Have I played many racing games? Does the Charger 318 V8 Engine have a Pushrod with a rocker actuated ohv with two valves per cylinder and a reciprocating piston type with 8 cylinders? Answer your question young puppy? Hell yes I’ve played dozens of racing games and only enjoyed about three of them.   You can make that four now that I’ve played the hell out of N4S: Shift.  

Developed by Slightly Mad Studios (and one wonders what sort of games Fully Mad Studios would release) who are better known for their efforts in creating the excellent GT games that showed up on the PC.   When EA announced last year after the release of the less than stellar Pro Street, that it will be splitting up the development of Need 4 Speed games to several different developers, each with a particular strength, be it for familiarity with racing games or their ability to work with a particular platform. The result is Shift for the Xbox 360 (and PS3) and it’s a win for the decision makers at EA as far as I’m concerned. It’s good to see Need for Speed back on track, even if the track feels a little bit different than it did before.  

The cockpit view works better than any driving game we've played before...oh and

vroom joke or something.

The first thing you’ll have to do in Shift is do a race straight away to gauge what level of driver you are.  Because I’m the best driver since the Dukes of Hazard I started off on a harder difficulty but even for those that aren’t veterans of racing games, the controls don’t take much before you adjust.   

You can also forget the crappy storylines, the clichéd street racing characters that busted a gut to remind us that they’re ‘extreme’ and cool when they just end up looking like posers with a trust fund slumming it down and trying to be gangsta…they have been cast into the slimey pool of bad ideas and here we are left with a clean racing experience that is more about driving and less about wearing your hat tilted.  

Shift tries to walk the line between Forza and Ridge Racer and does a pretty damn good job.  The damage that each can sustain is customizable and turning it off can make the game feel more like an arcade game and less of a simulation.  Turning it on and you’ll be taking care when you’re going around the corners, what speed you’re doing and what line you should follow.  I love that just one little dynamic can make the game feel so different.  Turning it on or off is up to you, but since I’m the kind of guy who likes to take things a little bit seriously these days, I left it on and played it like I would drive in real life.  

Career Mode will give you plenty of choices and reward you with points that you can use to upgrade special perks that can be used in a race.  There are perks for increasing your driving abilities to letting you get the perfect start at the beginning of a race.   Every mode has something to reward you with if you’re good enough, so exploring all the modes and challenges is well worth the time and effort.  

Although you can’t pimp your car completely like in Forza or some of the other crappy N4S games that came before this one, you will accumulate cash based on your performance on which you can use to buy cars or customize the one you’re currently driving.  It’s pretty standard, but doing well in races will earn you extra bonuses and who doesn’t like buying expensive things?  You can tweak the tuning of your car and if you think you can get a good deal you can sell it and get another one and start all over again.  There are heaps of licensed cars to choose from and there will no doubt be a brand and model that will appeal to all types of racing fans.  

Every time this picture is seen, somewhere a Bogan stains the front of their pants.

Career is pretty much a ‘climbing up the ladder by racing your little tushy off’ idea, and it’s the same one you’ve seen in just about every other racing game that has ever existed but at least we’re saved from having to skip another cut-scene with some stereotype girl showing a pierced midriff telling us how hot we make her…actually I kind of miss those.  

There are plenty of different modes to choose from, Drift, Duel, Endurance, and Eliminator to name a few so you’re definitely spoilt for choice.  Once again they are all pretty standard type of modes that we find in a lot of other games, but the flavour and mechanics of N4S make it a lot more fun than usual.  I don’t really know how to explain it except that the flavour of their special sauce is a little spicier than other simulators that do little except make you want to fall asleep behind the wheel.  

The controls can feel a little off in places, maybe a little loose with some cars and a little strict with others and until you adjust to the flow and feel of each car you can expect to find yourself flying off the track more than a handful of times.  It can get a little aggravating but that’s what racing is all about.   To be an awesome drive takes practice and those that take the time to practice with Shift are going to reap the benefits of all the loot they will have access to.  

The biggest downside to Shift is that because it does sit on the fence between pure simulation and arcade, it doesn’t often tell you what attitude you should have when you approach it.  I would probably suggest that the game is more simulation than arcade, but watching one of my friends play it, it was obvious that he thought it was a more ‘pick up and play’ type of game and quickly became frustrated when he realized that there was a certain amount of time and effort required to play it successfully.  However if you approach it as a simulation you’ll be put off by how the line on the road doesn’t always match to what you have to do, or why the game rewards you for driving like a Bogan when it obviously wants you to race intelligently.  

There is still a place for paddockbombs in modern racing.

Personally I had no problems coming to grips with the gameplay or how it felt.  The progression felt quick and fun and all the modes are what I come to expect a racing game to have these days.  The graphics are very pretty (not jaw dropping like DiRT) but they do a great job of keeping a stable framerate and attention to detail on the tracks.   

If you’re not inclined to play racing games then you probably wouldn’t waste your time reading this review in the first place, but since you’ve made it this far down into the closing comments then I’ll say that this is the best N4S game since Most Wanted.  Sure there aren’t any cops but at least the fashion police have done away with fluff and left us with a solid racer that feels just about right.  Definitely give this one a look.