Need for Speed: Shift
Game » consists of 19 releases. Released Sep 15, 2009
The first Need for Speed game developed by Slightly Mad Studios. "Shift" is an attempt at the simulation sub-genre of racing games, promising a sense of speed with new realistic effects and a new crash mechanic.
Short summary describing this game.
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5 (3) 4 (11) 3 (4) 2 (1) 1 (3) 3.5 starsAverage score of 22 user reviews
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From the perspective of a sim-racing fan 0
I am quite a hardcore racing sim fan. I own a g25 steering wheel with a clutch and H-Pattern shifter, I’ve dropped literally hundreds of hours into GTR and rFactor and for me, playing games like GRID or Forza is difficult because of the console focused, arcade car handling. So when I found out that Slightly Mad of GTR and RACE was creating this new Need for Speed game, I got quite excited. Shift is a semi-sim, in the same field as PGR, Forza and GT5, for me, the controls are perfect and are al...
11 out of 12 found this review helpful. -
Good luck, have fun, race for the podium. 1
I want to start this off by saying I'm no gear head. I don't go around looking at cars, asking about gearing ratios or turbos, "what kind of shoes does your car have on" or even "what kind of engine you got in there?" Instead, I enjoy racing games because the let me pretend to drive cars I would never get a chance to own, really fast and occasionally say "vroom vroom" to myself. So, going into Need for Speed: SHIFT, I knew I was going to generally be out of my element. The most fun I've had with...
6 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Shaft your opposition 0
I halfway feel bad for underground illegal street racers, for their culture has stagnated in the eyes of the world. After a couple dozen Fast and Furious movies, a couple dozen more bad spinoffs (who remembers “Torque”?) and far too many wave-riding video games with matching trip-hop soundtracks and badly-voiced characters whom wouldn’t know machismo if it bit them in the nuts, (and Nick Hogan’s little jaunt) people are bored with street racing culture. All that money racers spent on chrome-pl...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Quick Shifting 0
It's not the deepest racing sim on the market and it's not the "fast and furious" style game that the most recent dozen NFS games have been, but SHIFT happily straddles the line between the two without ever going over the edge one way or the other. I'm not a fane of "sim" racers in general and I ussualy can't stand racing from the cockpit but SHIFT does something quite remarkable. It makes me want to drive from the cockpit, and it makes me care about finding that perfect line around the tra...
4 out of 5 found this review helpful. -
A surpisingly well done NFS title. 0
Short, Sweet and…. unedited. First off this new NFS game isn’t the typical slam bam thank you mam, speed fest we’ve become accustom too. This game try’s to dip it’s feet into the sim racing field and in my opinion does fairly well. It’s not a full blown sim where you need to tweak your car every race through a complex menu system but it does offer a fairly hefty range of customizable options, via paint, body styles, upgrades, and tuning just not into full detail which many can appreciate...
2 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Cockpit View FTW 0
I am really enjoying playing this game. The Cockpit view is absolutely fantastic. I also like the career mode, there is rarely a time when you do not have the right car to compete in an event, and there are a lot of different types of races. I also like the Invitational concept and car battle where you get to compete in a car beyond your current level. This really mixes things up, rather than forcing the player to put in hour after hour after hour before they can get to the fast uber cars. The...
2 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Competent, but seriously lacking in imagination. 0
Need For Speed: Shift marks the first game in EA’s Need For Speed series reboot, leaving behind the street racing titles that have been the mainstay of the series for the last five iterations. Shift sees the Need For Speed franchise attempt a more simulation style racing game to more directly compete with some of the heavyweights of the genre, namely the Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing franchises. However, Need For Speed: Shift falls short of the mark in this regard. Whi...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
EA Shifting the franchise to a whole new level! 0
Game play: To point off the amazing new additions of this game it has incredible solid driving mechanics. Need For Speed Shift isn't like any other simulation games, this game is easy to adapt to, there are a lot of difficulty settings, in easy anyone can perfectly play this game successfully however playing on Pro difficulty really makes it challenging, braking early and knowing the track by heart. I have played throughout the hole career in Pro difficulty, with no assists and manual transmissi...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A flawed reboot 0
With sim race giants like Forza and Gran Turismo (maybe) on the horizon I couldn't figure out why NFS wanted to enter the market with those powerhouses pretty much owning both platforms. However I saw the beautiful cockpit view and some positive early reviews and thought maybe there was something here. After a few days of playing the game, I quickly wondered what game those reviewers were playing, and all the good aspects of the game were overshadowed by the inability to customize the controls...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Not your fav racing sim 1
EA has released some of the worst driving games you'll ever play over the last few years. They didn't look good, handled badly, had poor AI etc. When they announced that they're going to release Shift, I was very sure that this will flop for sure. After all, the market is pretty happy with FM and GT, why will they need NFS? Plus, that new EA branch consisting of former EA Blackbox employees, who didn't make any good games over the last few years. Their last good game is probably the NFS MW. Sh...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
In a mediocre middle ground 0
I’d like to start off by saying that EA could not have picked a more appropriate name for their latest title in the long running Need For Speed series. Not only is the game about racing really fast in really fast cars, but the game is also quite a “shift” from what people have known Need For Speed for. There are no bones about it, Need For Speed Shift is a simulation style racing game. This could be all well and good in theory, but in execution the whole thing doesn’t play out as well as it shou...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Wilde Ride - Not Gentle 1
Generally - I really like Need for Speed : Shift. Nothing in racing games was ever so exciting than 16x Bugatti Veyron 16.4 racing down the Nordschleife (Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Invitational). Quite frankly, it might be too exciting. The extreme sense of speed, the unforgiving, volatile driving physics, the very aggressive AI and the lack of a rewind function turn one single lap (7min+) on the Nordschleife into living hell. Well - that's what I wanted. That's what I got. Need for Speed : Shift is ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
ABSOLUTE CRAP 0
I Tried, I REALLY TIRED TO LIKE THIS GAME! But its just wrong, ALL WRONG! Lets start with the handling: it just feels wrong! it doesn't feel conventional AT ALL, and I've played a LOT of race car games on MANY different platforms. Its like they want you to steer at half or quarter stick all the time, and I'm sorry but I'm not going to do that!The noises: I know its expected of Need for speed franchise to include bad noises in there games by now, but JUST STOP IT. I DON'T WANT A BIG BASS THUD EVE...
