Customer Reviews

Need for Speed: Shift

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Before making a purchase, I always do my homework. As much as I hate Electronic Arts I must say, they have a winner with Need For Speed:Shift. This is the reason why it is being attacked up here.

Some reviews posted up here are not reviews but short narrow-minded paragraphs designed to scare people away from the product. It is called, "Fanboism" and is highly distasteful. Such "reviews" do not help the perspective buyer one bit.

I raced with Shift for a couple of weeks after installing it on my system before writing a review. This gave me time to earn some unlocks. It also gave me time to experience MORE of what Shift is all about.

The previous releases in the Need For Speed (NFS) series were all surreal arcade-style racing games. The physics were not that realistic. NFS:Shift however, leans heavily toward simulation.

Career

Shift is career driven. You start at the bottom and fight/race your way to the top. As you do, you earn money and points that unlock more vehicles, tracks and upgrades for vehicles that you own.

Profiles

You create a name for your profile when Shift starts up. Any progress made in your racing career will be saved under that name.

During a race, you earn points both in AGRESSION and PRECISION driving.

An aggressive driver is likely to block other drivers from passing them on the track or cause other drivers to spin out of control. Such behavior is risky and may cause the aggressive driver to spin out and lose valuable time as well.

The Racing Line

By default, there are green arrows on the race track. These arrows form what is called, the Racing Line. The Racing Line shows the shortest route around the track. If you keep your car on the arrows, you minimize the amount of time it will take you to complete a lap. Staying on those arrows maximizes precision points you earn during a race.

The arrows also change color with your cars speed. Red arrows mean you are going too fast and are going to turn wide, run off the track and most likely crash. If the arrows are yellow, you will most likely make the turn but your turn will be wider then it should be. Green means you are traveling at a speed optimal for cornering.

The Racing Line in Shift helps you to master the track and its brake points faster. It also helps you to become a better, more precise race car driver.

Earning Aggression and Precision points increases your Driver Level and unlocks more tracks, cars and upgrades for cars that you already own.

When you feel you have mastered the tracks, the Racing Line can be turned off in Options.

Stars

If you come in third place in a race, you earn one star. Coming in first earns you three stars. As star counts are built, you unlock new competitions and advance your career.

"Bonus stars are available for pulling off special objectives like racing clean or holding a drift long enough. You can even earn stars by racking up enough Profile points in a single race."

Badges

As you hit minor milestones, you will be awarded badges. Racking up mileage on a car, mastering corners, winning consecutive races, or defeating rival drivers will earn you badges.

Minor badges add up to major badges as you continue to excel at racing.

Garages

Every driver starts with a two-car garage. You earn more garages as your Driver Level increases.

The cars you purchase with the money you win from racing can be upgraded, downgraded or sold. Aerodynamics, power train, wheels, tires, brakes, for example can all be upgraded and downgraded at will.

There are some cars that may be a bit too wimpy for your liking. I have upgraded the engine in only one car so far my career because I didn't think it had enough horse power. Its acceleration was very poor (Nissan).

Cars can be painted any color or have decals assigned to them. This includes custom jobs.

You will race Front Wheel Drive, Rear Wheel Drive and All Wheel Drive vehicles in Shift. If you race enough, you will notice that each car has its own personality as they do in reality.

Race events include:

Race - This mode allows you to set up a race with up to 15 opponents. You can even set it to "0" opponents and race by yourself.

Eliminator - race against others and the last one to complete a lap is eliminated. The race isn't over until there is only one car left (maybe you?). There is also a time variation of this race where the last place holder is eliminated every 30 seconds.

The other events include; Drift, Driver Duel, Series, Endurance, Manufacture, Time Attack and Hot Lap.

AI Cars

The AI cars do not have glue on their tires. I've seen quite a few lose it on a corner and even spin out on straight-a-ways. They do seek revenge if you show aggression towards them though.

Multiplayer

Yes, you can race against other people over the Internet.

Game Screen

The Game Screen has a mini map in the lower left-hand corner showing your position on the track in relation to other drivers.

