Shift 2 Unleashed: Need for Speed Review

04 Apr 2011 at 10:00:00 by John Robertson
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Shift 2 Unleashed, the latest game to fly the confused Need for Speed banner, is a mean, vicious example of how to make a racer game. Unlike the highly polished, beautifully pristine and tightly controlled take on burnt rubber and gasoline guzzling offered by the likes of Forza and Gran Turismo, Unleashed is primarily concerned with getting your adrenaline flowing at full throttle.

And, in that respect, it doesn’t disappoint.

Unleashed's excitement stems from two primary sources; its A.I. opponents and its skill in making every bump, crash and G-Force inducing corner feel like a meaningful event. One thing you certainly can’t accuse Unleashed of is proliferating the usual racing game bugbear of follow-the-leader CPU opponents. We’ve all seen it, cars that each follow exactly the same racing line and refuse to even attempt to pass one another.

Opponents here are rude, aggressive and not afraid to go chassis-to-chassis if it’ll result in any sort of advantage, no matter how small. Almost every race features some kind of drama - be it cars spinning out in front of you, madly wrestling with the wheel as you try to stay on track after a rear end nudge or doing your best not to give up track position as you race three abreast around a corner.

When the inevitable happens and you find yourself wrapped around a safety barrier or spinning wildly out of control, you sure as hell know about it. As with the first Shift, the game’s big feature in terms of its presentation is the in-car, cockpit point of view. Crash into a barrier and the screen desaturates, blurs and shakes violently until it decides it’s made you feel sick enough. Combine this with the loud, imposing roar of metal on concrete, and the fact that the controller vibrates more than possibly any game I’ve ever played, and you’ve got a tri-pronged visual-audio-physical assault on the senses to rival a night spent playing Twister with an unwashed Susan Boyle.

Subtlety is not something Unleashed places much value in.

This time the cockpit-cam has been pulled back a tad so that you’re actually viewing events from inside your racer’s crash-helmet, as opposed to from an imaginary camera placed on the top of it as was the case last time around.

The result is an ever-so-slightly (but oh-so-important) widened view of the action. Combine this with the rather neat way in which your driver automatically turns their head to get a good look at an upcoming corner, and you’ve got a game that seems to have solved the long-standing issue of cockpit cameras not presenting you with a good enough view of the track to make it a viable, long-term option for achieving fast lap times.

Indeed, if it wasn’t for the quality of the cockpit camera, Unleashed would be fast forgotten by the racing game fraternity. The physics model of the cars is pitched somewhere between arcade and simulation which places it in an awkward no-mans-land of requiring too much finesse and control for those looking for an all-out thrill ride but not enough for those seeking an all-encompassing, rich level of depth.

Unleashed’s handling model is extremely ‘floaty’, cars at times don’t even feel as if they’re touching the ground at all. The result is often one of ‘twitchiness’, making it difficult to perform small steering corrections with any degree of accuracy; particular frustrating if, like me, you revel in setting quick lap times and hitting each apex perfectly. Perhaps as compensation, braking is incredibly forgiving; most cars able to reduce their speed by 70-80 percent within a matter of metres.

As with the bulk of modern racers, Unleashed comes bundled with the ‘green go fast, red go slow’ racing line painted on top of the track. But, unlike most modern racers, you’re better off ignoring it (at least its colour, anyway) because you can always start braking far, far later than it recommends.

Still, that’s not to say that its physics model stops it from being fun. If you like sim-style racers and are after something a little taxing but without going whole-hog down the arcade route, Unleashed is perfect for unwinding between (or during) day-long sessions tuning your perfect ride in Gran Turismo.

As with most games that spawn from the EA stable nowadays, this is a game that’s packed to the brim with enough content to keep you occupied for a good long time. There’s a generous helping of tracks, both real (Suzuka, Donnington, Nurburgring et al) and imagined (city tracks such as London and Miami), and a pleasingly diverse array of cars and manufacturers. Career mode is equally varied, featuring standard races, timed ‘Hot Lap’ events and even ‘Eliminator’ events of the likes seen in Motorstorm Apocalypse in which last place is eliminated at regular intervals.

Combine this with the lovely visuals (especially during night races), an XP system that rewards you for everything from winning races to ‘mastering’ corners and the same, fiendishly addictive, Autolog system that graces Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and you’ve got a racer that packs more than enough variety and excuses to pull you through to its final events.

So long as you don’t go into Unleashed expecting a full-on simulation racer then you’ll find a lot to like about it. It’s a chaotic, visceral, almost nasty, attack on the senses that delights in conjuring up new ways in which to display carnage and portray the inherent heat and hostility of motor racing.   

Version tested: Xbox 360

Comment