Shift into your highest gear! Designed to deliver a true driver’s experience that reflects contemporary motorsports, Need for Speed SHIFT is built by racers for racers. Need for Speed SHIFT delivers an authentic and immersive driving experience developed by Slightly Mad Studios in collaboration with executive producer Michael Mann at Black Box and senior vice president Patrick Soderlund at EA Games Europe. Slightly Mad Studios includes developers and designers that worked on the critically acclaimed games GT Legends and GTR 2. Need for Speed SHIFT replicates the true feeling of racing high-end performance cars like never before. Players are thrust into the heart of the action with immersive and exciting features including a stunningly realistic first-person cockpit view camera and an all-new crash mechanic, providing an unrivaled sensation of the speed and feeling of racing a car on the extreme edge of control.

Much like Codemasters’ Race Driver: GRID, Need for Speed Shift is a much more enjoyable experience when played from the cockpit view rather than the above-and-behind camera angle that most racers lend themselves to. In fact, viewed outside of the cockpit, Shift becomes a much blander racing experience – not bad but decidedly run-of-the-mill. This isn’t necessarily a criticism though, as the game play when viewed from inside the car is nothing short of a landmark in the production of racing games, where Slightly Mad Studios’ inspired camera work has built the most adrenaline-fuelled racing games we’ve ever played.

Vehicles range from common road going vehicles in tier 1 (e.g. the Ford Focus and BMW 135i), to the most powerful supercars in the world at tier 4 (e.g. the Bugatti Veyron, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, and Pagani Zonda), while the likes of Ford Shelby GT500s and Lamborghini Murcielagos in-between are more than enough to keep things interesting.

Car customization has been integrated into Shift in ways that aim to please both sim and arcade fans. Custom paint jobs can be applied to the cars you purchase, while a wide range of rims and body-kits for each model can spruce up their appearance and this will no doubt appeal to the typical Need for Speeder. Simulation fans will then enjoy the incredibly deep car setup options (which include down force, gear ratios, tire pressure, differential, and steering camber to name but a few), while racing liveries are available to doll factory-line cars up like GT racers, and everything from drive train to cockpit upgrades can be made to increase performance. The all important nitrous injections haven’t been forgotten either, although admittedly their effects are a lot more subtle than in previous NFS games.

Beyond the impressive camera work mentioned at the top of this article, Shift’s visual prowess varies depending on the platform. The PC version is superior to consoles by quite a margin with better motion blur effects, more detailed car models, improved lighting across the environments, and better heat hazing effects. The added details are particularly noticeable in Shift’s stunningly detailed cockpits, which are probably the most accurate and well designed interiors ever seen in a racing game.

Overall, Need for Speed SHIFT, the 13th installment of the long-running racing video game, is so much realistic and filled with true racing experience that it can’t be ignored by any serious racing car gamer.