Need for Speed: Shift

Back on track?

Following a mid-life crisis presumably brought about when the last few games in the series sold a mere billion copies each rather than the forecasted gajillion, Need for Speed is changing. In fact, it's developed full-blown schizophrenia, with its '09 offerings split into three distinct strands covering the core, casual and free-to-play audiences in turn. According to EA's VP of marketing, Keith Munro, offering three games rather than one represents "the inverse of milking", an unfortunate turn of phrase which conjures farmyard imagery of such a bizarrely disgusting nature, that we can probably leave it at that.

While such big budget soul-searching is mildly interesting, the more important question is how the games themselves will hold up. Luckily, if any franchise could handle such a fundamental change of gear, it's probably this one. Despite persistent themes like urban racing, car-collecting, and unintentionally creepy CGI/live action interludes, Need for Speed has always seemed defined by its reliance on one-shot gimmickry rather than the prolonged exploration of core ideas that has given Burnout's frantic evolution a sense of rock-steady inevitability. The series may flit between temporary pre-occupations with cop chases or finding the perfect shade of neon orange alloys, but, deep down, all Need for Speed's really about is selling a lot of games at Christmas.

Shift, at least, is looking like it can keep that theme on track, with a recent chance to play a pre-alpha build suggesting the core offering is shaping up to be a serious racing title, already sufficiently tuned to be putting on the second coat of polish.

'Need for Speed: Shift' Screenshot 1

AI is personality-driven, with rivals ranging from conservative types to accident-prone aggressors.

Slightly Mad, the title's UK-based developer, has a decent lineage in car games, its staff having started as modders before working on the GTR series and GT Legends with SimBin - although the extent of the team's involvement is a matter SimBin itself has suggested it may be willing to sue over. However the legal side of things turns out, Shift's brand new engine has been in development for two years, with a cross-platform emphasis from the start. Given such a solid chunk of hard work is behind it, it's hardly surprising that the game is already looking lovely.

As promised, most of the series' more familiar elements are AWOL: there's no police, no open-world environments, and no distracting character nonsense. The focus here is not on stocking up your garage so much as building your own career as a driver, with the game playing out as a very straight racing sim set against a variety of iconic tracks (some real, some imagined) from around the world.

'Need for Speed: Shift' Screenshot 2

Black Box producer Michael Mann is theoretically providing a sense of continuity for Shift, but it still doesn't feel much like Need for Speed.

Taking to the corners of Brands Hatch in a Zonda sees the developers striving to create a race-day atmosphere at the roadside, with crowds milling in the stands, bunting rippling in the breeze, and the sun bouncing off the metal walls of nearby buildings. The cars are pretty too, with large, shiny models, and bold primary colour liveries. The audio is throaty and fierce, and the much-teased in-cockpit view is equally excellent, with real-time reflections, elaborate gear-stick animations and a detailed expanse of dashboard visible. Outside cameras are still available, of course, including a stomach-churning bumper view, but it's in-cockpit that the game's focus lies, and where Slightly Mad's attempts to create a convincing sense of g-force are most vividly displayed.

The team seems to be doing a decent job in this respect, layering on a handful of telling little details to increase the sense of immersion: put your foot down and the depth of field changes, keeping the track in sharp focus while gently blurring out the cockpit, and even making your character's grip on the wheel tighten almost imperceptibly. Sudden accelerations are also coupled with camera shake and the screen pulling out to mimic your head being pushed back into the seat, while emergency braking contracts your view suddenly as you lurch forward again.

On top of this, the developers have spent a lot of time thinking about the too-often hum-drum activity of crashing, eager to capture the drama of collisions as a brutal bodily event as much as an annoying kink in your lap time. The solution so far is optical overload, collisions sending the screen into a screaming blur as your vision dissolves into a shimmering watery mass, and your heartbeat grows increasingly audible on the soundtrack. Compared to the Hollywood explosions of Burnout, it's a far more physical approach: the videogame equivalent of getting Tabasco in your eye. It's jarring rather than terrifying, then, but it's also far from cosmetic, as the damage modelling is keyed into the physics engine: after a series of bad racing decisions have reduced the clean lines of the Zonda to a clanking pile of abstract expressionism, the resulting mess handles very differently, sluggishly chugging down the road, and cutting through the oncoming breeze with all the grace of an old mattress.

