• Please make sure you are familiar with the forum rules. You can find them here: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/forum-rules.2334636/

[Game] NFS Shift - "realism" gone wrong

KrazyKraut

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 22, 2005
1,848
69
Beer capital of the world
Boy what a disappointing game.

I was never really good at racing games I have to admit, but still, this one freaking blows imo.

It tries to be somewhere between the old NFS and a simulation by having more or less more realistic physics, but in my opinion it fails miserably. To me it's a perfect example how the realism hype can turn a decent game series into well this. The cars drive like your controls are somehow filtered before they affect the car. Kind of "spongy" (is that a word?). That would not be so bad alone.

But then, the career mode: First of all you advance so quickly to the upper tiers it felt like I didn't race more then 3 races with my first car. The worst part though is that there is no qualifying and you always start in the last quarter of the field. Since there's only three rounds usually, you have to drive absolutely perfectly and be lucky if you want to make it to 1st place. Usually I end up restarting a race over and over again after the first corner, because I know if i haven't overtaken like 5-6 cars by then, I'm likely not going to win. Yes EA, I can't be bothered with a qualifying round, but restarting a race a dozen times over is fun.

I almost beat the game now (i do not know why, but sometimes I have to finish even a game i don't like for some reason) and it doesn't feel rewarding at all if I won a race. I know i only won because out of the x tries i got the lucky combination "good driving plus enough mistakes by AI" once. It's not skill, it's just statistics.
 
I quite enjoyed it actually! The online is a really good laugh!

The so called realistic 'physics' of the game is non-existent with cars going airbourne like theyre made out of paper!! But the challenges are really good and the tracks are very well designed with some hair-raising downhill straights and some lovely lighting in parts!

If you dedicate alot of time and ignore the bugs then its quite a good game.

The GT5 demo you mention, is it the GT academy thing?
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
That's the problem, the cars are out of paper like you mentioned yet you just can't avoid crashes with the AI, especially in the higher tiers it's like ping pong.

I'm not really interested in the multiplayer, the sp sucks though. My brother is playing Dirt 2 and seems to prefer it over NFS Shift. Might give that a try.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
My favorites are still NFS6 and Underground 2, they are fun and pretty, or so I remember

I thought the best one was Most Wanted. It had me entertained for weeks and looked very pretty at the time. Then came Carbon and I thought it was kinda ugly (dark nights with strangely too bright textures), the new additions were unnecessary, but it was still fun. I even like the cheesy stories:D

Then I lost interest until this last one came up and all the reviews were really good. Just shows the reviewers never finish the games or so it seems. Because, yes, the first half of the game seems really good with the more challenging gameplay, the return of damage, the cockpits and the overall graphical quality. That's until you advance and the serious flaws start to show.
 
Upvote 0
I woulden't say NFS-Shift is a realistic game, i would call it's problems "fake-difficulty" rather than "too much realism".

But as far as i'm concearned, the series went drastically downhill ever since NFS:pU(5), my favorites remain NFS-2, 4 and 5, none of the newer ones floats my boat in the least, but the series officially died for me when they removed the cockpit view (they may have put it back in now, but the games just don't have the same spirit as the older ones did anyway).
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Oh yeh thats another thing that impressed me, the cockpit view in Shift!

But overall a disappointing game though me and my mates did have a laugh playing it so I cant diss it too much really!

Yep. GT Academy Time Trial.

Thought that was absolute gash mate!

Could only drive it using the front bonnet view and there was no after effects like track marks or damage... the full game has got to be better than that 'demo' otherwise Im gonna be well pi55ed offf!!!!
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
The cockpit view and the graphics in general are very nice to look at. Gotta give it that. Other than that Shift seems like a bad version of Forza 3.

And I have to agree with Grobut. Too much realism doesn't seem to be the problem. It's just not that good a game. They seem to have tried to create a realistic game but round off the edges. I.e. cut out what people could consider annoying about realistic games. And with that they screwed up.
"Accessible realism" ala RO or presumably "relaxed realism" ala HOS is nice and well, but if you screw up with that you end up with a product that is neither fish nor fowl.
Slight lack of content (especially compared to other racing games) doesn't help either.

I'd still say Shift is miles ahead of the fast-and-furious type NFS games of late and maybe if they continue and make more NFS games like this they'll find a balance that works well for them, but with Forza 3 out for the realism fans, PGR 4 out for the "relaxed realism" fans and GRID for everyone else there is really no reason to get Shift. Maybe Shift 2 sometime down the line. But not Shift.
At least not for the 360.
 
Upvote 0
Thought that was absolute gash mate!

Could only drive it using the front bonnet view and there was no after effects like track marks or damage... the full game has got to be better than that 'demo' otherwise Im gonna be well pi55ed offf!!!!

As it say in the intro, it's a stripped down demo to get you a "feel" of the awesome physics. It's not a exactly a graphical representation. Bear in mind the whole demo is just 200mb.
 
Upvote 0