles such as the Aston Martin DB9 and the Mercedes SLR. You can move up through the Career Mode and advance to higher tiers by gain start from each of the different race events. The better you do in a race the more stars you a rewarded with. Sometimes you will have to complete bonus objectives such as reaching a particular speed or maintaining 1st position for a lap to acquire all the stars for certain events.  At no point should you feel disheartened if you get stuck on any events as the game lets you progress on to higher tiers without completing everything on the tier(s) below it.

The game plays out like cross-mix from and arcade racer and standard simulation. Like a simulation, the game tries to make you stick to the race line and and break before sharp turns. Failure to do this can be cost you a few places. The arcade elements of the game include “trading paint” with other racers and even ramming them off the track into a spin-out. This balance between the two doesn’t directly affect the gameplay but it is a mix that rarely goes hand in hand. Nevertheless, it is by no means a bad thing in Need for Speed: Shift.   

As you progress through Career Mode, you get a Driver Profile which relates to you actions on the track. It weighs you up as either “Precise” or “Aggressive” depending on your style of driving. For whichever type fits you best, you can level up and unlock new customisations for you cars and earn additional spaces in your garage for new rides.

 There are over 50 tracks in the game, some of which are real and some are made up. They have a lot of variation and some are more inner-city based tracks whereas others take the shape of a more rural environment. They are all great to drive on and most have a good balance of straights, slopes and corners. As there are only 65 different cars in the game, some additional vehicles would have been greatly welcomed. However, they do consist of some of the very top manufacturers and there is plenty of variation amongst them to make almost any car you pick fun to drive. The traditional car customisation features that have been seen in probably every NFS game made to date re-appear once more. They include body kits, nitrous tanks and visual colours as well as some more specific modifications such as gear tuning and tyre pressure.  

If you are getting bored of racing with the AI opponents then you can take your game Online and get involved with some very competitive racers. Driver Duel mode places you and an opponent in two randomly selected but identical vehicles and you race head to head. Other than that you get the typical ranked and unranked races. Cutting corners in online mode has been prevented as you will receive temporary low speed limit for a few seconds. For most online modes you can either choose you car from the online selection or simply import one from your Career Mode. You Driver Profile is also updated from your online wins and you can gain points and experience from online race events.

Visually, all the cars and tracks look fine but the damage effects on vehicles are only moderate. You can change the detailed settings for car damage in the menu. You will get a few dents and scratches if you collide with other drivers or obstacles but your car never gets damaged enough to make steering it much of a problem.

At face value, the game seems to repeat what it has done over the years but on a more formal and professional level. Need for Speed: Shift focuses more on being an authentic race simulation rather than an arcade with just a couple of areas that are in the mix between the two. With that said, Need for Speed: Shift is definitely a racing experience not to miss out on.

+ Loads of great tracks.

+ Vehicles feel natural to drive.

+ Good rank/tyer leveling system.

+ Fantastic sounds and visuals.

- Relatively small car selection.

- AI can be too good in places.

8.5/10

By Ian Ratledge Posted Thursday, September 24th, 2009 7:37 pm