'Need for Speed: Shift' Screenshot 3

Alongside the Zonda, the higher tier cars so far include the Porsche GT2, while the lower tier features the Lotus Elise.

Switching from Brands Hatch to a race on an imaginary track that threads itself around tourist book London, provides yet another opportunity to focus on just how good the game looks. These are streets already made familiar by PGR3, but here they're more richly detailed, with the buildings looming much closer over the track, the surrounding roads bustling with crowds, and a range of on-the-fly lighting effects allowing developers to switch between different types of weather and shunt the clock back and forth between the blooming orange glow of early evening to the shimmering pale sunlight of noon in seconds.

London's also a chance to see just how deeply the sim elements of the game are embedded into the design. Turning off the HUD entirely while in-cockpit allows you to drive by the dials alone, while a colour-coded racing line is projected onto the ground in front of you, red and yellow telling you when to brake, green encouraging you to floor it, while blue suggests you're lagging behind. It's serious stuff for a traditionally arcadey series, and, coupled with entirely new car physics - there's a much weightier sense of your tyres hugging the road, but if you're not careful on the corners, you can still end up in a spin - is enough to make Maggie Q seem like a distant memory.

'Need for Speed: Shift' Screenshot 4

Frame-rate even now is looking promising, given the janky stuttering of Undercover.

While it's hard to avoid suspicions about how Shift came to be - its new developer, new direction, and surprising level of polish suggesting its link to the Need for Speed franchise may be fairly opportunistic - there's no reason yet to question the quality of what Slightly Mad has been working on. Whether or not you believe EA's notion that the videogame audience is now so deeply fragmented it needs three separately tailored titles in order to please everyone, it's clear that, if you're after the series' more familiar style of gameplay, you'll need to wait for Nitro on the DS and Wii for the time being. However, if you're a fan of driving as much as just racing, Shift is looking like the best thing to emerge from the strange new art of inverse milking in quite a while.

Need for Speed: Shift is due for release on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PSP this winter.

Comments (44) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • quantumsheep #1 3 years ago

    I read that as Need for Speed: Shit

    I can't be the only one, shirley?
  • alimokrane #2 3 years ago

    More like Need For Speed: Sh*t

    I gave up on the series a LONG LONG time ago.
  • DAN.E.B #3 3 years ago

    you arent the only
    and dont call me shirley!
  • alimokrane #4 3 years ago

    @quantumsheep

    Darn, u beat me to it!!!! 40 seconds difference!!! :D but yeah you're not the only one surely :D
    Edited by 1 at 04/03/09 @ 16:07
  • UncleLou #5 3 years ago

    Knee-jerk comments of people who haven't read the article? Surely not?
  • MaxiSleep #6 3 years ago

    Against my better judgment I am actually quite enthusiastic about this
  • b00n #7 3 years ago

    Doesn't look half bad, even if it doesn't feel like a "real" Need for Speed game at this point. It's got my attention, which couldn't be said of the previous two NFS games.
  • Eraysor #8 3 years ago

    I also read this as NFS: Shit. It probably will be, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.
  • Darren #9 3 years ago

    @Eraysor - Yeah, that's what I read it as too and I'm sure that's exactly what it will be known as if it's another dud like NFS: ProStreet and Undercover.
  • HermitArcader #10 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011
  • SAH1977 #11 3 years ago

    I have to laugh at some of the above comments, if you're aware of the team and technology behind this game, you'll know it's odds on to be the best driving game released so far on consoles.
  • quantumsheep #12 3 years ago

    Please note - I'm not saying the game itself is shit.

