Need For Speed: Shift Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

A good but not overly taxing game.

Need For Speed Shift, or NFSS is the mobile port of the console version which I haven't played. Ok, to clarify that last sentence which was shocking from a grammatical point of view, I have played the mobile version but haven't played the console version. So I can't tell you how they compare.

I can tell you that NFSS is a well packaged and good looking game. The graphics are nice detailed polygons, a level we have come to expect recently in driving games. If this came out several years ago, we would have been blown away by the graphics, now they look fairly standard. But still good mind you, for a mid range phone. Shame you can't edit the car colours. Sound is better, and although lacking in effects of any kind, there is enough variety in the tunes to keep you entertained. And they skip every now and then, almost as if a DJ was scratching.

Controls are very simple as the car autoaccelerates. You only have to worry about left and right. If you really want to, you can brake, although I don't advise it. And pressing up will engage your nitro. So you can use the D-pad or keypad fairly easily. I even managed to have a few games using my left hand on a crowded central line train going home. Oh, and 5 is drift but we'll get onto that.

The game has two modes, quick race and career. Career has 3 stages (not sure where the 4 in the manufacturers blurb came from) with 8 races in each. You have to get a certain number of stars to unlock the next race. Winning will usually do it, although you can go back and repeat races you've won, once your profile points have increased. This will allow you to get stars on races you couldn't get before, and thereby potentially improve your trophy on that stage.

See if you win all the races, you will only get bronze. You have to win all the races, buy and upgrade some cool cars, go back and win the races again and then you can get silver or gold if you really want to. The astute amongst you will notice I wrote that you can buy and upgrade cool cars. This is true. There are cool cars in the game (Evo, Viper, Skyline, Ford GT and Zonda) and they cost a fair bit. Obviously the Zonda is the most expensive. Once you have a car you can spend your precious winnings on upgrading it (4 categories) or saving to buy a better car.

What would have been useful is to see how the categories affected your car's stats, thereby having some strategic element as to which category to upgrade first. But seeing as there are no car stats, this point is moot. I guess you have to take it as a given that a Zonda is better than an Evo. In a straight line anyway. The prize money doesn't change on the race depending how you drive, but your profile points do. Drive aggressively, use your nitros, hold a perfect racing line and you will get profile points. And if you have enough you can go back and replay the older levels to get those additional stars I mentioned.

A large part of increasing your points, and also one race objective, is using drift. As you hit a corner, press 5 to go into the standard drift mode that car games for mobiles have incorporated. You have to press left and right to keep a meter central. This will then replenish your nitro bar slightly as you come ouf of the drift. What's annoying is that you have to go into the turn slightly before you can activate drift mode, so you might miss a second of the turn, or if the turn is quite short / quick, it seems pointless doing it. If you could use it just before, that would have looked much cooler. And on some corners when you go into it, the meter doesn't go the way you expect and you have to react pretty quickly.

But overall, it isn't that hard. And therein lies another problem of the game. While it's nice to look at, fun to play, and has a variety of different races with different objectives (finish first, eliminate others, finish ahead a certain distance, time trial, drift objective etc) it really isn't that difficult to complete. Within a few races, my evo was almost top spec and breezing through the competition. Then I managed to save for a Viper and by the time I got to the third stage I had a Zonda. So again I breezed through it pretty quickly. The only levels which were tricky were the drift ones as you had to have a near perfect run on these. Points for good racing lines doesn't count.

So after a few hours of playing I'm almost done. Just souped up my Zonda, got the drift race and final race to play. After that, even though it's a fun game, I don't think I'm going to go back and improve my bronze rating. There are too many games I have to review for that.

So overall an enjoyable game, nice to look at with all the additional aspects you would expect from a racer. But it's a bit too easy and hence too short. Not one for the long haul.