NFS Shift user reviews
Posted: 17 Sep 2009, 21:58
Right. Another NFS. God knows witch number is it anyway. Its called shift and at first glance at the trailers i thought: Here goes copy of the GRID.
But now, i have the game, played it around 1h and here is my review of how the game felt so far.
At first, its back to ProStreet. There are no gangsta talking teenagers with small penises so they have to attract ladies with their flashing glittering cars. There is this deep male full of wisdom voise, talking seriously about track racing and stuff. Again there is this classic NFS welcome screen that we have seen before. Stylish background around the featured car of the game, and then... terrible menu. You have this huge font covering most of your screen, so you have to scroll a lot just to see all the options in the menu. And at first, like anybody else does, i went to options - graphics. Now, there are around 160 different resolutions to set from . The problem is screen resolution, refresh rate and AA are embedded into same option. So for example Setting No160 is 1920x1080 x 70Hz x 8AA, No159 is 1920x1080 x 70Hz x 4AA. Once AA reaches 0, Hz value drops to 60Hz, resolution is still 1920x1080 and AA is once again X8. On my PC refresh rates went all the way down to 30Hz, witch is ridiculous since i have LCD with fixed refresh rate. And once you scroll to your desired resolution/refresh rate/ AA it says, - new settings will be applied upon restarting the game. (Well F... you EA). I would also like to say that there is no benchmark option in the game, and default settings option is a bit weird. My PC is 3GB RAM, E5300 Dual core, Ati 4870 Sapphire and by default all settings are maxed out except for 2X AA and medium shadows quality. Not bad - quite a good engine then you would say. But! Once you start your first race, all collapses. Frame rate is painfully low, car reacts too late... so the moment you hit throttle, nothing happens, but half a second later, it revs to the limit. You let go, it still revs. Now imagine how annoying this gets when you try to hit optimum revs at start for perfect launch. Impossible! Not to talk about cornering that happens too late. Seeing that i scrolled again though menus to select lower resolution, and perhaps some gfx options as well. At setting No122 there it was - 1280x800 x60Hz x2AA. some effects were lowered to medium and it was time to quit to windows - so that after restart i could have new setting and perhaps smoother frame rate. But guess what - Saaaame shiznit! To slow reactions, and when to many cars are in front FPS drops to below 20. Once i am alone on the track, its smooth, but as soon as I am racing, it slows down. Now i reckon, if i overtake them all, there are no cars in front to render and all will be fine, but how to overtake when steering is late, you brake too late, accelerate too late. I lowered gfx settings again, but when message - "new settings will be applied upon restarting the game" appeared I gave up life all together. It reminded me of NFS Undercover and its poor engine, and why i uninstalled the game after just 20mins of play.
Now something about racing itself. First race in career is a sort of training. 1 lap around Brands Hatch Indy track, and based on your lap time, game suggests difficulty of the career - opponent skill, ABS, traction control, driving aid. Nice idea. Too bad I found it useless. Controls are set to arrows instead of WASD. Nothing too bad, but since lately all the games are on WASD, suddenly controlling the car with your right hand is a bit odd.
Also, you start of with cockpit camera. Ok, that has finally returned to NFS, and they made such a big fuss about it, but... they made too big fuss about it. You cant adjust your seating position - you are stuck way back so you can see all the little details EA has been working on hardly. I don't know about you, but i find it more useful while racing to look through windscreen than looking at the center console and dashboard.
Now i don't know if there is the same issue with other cars, but in M3 and Scirroco, while in cockpit, that bloody A pillar often gets in a way when cornering, so you sometime miss the apex - just because of that. If there was an option to adjust seat more forward, and upward maybe, cockpit camera would be my choice. When i wanted to change the camera, i found that C is not the key for it. So i stayed stuck with it, and after only one lap - first time behind the wheel an new physics and new track - as you can guess i performed badly. And based on that game has set me the easiest career difficulty. Oh come on, give me 5 laps and rate me based on best lap. You can restart that training until you get the feel of the car, and at the end of race you can set difficulty manually. So, all this rating based on lap time is unnecessary.