    I'm just pointing out that at first glance, the title *looked* like it said 'shit'.

    There's a bloody difference you know!
  • UncleLou #13 3 years ago

    I wasn't talking about you! :)
  • ronuds #14 3 years ago

    Didn't we just have another NFS not too long ago? Good grief...they're really milking this shit.
  • Eraysor #15 3 years ago

    The team and engine are excellent - I just don't see what it's going to bring to the table that's revolutionary when you compare it to the competition. The NFS license is just more a badge of shame than anything else.
  • aphexstwin #16 3 years ago

    the problem i have with non-sim style racers is that im 29 years old, and thus expected to be treated as such. which means realism, good handling and physics along with eye catching graphics. i was seriously hoping race:pro was going to do this til forza 3 and gt5 came along, i was sorely disappointed. im hoping that theres more upcoming games to race on my wheel with, and the simbin input seems promising, until i played race:pro. so take your grid, dirt, previous nfs incarnations and ram them, realism is so much more fun than slidy cars doing 0-120mph in 5 seconds (the chevy lacetti in grid is a good example of this)
  • crispyduckman #17 3 years ago

    I enjoyed NFS: Porsche Unleashed on the PC more that any other NFS game. If I remember correctly, I think I liked the handling. I don't think there were any NFS-esque gimmicks in that game either and it was well balanced between realistic and arcade. I never hear anyone refer to this game as a highlight of the series though.
  • markypants #18 3 years ago

  • Numbat #19 3 years ago

    Well it's a European developer so I think there's hope for it - after all Criterion continued with a great product after EA took them over. Can see why they keep Need for Speed in the title, but I think we'd all feel more positive if it wasn't. Oh well, I hope it's good - been a bit of a lack of good race games for a while.
  • secombe #20 3 years ago

    I can't decide if it's a good or bad thing that EA have basically 'taken over' what was Simbin. On the one hand we are actually going to get games from those guys, on the other hand it's worrying what this will mean long term.
  • poundworld #21 3 years ago

    could do with video to see frame rate, been one of the worst parts of previous games.
  • HermitArcader #22 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011
  • Bitkari #23 3 years ago

    Certainly does look like NFS is heading back in the right direction towards GRID/PGR type play.

    Would be even nicer if it went back to its original roots as a test drive rip-- homage. Would certainly be more interesting than just being another arcadey racer in detailed-but-tiny city-based maps
  • Synthesis #24 3 years ago

    I have been quietly hoping that this game turns out to be the PC version of Forza/GT that so many have been longing for. However I expect it's going to end up more like a prettier version of GT-R Evolution than a Forza/GT type game.

    It leaves me utterly bemused as to why no developer has attempted a Forza/GT game for the PC, surely it would be the biggest hit of them all, combining sim-like handling with beautiful visuals and a massive selection of customisable cars/tracks.

    I'll continue to hold out hope for Shift but I want to start seeing some road cars soon!
  • Dillinger #25 3 years ago

    'slightly mad'... lol, slightly 'gone bust'. try again!
  • rupert #26 3 years ago

  • BrokenSymmetry #27 3 years ago

    This looks great so far. I hope that finally a console racer will have a great in-car view that is actually usable. PGR4 was worse than PGR3 in this respect (unreadable dials, too-low position), and Race Pro is a big disappointment in the graphical area.
  • raion #28 3 years ago

    @crispyduckman
    NFS Porsche Unleashed on PC is my favourite. I believe that it's not known, considering I don't think the whole NFS franchise was this popular back then, was it? Most of the Fast'n'Furious kids don't even know there were some before Underground.

    anyway, on topic, kinda... I knew there wouldn't be anything on the PSP version. They do this every time! I wouldn't care much if it was the "casual" version, but they actually plan on getting a hardcore racing simulator on the PSP?? That's scary and intriguing. And of course we won't get any info on it until the day before it's release.
  • FooAtari #29 3 years ago

    The devs have the skill and talent to make a decent sim.