Perspective views include; chase view of your car, cockpit view and hood view.

Tunnel vision blurring

When a driver is speeding down a straight-a-way, his mind is focus on what is on the road ahead of his car. The peripheral view will somewhat blur in this situation. This simulates tunnel vision. At slower speeds this effect does not occur of course.

G-Force

The cars have more detail in them then most other racing games presently on the market.
The cockpit view in Shift is quite impressive. The dashboards are accurately modeled and look quite realistic. The gauges work, the steering wheel turns with your action and you can see the arms of your virtual driver steering and shifting as well.

If you accelerate quickly in a real car, you will be pushed back into your seat. This is simulated within Shift. It's a nice touch and adds to the realism.

The race tracks are quite detailed as well. Not just in texturing, but in terrain mesh as well. There are small bumps in the track (as you would expect). You will become air born briefly on some tracks, so watch your speed!

There are crowds in the stands, photographers with flashes and guys waving flags lined up sporadically along the banks of the tracks in strategic parts, too.

If you have a supported steering wheel with force feed back you will feel the bumps and dips in the track. You will even feel the steering wheel vibrate and hear the rumbling noise as your tires run over the red and white cornering markers.

When you drive over dirt, dust is kicked up. When you drive over grass, grass is kicked up and when your tires lose traction, they squeal and smoke.

During the race you can cycle through 4 different perspectives. Two of the most popular are; chase car view and cockpit view.

Screen Shot

When the race is over, the race is replayed. The VCR controls allow you to fast forward, rewind or pause the replay for a screen shot. You can even cycle through perspective views in this mode.

Controllers

I am using the Logitech G25 Steering Wheel with Shift. All functions this wheel has are supported by Shift, including the CLUTCH.

Recommendations for installing:

Make sure your system meets the minimum requirements!

Make sure you are running the latest Graphics driver for your video card before installing Shift. Many people fail miserably at doing this and when it comes time to install a new game, they get the dreaded Blue Screen of Death at runtime.

If you have sound difficulties during runtime, update the driver for your sound card.

After installing Shift, defrag your hard drive to maximize system performance then reboot to clean out main memory. When Windows is through loading, run Shift.

Final Words

Shift is receiving high marks in reviews all across the web, including Youtube.

There is more to Shift then even my review reveals. I am not going to write a book about it here. I just hope my review helps you make a more educated decision.

I'm out.

Have fun racing!

Everyone knows what SHIFT is: the NFS franchise's attempt to create a more realistic driving game using all the current-gen bells and whistles. The game makes a great first impression, and is a visceral, addicting, immersive racer with a (thankfully) more sim-based approach to driving, but the more you play, the more you realize that this game isn't really for sim fans nor arcade fans, and its shortcomings stem from trying to please both at once.

One of the problems is once you get to the higher-tier cars, it becomes less of feathering the throttle & brakes and precise steering around curves to more slamming on the throttle & brakes (or even the E-brake, which is a little too effective) and yanking the wheel, tires screaming the whole way around. It basically feels like you are simply turning the wheel to 100% and driving with the throttle most of the time. I was having a lot of fun and it actually felt like I was playing a driving simulation until I reached the higher tiers, at which point I opted to ditch the wheel and pick up my XB360 controller for Windows. You can tell after using both the wheel and a controller for extended periods of time that the game just works better with a controller since you feel like you are trying to do a lawn job on the infield as you slide around the corners. If you use a FFB wheel I wouldn't suggest turning it to a high setting because of how violently you have to yank on it. Everyone realizes that console optimization is something PC gamers have to deal with, and though individual results will vary, I was simply a more competitive racer using a gamepad online and off.

There are also a number of technical issues such as bugged cars that sit in the middle of the track, long loading times, and serious framerate problems for many users; a thread on the EA forums is currently almost 30 pages long and consists of nothing but user complaints.

