If you had told me 6 months ago that come fall I'd be singing the praises of a Need for Speed game. I'd have said you were out of your damned mind.  The series had always held a lukewarm interest for me at best, and completely lost me when they made the switch to street racing more than half a decade ago.  But then something happened.  Their attitude ...shifted.  Their direction ... shifted.  Last month EA released the appropriately titled Need for Speed: Shift, and the title couldn't have been more apt.

Unlike the last 6 or so iterations of the Need for Speed franchise that focused on urban locales and shady situations, Shift brings the NFS name onto real world tracks with real world drivers.  In essence, this is EA's attempt to play with the big boys.  Working their own niche as they have for the past few years is one thing, but Shift boldly calls out the big names in real world racing with it's new direction.  There's no doubt that this is EA's attempt to create a third-party answer to major racing franchises like Forza and Gran Turismo, but does the game deliver on it's promise to hold it's own in the face of such storied competition?  Short answer, "ish."  Long answer, "not really, but..."

While Shift tries it's damnedest to be a realistic simulation, it comes across much more like an arcade/simulation hybrid.  Think less Gran Turismo and more Project Gotham.  While that might not sound appealing to the most hardcore of gearheads out there, for a casual racing fan like me Shift plays like a dream.  The game remains staunchly accessible while offering up a staggering number of tracks and game modes.

That's not to say that the game doesn't offer anything for the car nuts in the crowd.  In addition to the standard tweaks and upgrades you can make to each vehicle (think Super Off-Road, but 2009), grease monkeys can get down and dirty in the advanced tuning section and get tweaking a host of settings that I couldn't possibly begin to understand.

Speaking of things that boggle my mind, one of the things that left us most impressed with Shift happened in the first 5 minutes of play.  Unlike other games that let you pick a difficulty or maybe tweak some generic car control settings to make the experience more comfortable, Shift starts off with a test track that will figure out the best configuration for you based on your performance.  Great at passing but not so great at cornering?  Having a little trouble with the steering?  At the end of the test lap, you'll be shown a dozen or so tweaks that the game will make on your behalf to customize the controls how it feels you'll be most comfortable.  You can always go back in and tweak these later -- in fact, the game advises it.  It's just a shame that you can't retake the test track whenever you like.  After a few hours I felt like I had gotten much better at Shift, and would love to know what the game felt would be a good fit for me instead of my going in and guessing.

Once on the track you're going to hear something that you're just not used to hearing from a proper racing game:  a voice.  You'll have an invisible, off-camera gentleman who will coach you through the game and help give everything a sense of purpose or context.  This little touch really adds a great layer to a fairly standard racing formula.  After all, Shift is no different than a number of other racing games on the market when you look at the big picture.  There are different events, different race types, different cars to buy, etc..  But adding in that context takes this cookie cutter layout from a racing game with a selection screen to a game with a sense of story and purpose.  I wasn't just Jim, figuring out which car I wanted to use in which race.  I was a race car driver working my way from the bottom of the leaderboards to the top, trying to earn a spot on the NFS World Tour.  It sounds silly, I know -- but it really made this a tough experience to put down.

The game itself borrows a little from other games while crafting it's own niche in the world of racing.  It kind of reminds me of how we felt about Uncharted 2 -- while there was nothing original here, it plays like a "best of" other gameplay elements.  More than anything it seemed as though they would borrow successful ideas from other games as starting points and build new ideas from there.  Profile Points, for example, seem to be cut and paste from the Kudos system in Project Gotham Racing.  You'll earn Profile Points for damned near everything.  Trade paint with a competitor?  That'll get you points.  Overtake a car without making contact?  That'll get you points.  But when you pull back and look at the big picture, this is really just the starting block of something much bigger.

Depending on the your style of driving, the points you'll earn will either be Aggressive Points or Precision Points which you'll use to level up.  Levelling up will unlock all sorts of new features, from vinyls or rims to invitational events.  If you've earned more aggressive points you'll get the "Aggressive" label for that level.  More precision points they'll stick you with "Precision."  Depending on which label you get, you'll unlock different invitational events that compliment your current style, so which type of points you earn by driving really does impact the overall offering of the game.

The points system is a prime example of what seems to be Shift's mission statement: reward everything.  So many racing games force you to go for bronze or better, and failure to do so simply means repeating the race or trying something else.  In Shift you'll always be winning something, even when you come in last place.  Points are pretty much a give-in no matter what.  Stars (which you'll use to unlock more races) are earned not only for ending up on the winner's podium, but for secondary goals that you can work towards.  Badges are also a big part of the reward system, handing out pats on the back for trading paint with x number of cars or driving so many miles in a Japanese vehicle.  No matter how well you perform, you'll always have something to show for trying.

While we've been heaping on the praise for Shift, there were definitely a few things we weren't fans of.  Drifting competitions were damned near impossible to perform well in.  While drifting in a real race is unavoidable, trying to get a drift going and to hold it in one of these competitions is like pulling teeth.  The selection of cars was fairly limited as well.  60 cars might be more than enough selection for a casual race fan like myself, but collect-a-thon car junkies might be let down by the small number.  And don't get us started on the load and save times.  When I fail a race I want to restart it right away -- it should take 75 seconds of saving, scoring, loading, reselecting, loading and starting.  Where the hell is the "restart" button that you'd expect to see at the end of every race?  Sure we could just restart from the pause menu right before the race ends, but then we're not going to earn any of the points or badges we accquired this time around.

It may not be the sort of thing that EA wants to hear, but Need for Speed: Shift is not Gran Turismo.  And while hardcore sim fans may steer clear of this one because of it, gamers who love the idea of a real racer but prefer a friendly and forgiving approach are going to be delighted in what they find.  With the PGR franchise unofficially retired (Bizarre has gone on record saying they won't be making another, but Microsoft still owns the rights), I think it's safe to declare Need For Speed: Shift the new king of the arcade/sim hybrid.

YAY! - Accessible controls.  Great variety of modes.  Excellent rewards system.  Spiritual successor to PGR. 
NAY! - Drift competitions = EPIC FAIL.  Only 60 cars.  Not the simulation racer that some fans were hoping for.

For those of you who really hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: - 9/10

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