Yap yap they are back! But wait wait! Don’t turn away now coz the new franchise has brought something really good this time. Anyone who played Race Driver: GRID before would probably mutters the same words (like me) when EA announced the launch of the new series of Need for Speed (NFS)- “is the game got any better than GRID?” I believe it does.
Unlike the previous franchise, the new Shift has nothing to do with police chases, world roam free driving track, hot sexy girls and storyline to amuse the drivers gamers. They are pretty serious about real racing track, maybe GRID’s racing simplicity had struck them bad.
Gamers will be introduced to career and profile. We will have to compete from the very low racing career track, slowly gaining experience points and levels, yeah just like MMORPG games, with Shift having the highest rank at Level 50. At that level we will get the chance to race in the World Tour. Well I can’t describe what the World Tour offers, yet, as I just bought the game and still noobishly manoeuvring my cars to gain levels. Using 370z currently just because I like the look hahaha!
There are two types of driving being measured: Precision and Aggression which tell us two things- are we a pro racing driver or a road bully. Precision here means drivers gain points thru careful driving, sticking to race line, drafting and taking corners professionally while Aggression as the name says involve banging other cars while keeping our car inside the track. Make the driver next to you goes flying or use his car as shield so we can take corners at high speed without the need to brake: all that give us points. How cool is that? Lucky they didn’t provide the cars with missile or RPG..
The only thing I hate about GRID is the crash. You crash, you ruin your car. No more driving la after that. And if the track is narrow and bumpy, imagine every little scratch (oxymoron) will slowly reduce your chance of winning or rather finishing the race. And every time that happens, you will have to press the restart button. And if this repeats for more than 10 times, you will start to go crazy and run over your neighbours’ fences, shouting GRID sucks and all. Hysterically.
Well can’t blame them, GRID devs are just being realistic.
Shift got the same idea too but they give us option either to limit the crash impact only on the exterior body parts or together with the running parts (engine, suspension, steering etc like GRID). This, to my relief, is a life saver! Woot!
If we refer back to Shift trailers earlier, they showed us how accidents affect drivers. In game they really did smoke the screen whenever we crash (won’t happen to minor one), and I realized they even make the pixelated driver numb for seconds before he can steer back the wheel, just like the real accident. Geil huh?
Other features like buying upgrades and body kits, earning cash in races, vinyl sprays are all in package lah, those features are applied to all racing game nowadays I think. Shift allows us to tune the car ourselves. Yeah, do it manually. I leave that to experts, no way I can tune the rim, suspension etc all by myself.
Now comes the important part: the spec required. A great game surely need a high performance PC. This… I hate the most. I don’t have such machines!!! I can still play the game but in medium mode, meaning I missed those hazy shiny glittering sparks on cars haihhh..
Nothing beats the sound of supercar engines revving.. ahhh~~! So if you have those specs mentioned above and a car freak, try Shift! We can’t get the real cars so driving them in game is considered OK la…
Sources: IGN.com, Videogamer.
PS: Can’t wait to go back Uniten so I can test the game using gamepad. Keyboard sux!
