Need for Speed: Shift

Installed Need for Speed: Shift hoping for a realistic game, just like Need for Speed: ProStreet, something you might call a simulator. But sadly it wasn’t. Comparing to the ProStreet it’s a giant leap backwards. To me the only refinements are the new realistic feeling when a side of the car gets out of the track and tires are exposed to the dirt, and the highly detailed in-car view dropped since the Porsche Unleashed.

The steering response is numb and lacks the feeling it should have. It’s the exact opposite of what Need for Speed: Carbon was, where you could falsely turn a tight corner in that overrated BMW M3 GTR doing over 120MPH. This time though, in Shift, an Audi RS4 cannot stabilize itself at less than 80MPH along a very long and loose turn, giving you the handling feeling of whether you’re driving a Toyota Camry over a wet surface. Driving the same RS4 at over 120MPH along a straight, it feels like it cannot hold itself together and desires diversion any minute, which is not true.

Then it’s the brakes, where the premium brakes and the ABS on an RS4 feel exactly like a cheap Korean sedan. You don’t feel the Quattro AWD either.

Then it’s the dumb way they tried to simulate steering resonance in an outraged car. It’s completely wrong, falsely intensifying steering lock, sometimes slipping incurable strange understeers, where it should skid in oversteers to opposite directions multiple times before it’s cured and stabilized by forcing multiple accurate opposite steerings.