The Need for Speed series has been around for quite sometime. Sense the debut of the Next Gen Consoles Need for Speed has done quite a change up from it’s usual offerings. I was fortunate enough to get a review copy of the Need for Speed Shift. While I’m not a hardcore racing enthusiast after seeing Shift at E3 I was a bit curious. So how does Shift hold up in the Next Gen Racing department?? Well buckle up and get ready for a high speed and unbiased review.

Gameplay

Sure enough Shift got the Gameplay right. The Game begins with a test lap, essentially gauging how much driver assistance you’ll need in the game. I myself hit the Normal range neither great nor horrible. The thing that really caught my eye about this game was the guiding and point system. While Burnout really established the point avenue Shift takes it to a new level. Much like games that have a moral standing Shift translates that into actually driving styles. You have precision and aggressive styles of driving. Precision is more based on not destroying the other drivers while the aggressive is more in the crashing category. An interesting effect of your driving is the change of you Character Logo, as you progress in either Precision or Aggressive your logo changes to reflect it. I started out with a logo with Large Spiked hammers and slowly progressed into more Angel Wing design. Felt it was a good indicator in how you are doing in the game. Which was something I really appreciated, a lot of times racing games rely on the joy of either saving money to buy a car or getting upgrades. In Shift there are various things to do, the Point system is used on each track that then Unlock Stars. The Stars are then used to unlock new races and equipment while the Points also translate into you License Level. If that wasn’t enough you can also collect Badges on all tracks, from simply trading paint with another vehicle or driving x amount of miles in US made car. There are various Medals to collect and it’s always fun to finish a race and see how you did. One of my biggest issues with racing games is more or less my own driving problems, I tend to take turns way to fast. That’s where the Guide Line comes into play. Essentially it shows you where you should be driving and how fast, Green means go, Yellow Slow a bit, Red Slow down a lot. I felt this was a fantastic add in, it can be turned off for the more Hardcore audience but made the game really easy to pick up and play. It also helped race my driving skills quite a lot. There is only one issue with the game, it has a very slow load times between races. I hoped that installing the game on the 360 Hard Drive would speeds things up but it was still noticeable.

Graphics

Damn this game look good. There was a very interesting Design choice of suggesting you play from the interior of the car. This of course can be changed but takes aways from the overall experience that is Shift. All the cars looked great from the inside and really added a huge dimension of realism to the game. Though the game doesn’t stop there. All the cars looked stunning and there wasn’t anything held back in the Customizing of your car. My favorite effect was the crashing instead of just slamming into something your windshield cracks and your vision would become blurred. This is very fun while attempting to get back into a race :)

Sound

This is an interesting area to discuss. While I enjoyed the realism to the game I felt that the music was a tad lacking. In most racing games you have a radio playing with various tunes. In the races it seemed it was left more to just the SFX of the cars. The SFX sounded fantastic. They really did a great job of making feel like you were in the car.

Overall

I have to say I’m impressed. The game is built for any racing enthusiast with any skill level. While this game takes things a tad more series then other racing games it was a nice change up. What stands out most about the game was added realism while keeping the game fun.