As for physics. It says it has Physx engine, but unless you have hardware for it you will not experience it. Neighter have I. All i can say, this no physx engine is terrible. Cars feel wooden, crashes feel numb. I bet EA has again put the best technology in real cars to capture their handling, but this doesn't feel anything like it. Head on crash just digs in your car, but if you hit another car its back end goes flying. Its way to easy to flip over the side opponents cars, and way to easy to spin them of the track. And if you think you will see some spectacular crashing in the game, forget it. At high speed, if you hit something, whole screen blurs, and when the screen sharpens you see slightly scratched car. It takes a lot of effort before some parts of kits start to fall of. But when that does happen, another disapointment. Under that bodykit, there is still the same box shaped bare car we used to see in Prostreet.
As for tuning & customizing, now you can apply beautiful full on racing kits. No more rice crap. No more choosing between same old spoilers, hoods or exhaust tips, all is included in kit. From what i have seen so far, they look really good. Some are maybe even real stuff you see on race tracks. There is no autosculpt (thank God, it was so terrible), but still, you can fine tune all the parts you apply. Much like in ProStreet. Every part you choose affects your aerodynamics, top speed, etc etc. Also you can quick-dress your car in some of premade great looking liveries. 5 per car, and every car has its own liveries. But when it all seemed perfect, EA ruined it again. There are still 1000 different shapes of rims. And since every part of car affects its handling, it seems that there is no difference between 15" and 21" rims on same car.
But the worst bit is that you can again rice up your car with same old shapes and vinyls we are seeing all over again since Carbon. Color tinted windshields only make things worse. Why o why...
EA also though of one very interesting thing to implement, well at least they thought its interesting and thus they hyped it up so even some of us thought thats a cool feature - its so called Precision vs Aggressive racer. If you are driving pitch perfect laps you are gaining points for precision, if you tend to knock opponents of the track, drift the corners, trade paint with other cars you get points for aggression. The only trouble is... Aggression points aren't really rewarding. Its hard work to drive perfect lane through every apex, its hard to avoid contact between cars on track and all other sort of things that award you with precision points. On the other hand, all you need for aggression points is lack of talent. Brake too late and you will ram into cars before you, hit throttle too soon in the corner and car will drift of the perfect lane, touch any other car in narrow corner etc. Eventually because you are new to the game and physics of driving the car, and because frame rate drops when there are some cars around, you will smash and drift around earning aggression points. After you accumulate required number of points you advance to level 2 aggression, and this new stylish badge with spiked hammers appears on the screen saying - wow, you are cool, you are aggressive, ROAR, a real beast. Where as it should say - you talentless idiot, you shouldn't drive anything more powerful than shopping pushcart!
In one of loading screen it says you can advance to Lv50 aggression/precision. I wonder, whats the reward for that? I doubt Lv50 aggression gives you a pair of machine guns, although that would be cool. Also i would like to mention that loading takes so long you can actually feel as you are getting older.
Something else bad? Well, hood camera swings too much so its hard to follow the road.
Also i have tried one quick race with Maserati MC12 Corsa - one of the fastest cars in game, to see if game feels any better at its best, and the answer is no. It drives faster, car sounds better than 2.0 TSI Scirroco, but all the rest is still there.
And correct me if I am wrong, but the game lacks soundtrack. While racing there is no music whatsoever, and in menus all you hear is distant crowd and distant revving cars.
Good stuff?
Well, gfx do look nice and realistic. This is the first time cars had full reflections on them, so you could see reflection of other cars on your hood. And finally someone realized that V8 Vantage is more suited for racing than DB9, so you can find it in the game as well. There are some real world legendary tracks like Laguna Seca, Circuit de Spa... and thats about it.
So, to sum it all up... Again its unfinished, unpolished, not well thought through game from EA with that same already disgusting name Need for Speed. Developing team has once again spent too much time designing menu, icons, trailers, "how to master race track" trailers, and all those little details that dont even need to be there - 3 stage cockpit, and all inside it. And since every year there HAS TO BE new NFS there isnt much time to make something new and good. By new i mean, it has all the same cars you used to see before, and most of the vinyls are sold again and again every year. Now, im not that stupid to pay every year for same shiznit.
