Review: Need for Speed Shift

"Rebooting" franchises seems to be all the rage right now. First it was Batman Begins, then J. J. Abrams did it with Star Trek - and now EA has done it with Need for Speed.

The series has something of a checkered past, with successive releases erratically bouncing up to soaring highs (like the original The Need For Speed, Hot Pursuit and Porsche Unleashed) then swooping down to sputtering lows (like Need for Speed II, Hot Pursuit 2, Carbon, ProStreet and Undercover).

Back in the late 1980's there was a very popular racing game by the name of Test Drive, developed by a Canadian studio called Distinctive Software Inc (DSI). DSI was acquired by EA and became EA Canada in 1991.

A few years later they released The Need For Speed, which was really an evolution of Test Drive, putting you behind the wheel of an expensive performance car and letting you loose on a scenic open road for a point-to-point race while avoiding being stopped by police. It attempted to realistically simulate the look, feel, sound and handling of the nine vehicles on offer, right down to each car's dashboard and even the sound of its gear shifter.

Subsequent games in the Need for Speed series drifted significantly from this premise however, with the emphasis moving away from realism and more toward arcade action racing - to varying degrees of critical and popular success. Lately that success seems to have been lacking, with the last few games all receiving relatively poor reviews.

With Need for Speed SHIFT, EA is putting that checkered past behind it and waving the chequered flag to signal a fresh start.
 
It has the same name, but this NFS bears only passing resemblance to its forebears. SHIFT was developed by the lads at UK-based independent Slightly Mad Studios, who have some serious racing sim credentials - under their former guise of Blimey!

Games they developed (in collaboration with SimBin Studios) GTR2 and GT Legends, two respected racing simulators. So in SHIFT we are finally seeing the series move away from arcade racing and back towards the realism it originally strived for.

But while realism may be back in, this is not a "returning to the roots" story at all; NFS is headed in an entirely new - and promising - direction with SHIFT. What you get here is a curious hybrid between a straight-up motorsport racing game bred together with some strands of NFS's arcade racing DNA, the two combining in a delicate balancing act.

The first time you start up SHIFT, you are asked to drive a test lap so the game can assess your driving ability. Based on how you do, it then picks a "handling model", AI difficulty level, ABS, Traction Control and Stability Control settings to suit you (you can adjust them if you want to).

The handling model is either Casual, Normal, Experienced or Professional; this directly determines how realistically the cars behave when you're driving. At lower levels the controls are more forgiving and you get steering and braking assistance - at Casual level you barely need to brake at all - while at Pro level it's set up for realism (a wheel is recommended for Pro level).
 
How realistic? Well, it's no GTR2. This is not a pure simulator. For the most part the driving model compares favourably with Forza or Gran Turismo, but SHIFT is let down somewhat by a tendency toward oversteer.

At times the cars seem to have only a tenuous grip on the tarmac, and it requires a light touch on the controls to avoid power sliding around every corner (at least when playing with a PS3 controller - it might be a different story using a wheel, but we didn't have one available to test). Overall though, the driving model is good and it's a huge step forward from previous NFS games.

In keeping with SHIFT's motorsport slant, the tracks you'll be racing on are mostly real-world motor racing circuits, including Silverstone, Nordschleife (Nürburgring), Brands Hatch, Spa Francorchamps, Laguna Seca, Road America, and quite a few others - most with one or several variations. Many of these tracks will be familiar to players from other racing games, and they are faithfully rendered here.

Also faithfully rendered in SHIFT are each of the 72 fully licensed cars. These are organised into four tiers and you start the game by purchasing a Tier 1 car from a selection of potentially affordable models including a BMW 135i, Ford Escort RS Cosworth, Honda S2000, Mazda MX-5, Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R (C10), Toyota AE86 or VW Golf GTi.

As you play the game you unlock further tiers, moving on to higher performance vehicles in Tier 2 like an Audi RS4, BMW M3, Chevrolet Camaro SS, Mazda RX-7, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX (or X), Nissan Silvia Spec-R (S15), Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34), Porsche 911 GT3 RS and Subaru Impreza WRX STi.

In Tier 3 you get supercars including an Aston Martin DB9, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Dodge Viper SRT10, Ford GT and Nissan GT-R Spec-V (R35), then Tier 4 takes you into hypercar dreamland territory with the Aston Martin DB9R, Bugatti Veyron 16.4, Koenigsegnigggseginiggggsegg CCX, Lamborghini Reventon, Maserati MC12 GT1, McLaren F1, Pagani Zonda R and Porsche Carrera GT.
 
Although SHIFT's car selection may seem small compared to, say, Gran Turismo's Sultan-sized garage, there is plenty of variety here (Ferrari's marque being the most glaring omission). And it's probably more vehicles than you'll ever bother to drive, because this is most certainly not a Gran Turismo-type car porn game; SHIFT does little to encourage any fascination with the cars it has on offer or make you want to build a car collection.

You'll be much better off buying the best car in each tier and spending any spare cash on upgrades than chucking it away on extra cars. Just pick your weapon and get out on the track.

Nevertheless the cars in SHIFT are modelled in gorgeous detail, with particular emphasis on each car's cockpit - which is the default view when racing. You'll really be missing out if you switch to another camera view (of which there are the usual options), because the accurately modeled interiors add tremendously to the experience of driving each car.

The cockpits have fully functional speedo, tacho and boost gauge (where applicable) - and having driven a couple of the game's cars in the real world, I can assure you they look just like the real thing. You also see your driver's hands turning the wheel and reaching for the gear stick when you shift.
 
SHIFT does some unique things to further add to the driving experience, helping to make you feel like you're actually in the car.

