Need for Speed: Shift

[sPliNtEr_777]

The latest in the NFS series is coming real soon, but I wondered if anyone knew whether customisation and modification is still on the boards for the NFS fans?

Ive been a religious fan of the series since NFS:Hot Pursuit 2, but recently their games, with the exeption of Carbon, have been gash. Shift claims to be the best since Underground 2, except with a slightly different flavour. Apparently a bigger emphasis has been placed on legality and realistic on-track racing, making it more competitive to games like the coming soon Forza 3 and GT5, or the recent PS3 hit Racing Driver:Grid. My concern is that what made me fall in love with NFS, luxury cars and ridiculous modifactions, is gone, and that we'll be left with a second rate GT5 to fill the gap until the real thing is released.

Anyone know more about the game, or have the same worry as I do?

Discuss?

[mikernaut]

I fear it will probably be more towards GT5. I too love the Underground and Carbon incarnations of the game and all the customization combined with the big free roam city. I wish they would just stick with that instead of trying to be more realistic.

Surprisingly I found Midnight Club LA gave me a fix of that NFS vibe and I bought and customized lots of cars (guessing around 20) until I ran out of garage space. It had a very big city (then East LA add on too for even more) and solid graphics.

[Scar Symmetry]

Need for Speed: Shift - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Scali]

I've been playing NFS since the original version back in the mid-90s, and the Test Drive series before that (somehow the original NFS seemed to be almost an exact remake of Test Drive, nearly all cars were the same).

I like the aspect of racing supercars on regular roads and such. I don't really want all this Japanese neon/drift junk that the later NFS-series suffered from.
The original NFS, Porsche 2000 and Hot Pursuit 2 are among my favourites in the series. I must say, Most Wanted and Carbon weren't bad either, although they took the game into a different direction (well actually Underground did, but I didn't like either version of that).

[darbdavys]

it's a sim. it is ABSOLUTELY different from all of the games in the series. it's like Forza and Gran Turismo.

Need For Speed SHIFT Video Game, Career Walkthrough Part 1 HD | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

[sPliNtEr_777]

Originally Posted by mikernaut

I fear it will probably be more towards GT5. I too love the Underground and Carbon incarnations of the game and all the customization combined with the big free roam city. I wish they would just stick with that instead of trying to be more realistic.

Surprisingly I found Midnight Club LA gave me a fix of that NFS vibe and I bought and customized lots of cars (guessing around 20) until I ran out of garage space. It had a very big city (then East LA add on too for even more) and solid graphics.

totally agree. loved MCLA, infact I still dip in and out of it, it never got boring and the variety of options was astounding, as soon as I started losing interest they released new car/street packs and then it got good allover again. I absolutley love that game.

If it were up to me, I would release NFS underground 3, directly following on, perhaps a year or two later, after underground 2. Same city, more cars, more options, police car chases straight outta Hot pursuit 2, more magazine photoshoots, and perhaps some half naked totty. You hear that EA???

[Hawkevil]

I loved Need For Speed: Most Wanted and played it a lot but the rest after that seemed kind of bland. I bought Pro Street for cheap and completly hated it. I played it for about 5 minutes...

I love sim racers too and play Race Pro on the Xbox 360 and GTR Evo on the PC quite a lot so I'm looking forward to Shift but I really want a demo though as they are saying it's a sim but from the videos it looks a bit too forgiving for a sim so the only way to tell is to actually try it myself...

[leigh321f]

Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted i think wer definitely the best in the series.

I'm actually a lil hesitant about Shift tho... the last time they tried to do track racing we got ProStreet.... and that sucked giant sweaty donkey balls....

please don't .... it up EA!

[Hawkevil]

Originally Posted by leigh321f

Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted i think wer definitely the best in the series.

I'm actually a lil hesitant about Shift tho... the last time they tried to do track racing we got ProStreet.... and that sucked giant sweaty donkey balls....

please don't .... it up EA!

