Shift
Monday, 21. September 2009, 20:09:25
Usually I don't play racing games a lot... I so much prefer racing in real world - but unfortunately my wife has different opinion here 
and ultimately I have to stick to virtual wheels...
Having that said I can also write that I'm not a newbie when it comes to this genre as I have started long time ago with Pit Stop 2, Outrun or Lotus Esprit 3. I also remember playing first Need for Speed on my shiny P100 with 16MB RAM and S3 Trio 64V+
That was ages ago of course - and even if NFS series has started really good, had even better third part, good Porsche edition, and nicely done Underground version, the rest of 16 (!) NFS editions were simply kind of weak... (at least in my humble opinion). And now we were given Shift. 16th version of the series. A nicely done successor!
This time authors wanted Shift to be more a simulation game than plain arcade - but still they wanted driving to be fun for everyone.
After first race game tries to somehow assess your driving abilities and suggest you adequate driving settings. I saw that kind of solution for the first time here and I have to say it's quite good. I just started game to see how it looks like and ended up in Tier 3 racing with a hundred stars crossed! In other words - game got me for few hours with difficulty level set high enough to make the game challenging for me yet not irritating. I'm impressed.
On the visual side - game is on level similar to G.R.I.D. but has visibly more polygons. Car models are better (and beautiful - just see pictures below) and tracks too. What is bad IMHO is visual side of collisions - here G.R.I.D. was much better. Audio - nothing to comment on. Everything you would expect from NFS.
On the playability side - Shift is less dynamic than G.R.I.D. (even if you could read that, on some - probably sponsored - reviews
) but I don't think it matters most as I easily spent more time on this title than on others...
I could have written more here but I need to test new suspension upgrade to my shiny Lotus and then try to be better at drift. For now I recommend seeing the pictures and then running to grab your own copy of Shift.
(and click 'read more' to see even more pictures)
and ultimately I have to stick to virtual wheels...Having that said I can also write that I'm not a newbie when it comes to this genre as I have started long time ago with Pit Stop 2, Outrun or Lotus Esprit 3. I also remember playing first Need for Speed on my shiny P100 with 16MB RAM and S3 Trio 64V+
That was ages ago of course - and even if NFS series has started really good, had even better third part, good Porsche edition, and nicely done Underground version, the rest of 16 (!) NFS editions were simply kind of weak... (at least in my humble opinion). And now we were given Shift. 16th version of the series. A nicely done successor!
This time authors wanted Shift to be more a simulation game than plain arcade - but still they wanted driving to be fun for everyone.
After first race game tries to somehow assess your driving abilities and suggest you adequate driving settings. I saw that kind of solution for the first time here and I have to say it's quite good. I just started game to see how it looks like and ended up in Tier 3 racing with a hundred stars crossed! In other words - game got me for few hours with difficulty level set high enough to make the game challenging for me yet not irritating. I'm impressed.
On the visual side - game is on level similar to G.R.I.D. but has visibly more polygons. Car models are better (and beautiful - just see pictures below) and tracks too. What is bad IMHO is visual side of collisions - here G.R.I.D. was much better. Audio - nothing to comment on. Everything you would expect from NFS.
On the playability side - Shift is less dynamic than G.R.I.D. (even if you could read that, on some - probably sponsored - reviews
) but I don't think it matters most as I easily spent more time on this title than on others...I could have written more here but I need to test new suspension upgrade to my shiny Lotus and then try to be better at drift. For now I recommend seeing the pictures and then running to grab your own copy of Shift.
(and click 'read more' to see even more pictures)
WIDGETIZE
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