But crucially, what this game is missing is what differs AutoCAD from Burnout Paradise. Its FUN!
3/10
But now, i have the game, played it around 1h and here is my review of how the game felt so far.
At first, its back to ProStreet. There are no gangsta talking teenagers with small penises so they have to attract ladies with their flashing glittering cars. There is this deep male full of wisdom voise, talking seriously about track racing and stuff. Again there is this classic NFS welcome screen that we have seen before. Stylish background around the featured car of the game, and then... terrible menu. You have this huge font covering most of your screen, so you have to scroll a lot just to see all the options in the menu. And at first, like anybody else does, i went to options - graphics. Now, there are around 160 different resolutions to set from . The problem is screen resolution, refresh rate and AA are embedded into same option. So for example Setting No160 is 1920x1080 x 70Hz x 8AA, No159 is 1920x1080 x 70Hz x 4AA. Once AA reaches 0, Hz value drops to 60Hz, resolution is still 1920x1080 and AA is once again X8. On my PC refresh rates went all the way down to 30Hz, witch is ridiculous since i have LCD with fixed refresh rate. And once you scroll to your desired resolution/refresh rate/ AA it says, - new settings will be applied upon restarting the game. (Well F... you EA). I would also like to say that there is no benchmark option in the game, and default settings option is a bit weird. My PC is 3GB RAM, E5300 Dual core, Ati 4870 Sapphire and by default all settings are maxed out except for 2X AA and medium shadows quality. Not bad - quite a good engine then you would say. But! Once you start your first race, all collapses. Frame rate is painfully low, car reacts too late... so the moment you hit throttle, nothing happens, but half a second later, it revs to the limit. You let go, it still revs. Now imagine how annoying this gets when you try to hit optimum revs at start for perfect launch. Impossible! Not to talk about cornering that happens too late. Seeing that i scrolled again though menus to select lower resolution, and perhaps some gfx options as well. At setting No122 there it was - 1280x800 x60Hz x2AA. some effects were lowered to medium and it was time to quit to windows - so that after restart i could have new setting and perhaps smoother frame rate. But guess what - Saaaame shiznit! To slow reactions, and when to many cars are in front FPS drops to below 20. Once i am alone on the track, its smooth, but as soon as I am racing, it slows down. Now i reckon, if i overtake them all, there are no cars in front to render and all will be fine, but how to overtake when steering is late, you brake too late, accelerate too late. I lowered gfx settings again, but when message - "new settings will be applied upon restarting the game" appeared I gave up life all together. It reminded me of NFS Undercover and its poor engine, and why i uninstalled the game after just 20mins of play.
Now something about racing itself. First race in career is a sort of training. 1 lap around Brands Hatch Indy track, and based on your lap time, game suggests difficulty of the career - opponent skill, ABS, traction control, driving aid. Nice idea. Too bad I found it useless. Controls are set to arrows instead of WASD. Nothing too bad, but since lately all the games are on WASD, suddenly controlling the car with your right hand is a bit odd.
Also, you start of with cockpit camera. Ok, that has finally returned to NFS, and they made such a big fuss about it, but... they made too big fuss about it. You cant adjust your seating position - you are stuck way back so you can see all the little details EA has been working on hardly. I don't know about you, but i find it more useful while racing to look through windscreen than looking at the center console and dashboard.
Now i don't know if there is the same issue with other cars, but in M3 and Scirroco, while in cockpit, that bloody A pillar often gets in a way when cornering, so you sometime miss the apex - just because of that. If there was an option to adjust seat more forward, and upward maybe, cockpit camera would be my choice. When i wanted to change the camera, i found that C is not the key for it. So i stayed stuck with it, and after only one lap - first time behind the wheel an new physics and new track - as you can guess i performed badly. And based on that game has set me the easiest career difficulty. Oh come on, give me 5 laps and rate me based on best lap. You can restart that training until you get the feel of the car, and at the end of race you can set difficulty manually. So, all this rating based on lap time is unnecessary.