At least Shift doesn't seem to have that hollywoodised style thing going on. That pissed me off just as much as the car handleing.

[darbdavys]

Originally Posted by Hawkevil

I loved Need For Speed: Most Wanted and played it a lot but the rest after that seemed kind of bland. I bought Pro Street for cheap and completly hated it. I played it for about 5 minutes...

I love sim racers too and play Race Pro on the Xbox 360 and GTR Evo on the PC quite a lot so I'm looking forward to Shift but I really want a demo though as they are saying it's a sim but from the videos it looks a bit too forgiving for a sim so the only way to tell is to actually try it myself...

demo will only be released when the game's released.

as for ....ing up, it's another developer then other games, so it won't have anything similar to nfs. all other ones were arcade (including pro street), so comparing Shift with other games in the series is almost the same as comparing Gran Turismo with Super Mario Kart.

[mikernaut]

It seems to me that there are 2 groups of NFS fans, the people that like the realism approach and the people that like the arcady versions. But to me it seems silly to try and make it like Gran Turismo. If people want that they will buy Gran Tursimo itself.

[GazPots]

Well not if you own an xbox.


I was a GT nutter since it's creation but after the ps2 i chose the xbox and xbox 360 for live and compatability with with my mates. And a few years down the line and the only real racing sim is Forza, which is good. But i welcome more sim racers on xbox.



Because i'll probably buy it.

[Marv Attaxx]

I didn't like any NFS game since NFS 3: Hot Pursuit
The games became boring since then imho. They didn't progress on the technical side (30 frames/per second while the Burnout series used 60 from the beginning and it just felt way better than the nfs slideshow) and I've never been a tuning fan. The tuning might be fun but the normal races and the drift shit bored the hell outa me
I hope they get their shit together with this new game altough I agree that it probably won't last long against GT5 and Forca...

EDIT: I'm talking about the console version
It might work better on high end pcs but NFS was and will always be a console game for me

[petereanima]

i absolutely LOVED the underground series, as well as Most Wanted. Carbon was...hmmm...weird. i loved the new tuning system for the bodykits etc., but the "flair" already got abit lost in that one. Pro Street was shit. Undergorund, well, a step forward in a good direction, but WAY too short (i borrowed it from a friend for a day and was already on ~80% - never bought it then).

i was hoping for the new one to go back to the "underground" style of the game, as there are imho already more than enough sims out there, and with GT a leading one that cannot be beaten.

[darbdavys]

Originally Posted by petereanima

i was hoping for the new one to go back to the "underground" style of the game, as there are imho already more than enough sims out there, and with GT a leading one that cannot be beaten.

LOL? compare the amount of arcade and sim games for pc. hmm, rfactor, lfs and.... that's ....in it. I'm really glad with this new NFS approach (again, whether you loved the previous nfs games, you can forget that love, because it's a different game. you can call it Shift w/o the NFS, because it mostly hasn't got anything to do with NFS), because there is a serious lack of sims on PC

[petereanima]

maybe. again: i'm a Playstation-only gamer, i dont know about the situation for computer-games. for PS there is Gran Turismo, and every other sim just cant reacht that level, so its pretty unneccessary to release another one.

[Hawkevil]

Originally Posted by petereanima

maybe. again: i'm a Playstation-only gamer, i dont know about the situation for computer-games. for PS there is Gran Turismo, and every other sim just cant reacht that level, so its pretty unneccessary to release another one.

There's always more room for sim racers IMO...

If you look at the Xbox 360 you have got Forza 2 and Race Pro being the two sims. Froza 2 has WAY more content than race pro does and has better graphics, but the physics of Race pro are a lot better. Thats why I prefer Race Pro over Forza, it is just a lot more fun to play.

Gran Turismo is the same as the Forza. It is rammed full of content but the physics look OK at best. From videos I have seen it looks as though the cars are going at a snails pace. There is no real sense of speed and this just takes away a lot of the fun factor IMO.

Shift might not be the most realistic but it looks fun from the videos...

