Need for Speed: SHIFT - Demos out now (360/PS3/PC)
nlawalker
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is probably a pretty pathetic first post for a game (if it takes off, mods have my permission to delete in favor of someone who wants to make a real FP), but I wanted to get something up and couldn't believe there wasn't a thread already here.
The newest entry in the NFS series, NFS:Shift, is about as far towards the "simulation" side of the "sim --- arcade" continuum that Need for Speed has gone. No cops, no "underground", no starting line girls, no "living life a quarter mile at a time." Just race cars and tracks.
Unfortunately for Shift (speaking as an X360 owner), the be-all-end-all of X360 driving sims is about to hit the stores. For PS3 owners, GT5 will be out... someday. And PC owners already have access to a huge library of racing sims. How does Shift differentiate itself? Arcade sexiness. While I find the Forza 3 demo to be very convincing, as someone who doesn't own a wheel and has always leaned a little bit further towards the arcade side of racers but has always wanted try to master something a bit more realistic, I find it to be a bit "flat" in some respects, whereas Shift is nice and bubbly. Like other NFS games, there's a great sense of speed, and the game plays all sorts of subtle camera tricks as your speed changes and the g's hit you in the turns. Take a hard shunt or sideswipe (which you'll do more often than in hardcore sims - this game has more crash-bang) and your vision will blur. Corners will whip your head around a bit. Crash and you'll black out for a second. The best part is, these effects don't really interrupt you or feel gimmicky; they're extremely immersive. The visuals aren't quite as smooth as F3 but they are beautiful nonetheless.
Even if you're already sold on Forza/GT5/etc, at least grab the demo for this, sit close to your TV and put it in behind-the-hood or cockpit view. It may not have quite enough "sim" for the sim-only fans, but you can definitely tune the settings to at least make it arcade enough for the arcade-only fans. If, like me, you are someone who falls somewhere in between, definitely give Shift a spin.
The newest entry in the NFS series, NFS:Shift, is about as far towards the "simulation" side of the "sim --- arcade" continuum that Need for Speed has gone. No cops, no "underground", no starting line girls, no "living life a quarter mile at a time." Just race cars and tracks.
Unfortunately for Shift (speaking as an X360 owner), the be-all-end-all of X360 driving sims is about to hit the stores. For PS3 owners, GT5 will be out... someday. And PC owners already have access to a huge library of racing sims. How does Shift differentiate itself? Arcade sexiness. While I find the Forza 3 demo to be very convincing, as someone who doesn't own a wheel and has always leaned a little bit further towards the arcade side of racers but has always wanted try to master something a bit more realistic, I find it to be a bit "flat" in some respects, whereas Shift is nice and bubbly. Like other NFS games, there's a great sense of speed, and the game plays all sorts of subtle camera tricks as your speed changes and the g's hit you in the turns. Take a hard shunt or sideswipe (which you'll do more often than in hardcore sims - this game has more crash-bang) and your vision will blur. Corners will whip your head around a bit. Crash and you'll black out for a second. The best part is, these effects don't really interrupt you or feel gimmicky; they're extremely immersive. The visuals aren't quite as smooth as F3 but they are beautiful nonetheless.
Even if you're already sold on Forza/GT5/etc, at least grab the demo for this, sit close to your TV and put it in behind-the-hood or cockpit view. It may not have quite enough "sim" for the sim-only fans, but you can definitely tune the settings to at least make it arcade enough for the arcade-only fans. If, like me, you are someone who falls somewhere in between, definitely give Shift a spin.
nlawalker on
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I do like the fine line it has between sim and arcade.
I also believe it has the best cockpit view of them all, because of all the effects you listed. GT5's looks very static to me now in comparison.
This is the first game I've really found myself enjoying cockpit view in. Then again, I started playing in behind-the-hood mode (I usually play in bumper cam) and rarely went back - cockpit is "realistic" and very cool, and I think you get the most out of the camera effects that way, but it obscures so much of the vertical view. I find it a bit annoying because when I'm actually driving my car, the wheel/dash/ceiling are really at my peripheral and my focus on the road pretty much excludes them from view.
Not being a huge sim guy, I'm not used to having to keep very good track of where the frame of the car is, but I find that the implementation of behind-the-hood in Shift to be very good. I started playing the Forza demo this way too and my experience vastly improved.