Need For Speed: SHIFT [PC]

With each year comes a new Need for Speed. With each Need for Speed comes the promise of a fresh, new gameplay experience that will attract long-time fans and newcomers alike. Things are a little more different than usual this year though; the franchise has been split into three games, each aimed at a different segment of the potential audience. The expectation then is that whether you enjoy the simulation approach or prefer something a little more ‘arcadey', there should a Need for Speed aimed squarely at fulfilling that preference.

Enter Need for Speed: SHIFT, the simulation arm of the three-pronged attack that - according to the blurb on the back of the box - delivers an "unrivalled in-car experience". While it might seem strange to focus your promotional efforts on highlighting the quality of your in-car viewpoint, the reasoning for doing so soon becomes obvious once you get to sit in the seat yourself. To put it bluntly, the first-person/in-car view is, without question, SHIFT's most impressive feature and pretty much the only thing that stands out against the competition.

Rather than seeing the action through a static camera hovering somewhere over the driver's seat, you're actually in first-person mode looking through the eyes of the driver, which has allowed the dev team to implement a whole host of effects that raise it above what we've seen in other games. It's the attention to detail that makes using the viewpoint so appealing; crash into a barrier and your vision blurs as your brains rocks around inside your skull, break heavily and your head lurches forward, struggling to resist the pull of the g-force, or change your angle to the sun and watch as the shadows on your dashboard stretch and rotate in response. It's all very impressive stuff and provides a strong sense of immersion that is often vacant from over racers that provide an in-car option. However, a jazzed-up viewpoint is not enough of an enticement to warrant a full-price purchase, which is why it's more than a little unfortunate that SHIFT doesn't quite manage to uphold the same levels of quality and flare throughout the rest of its potential pleasures.

With no poorly acted, lazily written cut-scenes to bog it down, SHIFT, unlike the bulk of recent NFS titles, is focused on

 getting you on the track and racing right from the off. Before you have a chance to even browse the menu screens you find yourself behind the wheel of a BMW driving a single lap of Brands Hatch, after which the game recommends what it thinks are the optimal settings (A.I. difficulty, traction control, handling model etc) based on your lap performance; these can be altered later if you find the going a little tough, or improve to the point where you need to raise the difficulty.

The issue is that it's unlikely that many people will play through enough of the single player to think about altering any settings. While the initial going is fun (thanks in most part to the first-person viewpoint), the career mode quickly becomes a matter of grinding through races, which bear only the slightest differences from one another, in a bid to level up through the various tiers, culminating in the all-singing, all-dancing Need For Need World Tour. Levelling up through the event tiers is a fairly swift process, so you're never left re-racing the same events in an effort to build your funds or attain enough experience to progress, but after you've driven all the tracks there's little incentive to continue playing.