[orb451]

I got NFS:Shift last night. The last NFS title I played was on the original Xbox (NFS:Underground) and after that Burnout 2 + 3, PGR3 + 4, Forza 2. I really liked Underground for all the geeky customization things you could do with it. Burnout 2 + 3 were fun for just all out arcade style mashups, PGR3 and to a lesser extent 4 were good balance between fun & semi-realism. Forza 2 was too "realistic" for my liking. I liked all the customization options in it and all the stuff you could tweak and tune on your car but it got tiring for me really fast.

Well after playing through the first 4 races of Career mode in Shift I'm glad to see a nice balance between sweet ass graphics, decent handling cars and semi-realistic physics.

I don't know if I'd call this one a "sim", not sure if that's what they were going for. What I like is a game that I can pickup and play from the get go that feels like a racing game without being a slave to realism OR being too cartoony.

Good game so far though and the first to divert my attention from COD for longer than 5 minutes which is a feat in and of itself (at least for me).

[mikernaut]

I picked it up last night too, (traded stuff in for it , heh). It does seem to fit in between arcade-ish and simulation style. Initially I was playing on "casual" setting and was finding it was holding my hand too much with breaking and acceleration assists. So I had to change the difficulty so it didn't do that so much. I was taking 1st place for 7 races in a row and I'm not that good of a driver, hah

The cockpit views look great but I'm bad at that view and have to go back to 3rd person. Customization seems very basic, some paint options , performance upgrades and vinyls and then just bodykits. You can go in and do performance tweaking if you choose.

The vinyls look pretty poor IMO and I don't think you can plaster them on like past NFS's. You can't even see your car when you cycle thru the body kits to see how it's appearance will change because all the text boxes are on top blocking your view.

Gameplaywise it seems decently fun so far and it's starting to get faster and more challenging. So far I am just driving a Nissan 350z and putting my money into performance parts for it. You do see to level up quickly (atleast for now) because you constantly earn points for driving with precision or aggression.

There are plenty of gameplay vids on youtube or gametrailers.com, if you are still curious about the game. If your really into your driving sims this may not be a game you will totally enjoy. Also if you loved the undergrounds and most wanted ( which I did), it is pretty different from those but I still am enjoying something new to play right now.

[Daiephir]

I'm probably gonna buy it since its NFS, I played Underground 2 (I had alot of fun on it) and Most Wanted (my favorite one between the two) I also played Hot Pursuit 2 on computer (über meh feeling), and I bought Prostreet for 10 bucks (süper über meh). I have a anectode for that one, I found the free car marker early on, got the Zonda (best car of the game) boosted it to the max, and owned everything (My Viper, Skyline, Charger, Zonda Team was the ultimate thing). But its still more a simulation than an arcade game. I'll probably be happier with NFS:World Online (if I ever get my parents to buy high speed Internet cause I dont play online cause of that shitty Internet I has [it aint 56K tho])

[SpaceDock]

I just got this on PC and it is awesome. Sort of like an upgraded version of the original Forza.

[GazPots]

I downloaded the demo on xbox and found the incar dashboard view to be riduclously good.


You can even turn the whole hud off and run it on the actual dashboard dials.



Saying that, while the graphics are astoundingly good, the actual gameplay is still a bit arcadey for my liking.



Definatly give it a bash when it's half price or something in a few months.

[Xaios]

No love for Project Gotham?

[ncbrock]

i agree that the physics of the cars are really arcady compared for Forza or GT, but thats what nfs is an arcade racer. Now if you get the actual game and mess around with the driver options\difficulty, and find where your comfortable at, and know how to tune a car, then you can get it to feel very realistic.
as its no Forza or GT, its a really fun game for the money.

[Metaldave]

It's defo a step up from Pro-Street, that was a major let down! Also I like how it keeps you interested by the constant flow of points. I agree that the physics aren't as accurate as other games, but it's a lot better than the others from the series. I used to rely on bouncing off the other cars on the first corner to take the lead