Worst of all though is the AI, which is almost completely brain dead. Don't expect to get any room on the track whatsoever, and when going around curves with any amount of traffic in front of you it is nearly impossible to avoid ramming unless you slow to a crawl, in which case you will then be rammed. It feels like everyone out there is either trying to assassinate you or just seemingly oblivious to your presence, and fighting your way to the front of the pack is like driving in a demolition derby, especially on the very narrow tracks of which this game has plenty. AI cars will literally turn right into you and squeeze you off the track like you're not even there. Also, you can pretty much total your car (200+ MPH head-on into a wall) and yet it still magically moves down the track. Even with the option set to full, the damage model is way too forgiving and doesn't give you any incentive to preserve your car; although this may be a good thing because the only way to effectively deal with the excessive AI aggression is to fight fire with fire... which is actually pretty fun. Cars go flipping and flying when you ram them as if an explosive went off underneath them, but if you go in expecting a positional, side by side sprint to the finish you may be disappointed. Not many of the heedless AI drivers will oblige, and given the fact that there is no qualifying, what results is a ridiculous spectacle of ramming and slamming on the first lap of every race if you hope to make it to the front of the pack on the short career races. They will run you off the track before turns, and accelerate through your rear fender during them, both scenarios ending with you in the dirt struggling to get back on track after pulling out some hair. Although the AI drivers in the front of the pack quite noticeably slow down towards the end of the race to let you catch and pass them. It's a method used to keep the races close throughout regardless of how tight your driving is, and it is both effective and frustrating. Undoubtedly my biggest complaint about this game is the AI (or lack thereof).

Since the cars are tanks, driving like an animal and plowing into the back ends of others is easier than timing your braking, and the game rewards this behavior. This means SHIFT invites the crashing kids with open arms to ruin your online racing experience, and thanks to the way the game handles stats, win/loss record is pointless. People can easily cheese their way to 1000 wins and 0 losses by disconnecting or restarting to avoid a loss. What makes this fact even worse is SHIFT follows the disturbing trend of no dedicated servers. You are thrown into race after race via match-making with very little control over your online experience. Another thing: the custom paint jobs and decals feature is not fleshed out at all and is essentially a waste of time. Clumsy, cumbersome menu navigation also makes upgrading cars, selecting rims, or simply finding a good race event feel like a chore.

Not all is bad though, of course. The graphics are great, aside from the in-game videos which are grainy. Likewise, the race line assist that glows around the track is one of the best racing assists yet. It calculates your speed and changes from green to yellow to red depending on the adjustments you need to make to stay on course. What it does is essentially eliminate the need to memorize tracks by heart, turn by turn, and makes it easier to use the in car perspective and still line up angles on the corners; though it's a bit of an eye sore. Speaking of cockpit perspectives though (of which obviously this game has the greatest to date), designing the game around this fact has caused side-effects: the chase camera looks strange, and the way the cars move just looks unnatural. It appears that the back end of your vehicle is sliding off the track, but then the car suddenly rights itself on its own. Remember Daytona USA?... You really notice this in the 3rd person perspective. Playing SHIFT from the chase cam, though still fun, is rather awkward-looking at times. However, even though you can't actually see this behavior in the 1st person, the front end of the cars still feel very light and floaty in general.

I thought I finally found a game to replace GTR 2 but I guess I am still waiting. NFS:S is very enjoyable though, the graphics are quite good and once you start playing it's hard to stop. Definably worth owning for fans of racing games. Just realize that although the game was touted as a pure driving sim, it really isn't that exactly. Ian Bell himself even admits that they were more concerned with mass appeal than creating a pure driving simulation; a fact evident in the way the cars handle, the track design, and the fact that players must trudge through a career mode full of 2-lap sprints earning stars in order to unlock tiers for setting up custom races to jump into (something many sim fans probably won't appreciate). I realize that we (sim fans) make up a small portion of the market, but let's hope the developers also realize that we may be the only ones still playing this game 6 months from now, especially if they can fix some of the issues and give the mod community room to grow.

