Peter has sat behind the wheel of a toktrimmad EVO IX and called out to chastise the asphalt in EA's upcoming Need for Speed: Shift to once and for all make up the game show's past

After an hour I am ready to give up. Although I have promised myself not to lose patience, faith that I have informed myself on the Shift developed by the people behind history's most difficult racing game, GTR 2nd But still ... I cut almost together at first. Yelling at the TV, pulling my hair. I lose race after race. My blue Honda Civic is so dull that time stands still, the sway of an old hammock, and the brakes to overheat after just one lap. Opponents fly by right from the start, each curve will become a new irritant. I'm worthless ...

Need for Speed: Shift starts really badly. Not only difficult (I'm playing with all the facilities refused from the start) but really bad. It takes a while to get accustomed to the unforgiving physics, and a while to get rid of that unchristian poor Civic. I switch to the steering wheel, penetrating into my old racially old man back in the newsroom PlaySeat, throw your controller behind the couch and takes new tag. Civic is gone, replaced by a heavily tuned EVO IX and I sit as grounds in his chair with his hands in an exemplary Ten two-grip. Now, it takes off, literally. Now wake Shift to life. Seriously.
This is an advertisement:

Seriously.

This is exactly how I would summarize the Need for Speed: Shift. A solemn simulator to sneeze at the smooth arcade racing series' last six games arranged for us. Forget the flimsy Fjose races in Undercover or Most Wanted, forget free cities, but details and cheese-scented between sequences with the gaming Hollywood rejects. Shift is a new direction for EA. An attempt to attract all of us who are waiting in vain (and suktar) after Gran Turismo 5, or GTR 3rd Need for Speed: Shift is a very successful merger of GTR 2 and Project Gotham Racing, with a display reminiscent of Forza Motorsport.

It's about racing simulator, including the ability to trim and decorate their cars. If unforgiving, tough races where the drivers are tested at every single curve. Shift is not perfect, but a damned good start on something that can easily outperform last year's fiasco. When Need for Speed: Shift starts (career mode), is one of the Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo completely without a car. You get to test their skillz in a tuned BMW M3 at Brands Hatch and, depending on how well it is the game itself in severity, the number of facilities that will be activated in the car and how much money you get to buy even the first cart. I win the race at Brands Hatch, and starting my career at Expert difficulty level.

20 $ 000 in his pocket for it to act smart, get through the necessary slave races and then be able to trade up. Career State is divided into five different sections. The first four parts of the shift is called "Tiers" and where the racing circuits around collecting stars. For each race won it receives a number of stars that makes you can eventually unlock the next portion of the game, with the stars as their currency.

Two-thirds of the stars in every race you win by putting himself as number one in the race. The rest lost it by performing some minor småuppdrag, or challenges, during the show. Often these challenges circles around a number of overtaking, or that it will rub off the color of one of the opponents' carts. If you want to be shitty, this is a rather awkward part of the shift, and a futile way of trying to make this simulator a bit more mainstream. A little more ... Grid. For me, it works not at all and I do not care respectfully in these small challenges, and instead focus wholeheartedly on to win. Just to win.

At the beginning of the game informed you that the drivers in Need for Speed: Shift universe is divided into two different categories. Aggressive driving and driving precision. My first race at Brands Hatch, is pretty wild to when I involuntarily happen to push out an innocent little Seat Leon Cupra out into the gravel. The game considers me as aggressive and therefore my småutmaningar before each race circuits almost constant around which includes bilburet violence. "Run on an opponent," "makes an angry overtaking", "do so to an opponent, spins, turns and goes by without you doing it." Ridiculous. A piece of Need for Speed: Shift, which I dislike, and that does not belong in a racing game with an otherwise so-serious approach to asphalt racing as it actually exists here.


My expectations of bilfysiken and the körkänslan in Shift has been enormous. Completely unrealistic it is, after all, the people behind the GTR 2 and GT Legends who put together this. Well, did you not? Although I have tried to repeat it in about 100 different småtexter over the past year? This is how it happened (in greatly simplified form, of course): Core team of Swedish SimBin Studios (which accounted for most of the skills in the development of GTR 2) drug and shaped studio Blimey Games. Bilfysiken in Shift is based on the devised for use in Blim previously announced games, "The Ferrari Project". Blimey purchased, Slightly Mad Studios was born, and work closely with the EA as well.

I would thus be lying if I said that körkänslan in Shift recalls in particular the GT Legends. For the do it, but a few important differences. The cars are slightly heavier, tires physics have improved and changed to simulate more momentum and the system of friction are bulls, more sensitive. Forget what you learned in the Gran Turismo games where there has never been waxing through curves, or where a four-wheel-driven sports car over and slid through the curves in the same way as a front-wheel drive.

Forget also that you learn in Forza Motorsport 2 where excessive stability assistant made it possible to brake into the corners while suddenly starts to tear into the steering wheel to turn, without losing hold. In Shift, with facilities refused, it is important to use the quiet movements. Throttle calm, reassuring steering wheel movements. Everything suddenly and erratically punished quickly at high speeds and terms to be clear and let gravity move before starting to rotate the car through the hairpin are.

