Compared with the hundreds of vehicles on offer in various other racing games the 80 plus cars on offer here may seem paltry in comparison but Tudor explained that the emphasis with SHIFT is to create a “core, visceral experience, that goes back to basics and gets the driving right.”  As a result the number of cars has been limited so that you begin to feel a certain sense of loyalty to specific vehicles, learning every nuance and quirk it has to offer, rather than just hoarding cash in an attempt to fill your garage with as many machines as possible.

Whether or not 80 cars will be enough to satisfy racing fans that have become accustomed to being able to pick from a much larger pool remains to be seen, but the usual avalanche of post-launch DLC that is sure to follow should be enough to satisfy the hunger of most petrol-heads.  Your vehicles can be customised to your hearts content, both inside and out.  Performance upgrades are available in all the usual areas, from the quality of your exhaust to the level of weight reduction and the ever-popular nitrous injection system.  Paint jobs and liveries can be either selected from a pre-determined list or created from scratch using a vinyl layering system, similar to that seen in Forza 2.  

However you choose to spend your time in the game, no matter which mode you select, you’re always adding to your driver profile.  This stores a whole bunch of information, from how well you’ve performed on certain tracks, which badges you’ve won (first overtaking a set number of people, winning consecutive races etc.) and what kind of a driver you are.  Your driver type will either be labelled as ‘aggressive’ or ‘precision’.  As you race around the track points are awarded almost constant, and for almost everything. 

Aggression points are handed out for the kind of driving you’d never see in most real life racing events, things like smashing opponents off the tracks, continuously blocking another racer from passing and other tactics generally consider below the belt.  In contrast, precision points are awarded for smooth, attractive driving, taking the apex of a corner perfectly, for example, or performing an overtake manoeuvre without making contact with your adversary.  Apparently, depending on whether you score mainly aggression or precision points, determines how the computer A.I. reacts to your presence on the track.  Those with many aggression points will often be given a wider berth than someone sitting on a mountain of precision points, except by those drivers who are just as eager to get into a scuffle. 

That same profile can be used to find suitable opponents online too.  You have the option of searching for matches by driver profile, allowing you to enter races with only those users who have a large number of precision points, eliminating the potential frustration of sharing the track with exactly the kind of person you’ve tried to avoid in other games. Online games support up to eight players across a variety of game modes, one of the most interesting of which being ‘Duel’ mode in which racers face off in one-on-one knockout events, eventually finishing with the final between the remaining two participants.

SHIFT is a major departure from what we’ve come to expect from a Need for Speed title but, thankfully, in what looks to be an overwhelmingly positive way, Tudor explained that “[Need for Speed] reinvents itself every year, but there’s no way you can really satisfy everyone’s demands.”  That’s certainly true, and it will be interesting to see whether the game appeals to fans of the previous games, and indeed whether the simulation crowd can bring themselves to pay for something with the words ‘Need for Speed’ in the title, and galvanise the same kind of brand loyalty we’ve seen in the past (despite the sometimes questionable quality of the games themselves).

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