Need for Speed: Shift

Game: Need for Speed: Shift
Format: PC, PS3, PSP, X360
Publisher: EA

If any series has had an unstable history, it has to be Need for Speed. Each iteration has indeed sold in abundance, but the extremes of quality between one release and another are vast.

One year, as the shadow of Christmas draws near, a sublime Need for Speed racer will grace the shelf stores, and the next, a far less impressive sequel will creep up the charts. Such wild fluctuations have made EA’s goliath of a racing series an unpredictable beast, but for 2009, at least, it seems Need for Speed has found its racing line once more.

This time around, after previous dalliances with open-world and arcade racing, Need for Speed is to all intents and purposes a sim. It doesn’t take things quite as far as the obsessively meticulous Gran Turismo, but the game’s developers have clearly pursued realism as earnestly as they have chased fun.

The result is a remarkably striking, exciting racing experience. There’s just enough emphasis on Need for Speed’s arcade past to ensure the driving is intense and excessive, but the new fixation with simulation makes things feel credible, rewarding and ultimately of a far superior quality to anything the series has offered before.

Of most importance to any automotive game is the car handling, and across a broad spectrum of rides, each of which is subtly distinct from its garage-mates, the driving physics are robust and precise, offering a huge potential for mastery.

Shift’s main campaign mode offers five tiers of events, each containing the likes of traditional races, time trials, drifting contests, head-to-heads, endurance challenges and classic elimination competitions. Climbing through these ranks of course demands plenty of podium finishes, but you are also rewarded for driving with style, thanks to a points and cash system.

While this supplemental structure sounds like an incidental inclusion, the way Shift uses it to encourage you to not only race for the finish line, but also to meet set goals and drive with panache and precision, really adds to the atmosphere.

At times the game is remarkably fast, and as you overcome the collection of international raceways, there’s plenty to learn thanks to a huge variety in level design. Fortunately, in what is one of Shift’s greatest features, as you start to play for the first time on a humble test track it assesses your various abilities and tailors the experience for you, turning on or off a number of auto-assists. While you can reset any of the settings, or even re-take the simple ‘driving test’, Shift does an amazing job of customising the experience based on your initial performance, meaning that whether you’re a hardened racing fan or relative newcomer, the latest Need for Speed will be perfect for you.

When you’ve satisfied yourself with the main campaign mode, there’s an impressive suite of online multiplayer options, along with a dizzying array of customisation functionality so you can tinker with every last nut and bolt of your favoured vehicles.

If you’ve never played a Need for Speed game, or have developed a suspicion about the series, now is the time to return, as Shift is absolutely brilliant in every way. It’s a big year for racers, with Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5 on the way, but the latest from EA is sure to stand up to the best there is.