Flaws aside, and especially if the more serious flaws are patched (I'll update this review if they are), SHIFT is somewhat easy to recommend and is a fun, glossy racer. The bottom line however is this is a strange title; arcade fans may find it too unforgiving, while true sim fans may be turned off by the power-sliding and defensive style of driving needed to be competitive.

Something important to point out is the ATI performance; namely, it sucks. If you have an ATI card you may want to wait for a patch (they claim they fixed it...). I recommend checking out the technical support thread at the EA website to see if your hardware may be affected.

EDIT: The 1.02 patch went live today, and it delivered. Just about every issue has been either improved or fixed altogether. Among other things, vehicle handling is greatly improved, car physics are improved, and most importantly ATI performance has been fixed. Before the patch I was getting a low of around 15 FPS with a full grid in traffic, now it is a rock solid 60 (vsync) under all conditions. Also, though it still looks awkward at times, the chase cam is improved and the cars behave a bit more smoothly when using it. Although my opinion of the game at launch will obviously not change and it was clearly released 2 months too early, it is now easier to recommend that racing fans at least give SHIFT a try.

After the previous, well...disastrous NFS releases, the franchise was in need for a breath of fresh air. Luckily the new developers seem to love racing and provided just that.

The first thing that you realize is that NFS-SHIFT is not just eye-candy (although I have rarely seen better looking cars on a PC): it is more of a simulation game than previous installments of the series. Metal gets bend, windshields get cracked, performance gets affected and crashes will leave you dazed.
I especially enjoyed the in-cockpit perspective (every model with its accurate interior and the helmet-mounted camera tilting back when accelerating and dipping when braking). Having said that I have to make clear that SHIFT is NOT strictly a driving-simulation game. A number of assists take care of whatever you cannot (or do not want) to handle. You can tweak them or let the initial test-lap to determine the optimal level of difficulty for you. All in all, this game is true to its arcade pedigree but is also makes more than an honest effort to accommodate simulation gamers.

There are 5 tiers of events with each tier consisting of a series of events (races, time trials, head to head, drifts, endurance and eliminator). Each event awards a number of stars, cash and points towards your overall driver rank. Precision, aggression and drafting get rewarded. As points get accumulated, new cars and items get unlocked.
The competition will adapt to your level of competence so any amount of experience with racing is welcome. On the minus side, this may be one of the shortest NFS carriers ever (hence the star withheld).

When it comes to the DRM front, it is a bad-news/good-news situation. The bad news is that, yes, this game comes bundled with SecuROM 7.xx. The good news however, is that (similarly to FALLOUT 3) it uses only a disk-check: it does not require neither OnLine Activation nor limit the number of installations. Personally, that is where I draw the line of barely acceptable. However, if you are boycotting SecuROM, you now can make an informed decision.

RECOMMENDED!

I just received the game this morning (thanks amazon for the release date shipping!) and installed it in the evening to test it out. I obviously have not gotten far into the game, but once you play a racer for an hour+, you've played 90% of the core features of the game, so I figure I can safely write a review for it.

Unlike previous titles, there is no cinematic storyline that tells of some bad guy who hates you for some reason, and how you have to climb the ranks of some underground racers to one day best him in an epic race. Also, unlike a titles way back ago, all these races are legal and done on tracks--No intense police chases here. The basic premise here is that you start off at the bottom rung of an enormous ladder tournament that one day leads you to a world championship race with some of the most exotic cars on the planet. Sounds good, lets get racing!

You start off being put into the seat of a BMW that you only get for 1 day before you start off your career. You do a test lap and the game will offer up some suggestions on difficulty level settings (turning traction control on, ABS, etc). It did a pretty good job at guessing the settings I would have picked, so I liked that feature. You can tweak it as necessary, so this isn't a one time only thing.

The racing itself is incredible. It is a huge departure from the previous arcade style racing games that the NFS titles seemed to focus on. With max simulation on, it races like a car would race. You can't take 90 degree turns at 190 mph, you can't smash into a barrier wall at 140mph, backup and still win the race, etc. To help those of us who have a true "need for speed", the game does offer a racing line with speed indicators that change dynamically as you race (for example, it'll turn red as you approach a hard turn, indicating you should slow down.)