As for physics. It says it has Physx engine, but unless you have hardware for it you will not experience it. Neighter have I. All i can say, this no physx engine is terrible. Cars feel wooden, crashes feel numb. I bet EA has again put the best technology in real cars to capture their handling, but this doesn't feel anything like it. Head on crash just digs in your car, but if you hit another car its back end goes flying. Its way to easy to flip over the side opponents cars, and way to easy to spin them of the track. And if you think you will see some spectacular crashing in the game, forget it. At high speed, if you hit something, whole screen blurs, and when the screen sharpens you see slightly scratched car. It takes a lot of effort before some parts of kits start to fall of. But when that does happen, another disapointment. Under that bodykit, there is still the same box shaped bare car we used to see in Prostreet.
As for tuning & customizing, now you can apply beautiful full on racing kits. No more rice crap. No more choosing between same old spoilers, hoods or exhaust tips, all is included in kit. From what i have seen so far, they look really good. Some are maybe even real stuff you see on race tracks. There is no autosculpt (thank God, it was so terrible), but still, you can fine tune all the parts you apply. Much like in ProStreet. Every part you choose affects your aerodynamics, top speed, etc etc. Also you can quick-dress your car in some of premade great looking liveries. 5 per car, and every car has its own liveries. But when it all seemed perfect, EA ruined it again. There are still 1000 different shapes of rims. And since every part of car affects its handling, it seems that there is no difference between 15" and 21" rims on same car.
But the worst bit is that you can again rice up your car with same old shapes and vinyls we are seeing all over again since Carbon. Color tinted windshields only make things worse. Why o why...
EA also though of one very interesting thing to implement, well at least they thought its interesting and thus they hyped it up so even some of us thought thats a cool feature - its so called Precision vs Aggressive racer. If you are driving pitch perfect laps you are gaining points for precision, if you tend to knock opponents of the track, drift the corners, trade paint with other cars you get points for aggression. The only trouble is... Aggression points aren't really rewarding. Its hard work to drive perfect lane through every apex, its hard to avoid contact between cars on track and all other sort of things that award you with precision points. On the other hand, all you need for aggression points is lack of talent. Brake too late and you will ram into cars before you, hit throttle too soon in the corner and car will drift of the perfect lane, touch any other car in narrow corner etc. Eventually because you are new to the game and physics of driving the car, and because frame rate drops when there are some cars around, you will smash and drift around earning aggression points. After you accumulate required number of points you advance to level 2 aggression, and this new stylish badge with spiked hammers appears on the screen saying - wow, you are cool, you are aggressive, ROAR, a real beast. Where as it should say - you talentless idiot, you shouldn't drive anything more powerful than shopping pushcart!
In one of loading screen it says you can advance to Lv50 aggression/precision. I wonder, whats the reward for that? I doubt Lv50 aggression gives you a pair of machine guns, although that would be cool. Also i would like to mention that loading takes so long you can actually feel as you are getting older.
Something else bad? Well, hood camera swings too much so its hard to follow the road.
Also i have tried one quick race with Maserati MC12 Corsa - one of the fastest cars in game, to see if game feels any better at its best, and the answer is no. It drives faster, car sounds better than 2.0 TSI Scirroco, but all the rest is still there.
And correct me if I am wrong, but the game lacks soundtrack. While racing there is no music whatsoever, and in menus all you hear is distant crowd and distant revving cars.
Good stuff?
Well, gfx do look nice and realistic. This is the first time cars had full reflections on them, so you could see reflection of other cars on your hood. And finally someone realized that V8 Vantage is more suited for racing than DB9, so you can find it in the game as well. There are some real world legendary tracks like Laguna Seca, Circuit de Spa... and thats about it.
So, to sum it all up... Again its unfinished, unpolished, not well thought through game from EA with that same already disgusting name Need for Speed. Developing team has once again spent too much time designing menu, icons, trailers, "how to master race track" trailers, and all those little details that dont even need to be there - 3 stage cockpit, and all inside it. And since every year there HAS TO BE new NFS there isnt much time to make something new and good. By new i mean, it has all the same cars you used to see before, and most of the vinyls are sold again and again every year. Now, im not that stupid to pay every year for same shiznit.
But crucially, what this game is missing is what differs AutoCAD from Burnout Paradise. Its FUN!
3/10