To simulate the movement of your head, the camera and the HUD get jounced around when you go over a bump, or take a corner - or even just rev the car from idle, rocking it from side to side. Reach 150km/h and the game simulates "concentration" by blurring out the cockpit, focusing all your attention on the road.

If you crash, you see your driver's helmeted head fly forwards toward the windscreen, then get arrested back by his seatbelt, while your entire vision blurs and becomes black and white. In particularly brutal accidents you'll even hear your driver cry out in pain. (Sorry mate - where did that tyre wall come from?)

Although SHIFT has a comprehensive visual damage model, deforming your car into all kinds of shapes - even smashing the windscreen - when you crash, this doesn't seem to have much effect on your car's performance. The damage model can be selected between "visual only" and "full", but with it set to "full", smashing into a wall at 200km/h just seemed to put the wheel alignment out, making my car list to the left slightly.

The performance upgrades available for each car are relatively basic, with less options and none of the tuner brand sponsorships seen in past games. Instead, you simply have a more sober choice of generic upgrades in three stages, e.g. Stage 1 Brakes Upgrade, Stage 1 Tyre Package, Stage 2 Engine Upgrade, and so forth.

The later stages only become available as you progress through the career mode. Once you have installed all the upgrades available, some vehicles can for an additional cost be "Works Converted" which gives them full race preparation and squeezes out every ounce of performance.

Some basic visual upgrades are also available, allowing you to customise your car's paint job, install different alloy rims (from a range of real wheel brands like BBS and Work) and apply vinyl decals. Pimp My Ride and ricer-style rubbish like neons, ridiculous body kits and carbon fibre body panels are all thankfully missing.

SHIFT's Career mode is also relatively basic. You start in Tier 1 with access to a limited selection of events. With each race you have a chance to earn stars; in order to unlock more events and move on to the next tier, you need to earn a specified number of stars.

Most races have six stars on offer, three for placings on the podium, two for achieving particular numbers of Driver Profile points (we'll come to that in a moment) and one for a race-specific special objective (such as performing a clean lap, owning 75 percent of the racing line or holding a drift for 4 seconds). What this means is you can potentially earn stars from a race (and thereby advance your career) even though you finished in last place. Curious.
 
Even curiouser is the Driver Profile system, a gimmick upon which the game places far too much emphasis. This is where NFS SHIFT's delicate combination of serious racing pretensions and arcade accessibility ambition starts to smell a bit off.

While you're racing around the track you pick up Driver Profile points in one of two categories: Precision and Aggression.

Precision points are earned for things like sticking to the racing line, making a clean overtake, mastering a corner, doing a perfect launch or achieving a best lap or sector time. Aggression points are earned for things like sliding around corners, doing a dirty overtaking maneuvre, drafting, blocking an opponent or "trading paint".

Fill up the points meter at the top of the screen and you start earning double points for a short time. Your points are added up at the end of each race and your totals determine whether you are a "Precise" or "Aggressive" driver on your Driver Profile.

The trouble is, Aggression points reward drivers for doing things they shouldn't really be rewarded for. It's incongruous and detracts from the game's otherwise straight-faced approach to motor racing.

And it doesn't stop there either. As you gain more and more Driver Profile points, you level up and gain Driver Levels which reward you with bonus cash and access to Invitational events. These events usually give you a chance to race in a car beyond your current career level.
 
But that's not all. You also earn "Badges" for things like trading paint (crashing) with a particular number of opponents, or loyalty to Japan, Europe or USA by driving a particular distance in cars from that region, or doing a particular number of perfect launches.

Once you've earned all the minor badges of a type, you gain the major badge. These are further split into silver, gold and epic badges. If that all seems a bit pointless, well, it is.

It's an orgy of rewards for rewards sake, desperately trying to create extra motivation for you to keep coming back to the game. If you are the sort who obsessively collects all the trophies or achievements in each game you play, you might like it though.

Fortunately, the whole Driver Profile and reward system can be safely ignored if you choose. Putting that aside, the career mode is well paced, and with cash and stars to be earned there's still plenty of motivation to win. With so many tracks on offer, the range of events feels quite varied.

As well as straightforward races (either on one track or as a series across multiple tracks, with endurance, manufacturer and driver duel variations), there are also hot lap and time attack events (where you compete to set a best lap time), car battles (where two iconic cars are pitted against each other - such as a Mitsubishi Evo vs. Subaru WRX), eliminator races (where after each lap the last place driver drops out) and drifting events.
 
I found the drift events initially frustrating, as the objective is the opposite of circuit racing, and the car handling is set up differently. Presumably it's meant to simulate an oiled road surface, but the cars slide so easily it's actually difficult to hold a straight line - simply apply too much throttle and you'll lose the back end.

You win by scoring more style points than the AI opponents, and style points are earned by drifting around a corner at the sharpest angle, as close to the clipping point marker and at the highest speed possible.

Once I figured out that chucking it up to fourth gear and feathering the throttle enabled me to maintain some control over my Nissan S15, I started winning the events and warmed to them a little, but I still feel they add little to the game and would have been happier not having to slog through them.

The AI opponents in SHIFT are competent drivers who will react to you - not just parade around the track like the zombies in Gran Turismo. Sometimes they make mistakes, braking too late and running off on corners, but mostly they provide a good challenge.
The AI difficulty level can be switched between low, medium or high if you find them too hard or too easy.

Once you outgrow the AI opponents you can go online and match wits with fleshy ones. Unfortunately we were not able to test SHIFT's multiplayer functions for this review, but several modes are available: ranked and unranked "Versus" races with up to eight players and a head-to-head Driver Duel ladder mode.

EA has succeeded in jumpstarting Need for Speed back to life with SHIFT. Despite numerous flaws, underneath the confused body work of a game that can't decide if it wants to be a simulation or an arcade racer, there is a solid engine and, most importantly, a fun racing game.