Hands-on: Need for Speed Shift

Racing games have become increasingly dense over the past few years, with users able to modify the smallest details on their cars in an effort to shave seconds off their lap times. The whole genre has become increasingly immersive as well, to a point that has seen developers rebel against realism and create arcade-style games like Split/Second and Blur.

That's even carried over to the hyperrealistic racing games like Need for Speed: Shift, which lead designer Andy Tutor calls "A return to basics. You know how movies are rebooting with things like Batman Begins? That's what we're doing with Shift." While those are exciting words to hear, once you slip behind the controls of Shift, you'll see that it really is a definite shift (see what we did there?) for the title. Thankfully, Maggie Q is nowhere in sight.
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Need for Speed: Shift

is an entirely different direction for the franchise, and enters the world of simulated racing. Gone are the high speed police chases of the other NFS titles, here you're just racing to improve your driver profile, and to tune your car to your heart's content. While titles like Blur and Split/Second have gone down the arcade path, Shift and Forza 3 are fully embracing the customization features, and Shift offers players the chance to fully customize car tuning, as well as both the interior and exterior of their cars.

Shift moves to the core racing experience where drivers have to follow the racing line, take the corners aggressively, use drafting, master drift, and try not to crash. Every race affects your Driver Profile, which constantly keeps track of the way you drive and will ultimately determine what kind of driver you are and what types of in-game items are offered to you. Leveling up will open up new cars and customization options, and an aggressive driver can end up with an extremely different looking vehicle than someone who is a calculated racer.

So what does that mean when you're on the thumbsticks? It's definitely not an arcadey racer where you can bounce off of other cars as you go into a steep turn, or use the walls as sponges when you haven't decelerated enough. Experienced racers will find it immediately intuitive, but if you're used to simple racing games you'll definitely be behind a steep learning curve. Mastering the brake and following the line are key to staying on the track and being competitive, and Shift has extremely detailed physics, which includes a unique driver view.

Tutor compares that to the intensity level of a first-person shooter, "You've got grenades going off, airstrikes, all that kind of thing. When you're racing, you've got exactly the same thing going on. You're being shunted all the time, which is like being shot. You have massive crashes which is like a grenade going off at your feet. The cockpit view is just like an FPS view, you can look around with the right stick just like a shooter. We want to cockpit view to really make you feel like you're in the driver's seat."

If you select the cockpit view, you'll see your driver do things like shift gears and adjust his head for a better view, but if you go into a steep turn, you'll also see how the g-forces affect him, and watch him fight to keep his head level. If you happen to crash, you'll be treated to the full experience from inside the car, complete with a loud, semi-orgasmic groan from the driver as his ride turns into junkyard fodder. The harder you hit, the louder your driver is, and we'd be lying if we said we didn't have a lot of fun playing around with that.

Crashes are definitely fun, although Shift doesn't let you drive the wrong way to try and cause one. If you head the wrong way on a track, a five second counter appears on-screen and when it reaches zero, you'll find yourself facing the correct direction again. You'll also notice damage to your car after you bang it up, although they've dialed down how much that actually affects your driving, and you can also go into the menu to turn it off completely.

During our time with the game, we were really wishing this was being demoed with a racing wheel, because we were playing it with an Xbox 360 controller, and it's extremely easy to oversteer with a stick. We noticed that every corner has a gray box near it on your minimap, and if you take a corner precisely you can "master" that corner, and it gets checked off. The box turns yellow as the corner is in-progress, and will X out if you fail, or turn into a check mark if you succeed. Your profile keeps tracks of these, and Slightly Mad Studios is hoping that numbers of corners mastered will become a bragging point amongst racers.

The game is extremely fast, and other than some seemingly longer than normal load screens, we really enjoyed spending time with it, especially in the cockpit view, which is really impressive. Hardcore racers are definitely going to want to pick this up, especially since the developer is estimating 70 hours just to complete the career mode, and another 30 or so for online gameplay. They'll have 70 cars at launch in September, with several DLC packs on the way.