The game also has a system of style points, which you get for things such as tightly following the racing line, passing people, drafting, etc. One thing I did like is that these style points is not just for those of us who play 100% "nice". They have split up style points into "precision" and "aggression." Precision points are for those who like to finesse their way to 1st (drafting, passing politely, nice cornering). Aggression points go to those like me, who basically smash their way through cars until I'm in 1st place and half the group is totaled. You can even get points for spinning people off the track! Awesome.

These points go towards winning stars, and stars increase your driver level, and increasing your driver level unlocks more cars, modifications, etc. Like I said earlier, it is a pretty large ladder system of unlocks and races. I am incredibly impressed so far with how the game feels and runs.

A few final thoughts:

The interior mode of racing (which I highly recommend) puts you as if you were actually inside the car, and the details are INCREDIBLE. They really spent the time to actually copy what the car interior should look like. The BMW has the iDrive system even. Also, the graphics (when played on high) are unbelievable. There is unfortunately a significant loading time between races, but that might be because I set my settings to max on everything.

Also, it is clearly a port, because it tells me not to "turn my system off while saving." When was the last time I reached for my power button to turn my computer off, mid-anything? It's not like I'm sitting there, getting impatient mid-game while it's saving ,and then flipping the switch on my surge protector and being like, I'm outta here! Oh well. Despite that, everything else runs smoothly. (I'm running it on Windows 7 and there weren't any hiccups in the install.)

So overall, I am incredibly happy with this purchase. I'm also happy to see a real racing game from the NFS guys--it's about time they get back to their roots of simulation racing. The arcade stuff was fun, but this is what I'm really interested in. If you've played NFS before, buy this title. You won't be disappointed.

As the title states, nice to look at, but can't comprehend physics. I purchased NFS Shift solely for the Nurburgring and as much as I tried to like the game, the physics were simply too unrealistic to make the game playable. I'm a member of [...] and I compete in SCCA events and the occasional track day, so I wasnt expecting too much from a NFS series game but I still expected a certain level of realism.

Here's my major problem with the game (besides no in-game exit option), whenever I turn in, toward an apex for example, and hold the wheel in, the car shifts its weight back out as if I were moving the wheel back and forth. I tried all kinds of custom steering wheel settings (I use a Logitech Momo) and could not resolve this problem. I even tried out the MKV GTI in the game, which is my daily driver and occasional track car, and I still could not get it dialed in to feel at least a bit real. The problem was even more evident during late or hard braking as the car felt as if one of the two front tires was flat. My same wheel/pedal combo works GREAT for iracing and GTR2, so I dont believe it is a problem with my setup.

I loved NFS Underground for the xbox 360 so I'm not hating on the NFS series but I find Shift, for the PC, to be simply unplayable.

Bottomline: For you harder core racing sim fans, I would recommend avoiding NFS Shift for the PC completely. If you want a MUCH more FUN and realistic driving experience then check out iracing.com or even Simbin's GTR series.

NFS Shift is fun, yet it suffers from several trade-offs that ultimately left me with mixed feelings about the game. It is a good runner up candidate to GRID, but is not quite there yet.

The graphics, music and sound effects are very good, on the same level as GRID, with perhaps more details in the track design. Special care has been taken to make the player feel more immersed in the car environment: the scene will blur with speed, shocks will make the pilot moan with pain, his breathing getting heavier and the vision troubled for a few seconds.

As mentioned many times, this instalment of the NFS franchise claims its spot somewhere between simulation and arcade. It really is arcade with a more accurate driving model, but it is very forgiving: even with the damage settings on "full", your car will be able to sustain deadly crashes with at worst an annoying steering offset. GRID does a far better job of persuading the player they should take care of their car, even if it doesn't charge for the repairs either.