Shift requires patience, time and training. Like most simulators. We must find balance in his car, learn to gas analogy and to move the center of gravity effectively. It is very important to the tougher levels of difficulty to not force the tires to do several things at once. Just like in real life. If you do it quickly loses momentum and goes often to.

Fastest is always on the brakes to first, strong and sometimes even excessively, select narrow lines and then Gas from the curves. It requires some training but once it sits is racing both rewarding, exciting, addictive and terrible intensity. Unfortunately, unlike for example, GTR 2 is the computer-controlled opponents a little too aggressive and a bit of pre-programmed to a very tight financial and driving style will be financially beneficial to the extent it does in real circuit racing.

To become so successful that it really should be, run smart and with a focus on hard braking into the corners and a lot of gas out of them, you need to take to the grid where the human resistance (which surprisingly often seem to believe that Need For Speed: Shift is the same as Race Driver: GRID) will be an economic driver can easily win on pure intelligence and good knowledge of the runways.

Perhaps the best part of bilfysiken in Shift, in addition to a very stable simulation of tire adhesion, is the difference between different types of cars and powertrains. Short, small cars are fast in the curves, over-driven, but compact and stable. Rear Wheel Drive muscular monster Corvette Z06 and Ford GT are swaying, disorderly, super strong and loves to stick out the back end. Unlike, for example Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, you can go wide if you feel like it. It is perfectly acceptable to turn off all assists and tackle curves Samuel Hübinette rather than Mattias Ekstrom, if that is the case you want to be perceived.

Fun to drive, the four-wheel drive cars with a steady hold and superior kurvegenskaper allows a more steady and fast driving than any other type of powertrain. Just as it should be. Slightly Mad Studios, for example, caught the körkänslan in Mitsubishi EVO IX perfect and gave it just the right character. It is a kamikaze-money directly driven, witty, fast acceleration and stable but with a bit of ground in the engine and a pale top speed. I tuned the form is 9: an, however, one of the game's very best and most easy to drive cars that I always seem to return to when the super-monsters making cornering unpredictable and chaotic.

There are several different racing disciplines in Shift. Apart from regular competitions against eight other opponents here are Time Attack, Race, Elimination, race, Car Battle Drift. Most fun is the Time Attack and duels where you meet a rival and have to beat him in three attempts to win the prize money. Drift is worst-event which leaves a lot to be desired.

In addition to operating-piece, there are a few other smaller problems, in Shift, which must be highlighted. That lag in governance, which I talked about in the console versions is the game's greatest weakness and cause problems, especially if you want to see the entire car on the screen while driving. As in the case of GTR 2 differs körkänslan depending on the view you play in, which I guess has to do with the simulator foxes in Slightly Mad Studios worked with the absolute worst urgrymma cockpit view. As in the case of GTR, GTR 2, GP Legends, Live for Speed and GT Legends is the only way to get really good at Shift to play the cock-pit view which, unlike many others of this generation racing game not made by a visually delightful but körtekniskt useless decoration, but actually plays a very important function.

In the case of minus points to even the GUI have a boot when it is scribbled and often illegible with rotten fonts cool and packed with excessive information. To read the text which lies to the left (on the challenges, driving style, opponent, motståndartider) is almost impossible when it first presented in an extremely compact linear but also made semi-transparent.

Apart from the cluttered interface is Need for Speed: Shift extremely neat. Car models are the most delicious I've seen in a racing game ever, including Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. Polygonantalet is to say the least massive and the fantastic real-time reflections in the paintwork is impressive large. Even inside the cars look brilliant Shift out with the most realistic interiors I've seen.

The courts are, like cars, scandalously realistic and often drenched in wonderfully charming (and hot) evening sun forming lens of radiation effects on the car's polished roof. Komer to do horrible high-resolution shadow projections and wonderfully delicious effects of focus and motion blur. To Slightly Mad Studios also had the good taste not to use very little bloom (this generation's largest graphic torture anyone?) I am A simulator-heart like mine.

As to the distinction between the different versions of Need for Speed: Shift (PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) is the PC version that feels best. With a powerful PC, you can scare up the graphics beyond what the consoles can handle, and because the shift must be played with a steering wheel (according to me) is the PC edition, which I would recommend the warmest. The two console versions are identical except on the loading times for the PlayStation 3 is a few seconds longer.

When I first tested Need for Speed: Shift, I am surprised how unforgivable and simulator money it actually was. Today, after having passed all the game's races, I am pleased to Slightly Mad Studios chose the hard way. Sure, this is not flawless and it will most likely be run on the Forza Motorsport 3 next month. But Need for Speed: Shift is a cruel first-attempt and a good racing game. My tip to you as tired of the superficial arcade racing in Race Driver: GRID will be the purchase of a cruel wheel, and an example of the shift. Autumn is saved.