0 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Need for Speed: Shift - Facebook Status Update Review 0
"Need for Speed: Shift" (2009, Slightly Mad Studios) - Above-average visuals and presentation meet a wildly schizophrenic physics model that at times, borders on completely broken. A half-baked drift mode, largely ineffectual tuning options and the typical EA bugs and glitches round out this disappointing package. ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Traded it in 4 days after release! 0
I was really anticipating Shift, it looked amazing before the game came out so I pre-ordered it. They called me on release day and I went and picked up the game payed $65 for it, played it for a while, the driving took some getting used to at Tier 1 but I managed it in a FWD and advanced to Tier 2. There I bought a RWD car and upgraded it, BIG MISTAKE!!! it felt like I was driving on a wet track with not a drop in sight. The track just seemed to be icy when turning corners so I went straight in...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Flawed but Close to Greatness 0
First of all, Shift seems really unpolished. I really think Shift is the latest victim of rushed releases as a result of a down turn in game sales. What's here is good and there are hints of a really great arcade/semi-realistic racer under the unpolished exterior. The Good: Not your usual NFS game, in a good wayLots of tracks, lots of modes to explore Progression system is a clever additionGraphics are respectable for a multi-platform title Fun and addictive gameplayThe Sad: Bizarrely omitted c...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Best Racing Game I have played this Year So Far 0
There hasn't been a great need for speed game since Most Wanted, Carbon wasn't that great, prostreet was just lame and undercover was just most wanted except everything was worse and you needed sun glasses to play it. EA has realized this and this NFS game is made by slightly mad Studios. These were the guys that used to be called SimBin and they used to make GTR2 and Race 07, some of the best driving games ever made. A lot of people were scepticle about a Need For Speed game going in a more sim...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Thank God i did not buy this crap....... 0
the reason i started playing video games is because of the racing genre. i had my hands on brilliant and not so brilliant racing games. i have played racing games ranging from 1982 Pole Position, to top gear on the NES and drift out, to more simulator oriented games such as rFactor and live for speed. And i have to say with out any shadow of a doubt that this game is not one of the good ones. i kept on telling myself that the game will get better as i progress, but it never did. i wanted this g...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Need for Speed: Shift Review 0
Need for Speed: Shift is EA’s newest foray into racing. Long gone are the street races known to many NFS fans, now replaced by both real and fake circuit tracks. The game will start you off on a test track, in the cockpit view. While 3 person is available, switch to it for one track and you will tell right away that the focus was put into the cockpit view… and what a view it is. Everything from the interior of the car to the blur at 200 mph is done to great extent. The tracks, on the other han...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The best Racing Game of this Generation 0
Introduction So I got Need For Speed: Shift as a Christmas gift this past holiday, and after getting hooked for a good week or so, I picked up Assassins Creed II and never went back until this past week. I picked up a new 250gb Hard drive for my 360, and proceeded to install all of my games (except Halo 3, of course) and the last game in my stack was this lonely copy of Need For Speed Shift that hadn’t been opened for months. After installing I proceed to boot it up, and remember how much fun...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Pretty good...pret-ty-pret-ty good 1
I’ve been playing NFS for over 10 years, and I think this is the best edition yet…the cockpit cam is great, and the physics are amazing. This is my first NFS on a next-gen system, and I’m blown away by the realism. Overall, the perfect mix between arcade-style fun and sim-style realism. Also nice to see a good soundtrack, I was thrilled that they used Rootbeer’s “Under Control” – that’s definitely an awesome under-the-radar jam. Video can be found at : http://displacedbrett.wordpress.com/2009...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
A great racing game in its own right... 0
My first review for this site so be nice. I write reviews to help my writing skills so don't take it so seriously. I have also played the 360 version a lot at my friend's but this review is based off my experience on the PC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + A great new direction for the series + No attempt on a story + Cars feel great to drive + Great motion blur that makes racing intense + Best cockpit view yet + Interes...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.
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