    But sadly I don't think they will be given free reign and EA will keep them in check ending up with another GRID like turd of a game
  • Rodchenko #30 3 years ago

    / rubs eyes

    This looks and sounds to good to be true.
  • coojam #31 3 years ago

    Strange that this article can be written without even mentioning the lovely GRID...
  • DrDamn #32 3 years ago

    @coojam
    Grid is great, but all out arcade handling. This may bear the NfS name but the dev credentials and the text of the preview indicate this will be much more sim like. Apples and oranges.
  • seasidebaz #33 3 years ago

    So......

    This is basically what Race Pro should've been? Awesome.
  • metalangel #34 3 years ago

    If they really want to reinvent the series, why not go back to the original? Long, multi-stage point to point races on real roads through gorgeous scenery, and some closed circuits for fun. Road legal sports cars, other traffic, and a petrolhead section of stats and model history. All the Fast and Furry-arsed crap is done far better by Midnight Club.
  • superjag86 #35 3 years ago

    If they give us a demo this time that'll be an indication that they don't think it's crap
  • secombe #36 3 years ago

    Essentially we may as well forget "Need for Speed" at the start of the game title, it's not a NFS game and was never originally intended to be.

    Long term you wonder how it will work, sure the first release will sell in big numbers due to the NFS tag, but the traditional NFS fans are likely to feel alienated by a reasonably serious 'sim' with proper physics...and the actual people who would otherwise be interested in such a game will probably overlook it due to the arcadey origins of the NFS brand.

    I just hope EA don't get cold feet at the last minute and seriously water this down, if they stay true to their triple release concept, there is no reason why the individual games shouldn't be suitably different and appeal to entirely different people...at the end of the day, if they end up similar people aren't going to buy both anyway.
  • AlcohollicA #37 3 years ago

    NFS Most Wanted 2 please.
  • Vedfolner #38 3 years ago

    crispyduckman: Porsche Unleashed is one of the best driving games of all time. Not only because of the fantastic handling model but because of the dedication to just the one brand. It was a fantastic feeling to try out all of the old models before trying to tame the brutal modern ones and I also seem to recall that the game was one of the first - if not THE first - driving game to introduce the ability to buy used cars. In all the game was simply a fantastic effort. I wish that EA would pick up that game structure again, the didication to one brand (take your pick; Lamborghini, Maserati, Jaguar, BMW).
    I haven't played a NFS game in ages. Tried a couple of them but thought the street style was awful and that the new NFS games in general were lightyears behind previous efforts.
    Edited by 1 at 05/03/09 @ 11:37
  • Snooz #39 3 years ago

    "the inverse of milking" - man, I've got too much imagination.

    NFS tag put me off this, comments made me more hopful, but why oh why oh whywhywhy isn't there a giant new rallysim?
  • DAN.E.B #40 3 years ago

    whywhywhy isn't there a giant new rallysim? +1

    I guess devs think we just want to tune cheap jap cars and stick spoilers on them.
    then we can drive said shit heaps around the same old tracks over and over again.
    bring back the real rally games FFS!
  • zisssou #41 3 years ago

  • MaxHughes #42 3 years ago

    I also read the title as Need for Speed: Shit :p
  • slave23d #43 3 years ago

    so its EA's take on G.R.I.D then... woopdeewoo
  • metalangel #44 3 years ago

    Can EG just change it so it reads:

    Need for Speed: Shit
    Stating the obvious

    Anyway, I too have noticed that all non-sim racing games are just buying a Japanese tuner/American Muscle/token European (the only game where they've ever had a proper showing is TDU, and that doesn't fall into the category I'm making) and covering it with hideous bodykit, and then racing people who call you a 'buster'.

    Midnight Club: LA is jolly good fun but we don't need a dozen other variants on the same formula (Juiced, NFS: You is a gangsta, etc etc etc) any more, thanks.