Throwing in an RPG-like experience and style (though simplistic it turns out to be) is fine, but the presentation is definitely arcade and flashy icons. Even the career, which is short and easy to undertake, gives a feeling that the whole game was designed with one priority in mind: the player should be given what they want here and now, no patience required, guaranteed zero frustration - or almost. Idiot-proof if you will.

The game interface is fine but not very flexible, once again GRID offers a better, more intuitive control in the menus, the game flow and the replay system. The loading times are rather long and much patience is needed in multi-track events - the cars themselves seem to take a lot of time to load when you select them in the showroom, 5 to 10 seconds on average.

When will we see a game like NFS Porsche Unleashed again? It was nine years ago, and was superior in those areas. Is the realism achieved by the current graphics card an excuse not to pay attention to the gameplay? Or is it the desire to hit a wider audience?

Yet, as said before NFS Shift does provide a lot of fun despite its shortcomings, there is no denying it. And it includes the old Nürburgring in the track list, which is not common and grants some kudos to the development team!

Then comes the issue of privacy, and since this is only mentioned in small characters on the last page of the manual - not in the license terms shown at the installation hence probably nowhere to see for those who buy the download version only - I think it deserves a fair warning. This title incorporates the dynamic advertisement feature by Massive (now owned by Microsoft), that sends data over Internet to Massive servers in order to send back optimally-targeted ads in the game. Besides the obvious security issues, I'm amazed this doesn't rise more concern from customers who pay the full price for an adware, or that it is even legal without an option to turn it off. But there you are, it is apparently the new trend to come.

This game would have deserved a 3-4 stars but for the last point. If you don't care about this kind of considerations and don't feel abused, that's the score you should see instead of 2.

I had a really tough time finding a reason to enjoy the game at first. It seemed ridiculously slow to install, I could have copied five data DVD's to my computer in the time it took to copy this one game. Plus my normally quiet DVD drive was making some really awful noises during the install. A half hour later it was done and I boot it up just to find I could not exit out of the game. Seriously, what EA project leader was so spaced-out that he forgot to include the 'quit' option in the game (or the manual)? I'm looking at you QA Department. Talk about an unfinished game; this has to go down as one of the most wtf moments in gaming history. In any case the only way to get out is to ctrl-alt-del and end-process as attempting to close the game window doesn't work. The solution to all this aggravation is to go to the needforspeed website, search for nfs shift, click 'support', then download and install the patches to this game. Perhaps as compensation for the aggravation, they even included some additional cars with their patch at no additional charge. Once this is done the 'QUIT' option will be available; in rather large font I might add.

Once you get past the initial hassles, the game is actually quite fun to play. I question the purpose of doing this but they start you off in expert mode with what is probably the most difficult race on a track that has to be covered in butter. Suddenly the act of driving a car, even at slow speeds, becomes an almost impossible experience. After being thoroughly humbled, it will recommend some easier settings for you. I recommend you start with ALL settings on easy until you get used to driving as you can increase the difficulty at any time in your career. You may notice that for a 'speed' game the cars seem quite slow compared to other racers. Don't worry folks, this is just the beginning. As you win races, your opponents become much faster and more aggressive. Upgrades to your vehicle and proper tuning will become a must and you will see a dramatic improvement in both speed and handling as a result. Before long the action on the track will become quite frenetic.

Like others have mentioned, you will probably need a wheel controller for the best performance. Using a Logitech Rumblepad and a standard Logitech USB controller, both admittedly dated, I can't seem to get acceleration anywhere between 0 and 100. In spite of the ability to customize settings, both for a wheel and gamepad, I can't get the joystick controls in the middle of the pad to register at all. There is support for a Logitech G25/G27, Driving Force EX/RX/Pro/Momo, Thrustmaster RGT FFB Pro/Ferrari GT/F450 & Fanatec 911 Turbo so hopefully you'll have better luck with one of those. Sim fans will find plenty of challenge but casual racers like me who just want the thrill of the race will also find a lot to like in the casual settings; even with just a keyboard. Don't mistake casual for easy, though. This is a tough game! Fortunately, people who aren't into car-culture will see what various upgrades will do to their vehicle before buying so they don't have to wonder if they bought the right part. You earn money by winning races, but unlike other NFS titles, this is the first of the bunch that makes the process of buying a top-tier car difficult. Money is tight and even if you're a god among racers, you'll still find the opponents are too tough to beat and the parts you need are locked away until you have leveled up enough to unlock them. Fortunately you earn points to level up whether you are in career mode, a quick race, or even in multi-player mode. Depending on your skill level, it's quite possible you will need to step out of career mode to continue your career. Like I said before, this game is pretty tough.

