Need For Speed Shift- Back to basics?

Back in the good old console days the video game industry put out a Need for Speed game. It started a revolution that would span from 1994 to the present. Starting from track racing to street racing, to running from the police, the game evolved each new one. But what has the game really forgotten about? Its past roots.

Game play
Returning to the racing glory that was the original Need for Speed, you begin the career mode and are told your objective of the game is to make it through the 4 tiers to get to the Need for Speed Championship.  There isn’t really a story line behind the game.  If you unlock a new race type, they will explain what you have to do if you have never played one of the games in the past.  As most driving games go, the triggers are the gas and brake. The A button is the E-Brake and the B button is the nitrous.  The tier’s are filled with races such as Lap knockouts, 1 on 1 versus mode, time trials, time knockouts, regular circuit racing, model competitions, and drift.  As you progress through the races you are graded upon your precision driving and aggressiveness also. The amount of points for each are totaled up and fill up a Level meter. There are 50 levels to your driver profile, and each unlocks more races or customization of your vehicle.  During each race, you can also unlock medals by doing things such as drafting, passing a car cleanly, passing a car dirty, spinning a car without going off track, and finishing a race cleanly without damage or running off track. Getting enough medals, you get master medals and epic medals. You also have medals for mastering corners. In past games, you could drift around corners with little or no fight from the car, but it seems they sort of tweaked it so that the cars require a little skill to go around most corners, to master them, though it does sort of master them if you use the car drift, meaning as you are turning the steering wheel you don’t hit the brakes, it will start to squeal the tires, causing it to drift. Once in awhile this will work, giving you the Mastered checkmark on your mini-map.

Graphics and Sound
Added into this game is the realism effect to the driver. As you crash into walls, cars, and everything else on the track, you are jolted, and the screen turns gray for a second and starts to blur. There isn’t any weather that is noticed. You can choose what time of day you want to race in, dawn, midday and dusk.  On some tracks, it seems there are some glitches in the mini-map on your HUD. It will sort of jump and redo the section, though you are still in the same spot and don’t move to the place where the map moves to. The sounds of the game are really just the natural sounds of any racing game, revving of the engines, crashes, speeding, hitting the rumble strips on sides of the track. The sound track really doesn’t have any well-known artists.

Achievements
There are 29 achievements. Each of them are story based. Most of them are for the badges that you have to get. The rest are making it through the Tiers, Beating the Championship, and making it through all 50 levels of your driver profile. On a scale of 1-10 I would give them a 7 as the badge ones take a lot of time and work to get through.

Overall
I would give the game a go if you are looking for another installment of the juggernaut that is the Need for Speed series.  It goes pretty quick and you have fun doing the different races and enjoy the scenery of Japan, USA, and European tracks.

Written by WallLessFury

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