The cars also have their own personality too. My Honda S2000 zips through the track but tends to oversteer a lot. If I take the corners too fast it'll understeer. Meanwhile my Dodge Viper feels like a cruise ship. For all its power, it's almost impossible on the corners unless you take them reeeal slow. As other reviewers have mentioned, the constant tire squealing gets rather grating. Even when the race is finished and you view the replay, you find little to justify all the squealing happening during the race. Minus one star for the broken eardrums. I'm knocking off another star because occasionally, not frequently, I run into problems loading the different levels. Either the screen goes black after a level or the level gets stuck while loading. These are usually fixed after a game restart but it's still annoying when it happens.

You're going to need some recent hardware to keep the frame-rates at an acceptable level. The minimum settings are dual core, so plan on needing a quad and make sure your video card came out within the past year or don't bother unless you don't mind the settings turned way down. (I'm guessing a Geforce GT/Radeon HD at minimum) Even if the digital download is selling for a lower price, I'd still recommend this higher priced disc version. I range from no trouble at all to excruciating hassles using EA's download manager and their tech support is useless.

Arcade racers will have a lot more fun playing Dirt2 and I think that's a better title to use to show off a new computer system. Still, NFS Shift isn't bad once you get used to it and sim racers are in for a treat. Hope the review helped.

I wanted to like Need for Speed: Shift, I really did. As with other games I've recently purchased, my Thrustmaster Ferrari 5-in-1 was not recognized after the game was loaded on a Lenovo Pentium dual core computer with a 3.something processor. The test car that was going to measure my skills sat on the side of the track in the grass with a running motor. I then went back to the Main Menu options, chose edit for each control box, and steered the wheel, pressed the pedals, and pressed the buttons of the Thrustmaster to have the settings necessary to operate my wheel recognized. Returning to the race screen, I was now looking forward to the test lap. Well, the car was on the track, but it wouldn't stay there--unsafe at any speed! I then returned to the Main Menu and chose "adjust options." I saw that the steering sensitivity had been set to 25% and switched that to 100%. Returning to the game screen, I was now able to stay on the track at about five miles an hour on a zig-zag course. After again returning to adjust options and trying a couple more steering changes with no apparent result, I packed the Need for Speed: Shift, or an alternative title might be Need for Big Improvement in the Software: Hassle! back in the Amazon box. How do I know it was the software? Because, the wheel works great with the other game I bought called GTR Evolution. My suggestion would be for the Electronic Arts company to get together with the Simbin company. It gets on the nerves, after awhile, to listen to the extensive narrative regarding the approaching great opportunity. They even repeat the same exact verbage twice in case the buyer missed it the first time. And, you have to listen to it all each time a change is made in the options. In summary, not a lot of fun playing the game or standing in line at the Post Office to return it!

This game crashes every time i go to start a race. i thought i paid for a good product, but i guess not. i dont think im ever going to purchace games like this again. I have way better specs then what is reccomended, and it still doesnt work, not to mention it lags sooooo bad.

The game does not work for most PC games. the game freezes, doesnt work, or is slower then a turtle in the winter. this game is fun dont get me wrong, but for the PC it has the WORST qualities ever. even if you fix one problem, another pops up. i have tried the download from amazon, and the cd neither fix anything. EA messed up by putting a non PC tested game to the public. the problems are in plenty and the game is not worth the hassle.