Need For Speed: Shift (PS3 + 360) Review Based On PS3 Version

Upon starting Need For Speed: Shift you will find yourself behind the wheel on a track by yourself, with your trainer instructing you to take a lap and then popping the control settings up for you to fiddle about with. This isn’t so bad for experienced racers, but newcomers to the genre might find themselves a little overwhelmed, especially as the initial handling scheme is completely unsuitable for them.

A better option would probably have been for the developers to set the default controls to make for easy handling, thereby allowing less experienced players to breeze through the game’s introduction while still offering the more hardcore a chance to tune their controls. Unfortunately it went the other way and inexperienced players who stick with the default setting are likely to find themselves even more frustrated in the long-term than if they’d spent fifteen minutes experimenting with different settings on the practice track.

Still, don’t let first impressions scare you off, Shift is a solid racer and has something to offer players of all skill levels. The game’s single player career mode offers 150 different events, and doing well will unlock bigger events and better cars. It’s all building up to the World Tour, which you can unlock earlier than you might think, essentially offering you the ability to lengthen or shorten your single-player experience. You can do the bare minimum required to race in the World Tour, or you can hit every single event, it’s up to you.

The unlocks work by earning stars during races. You can earn stars by finishing in position but also for a number of other feats during each race. Run each race perfectly and you will unlock the higher level content more quickly. Race just adequately and you can still advance, it will just take you more events. The stars are a great game mechanic because they encourage you to focus on more than just driving fast and finishing first, which keeps the gameplay fresh. It’s also fun and challenging to go back and try for perfect runs in events where you missed stars, but it’s not required and you can simply move on to a new event instead. Online game modes also rewards players for precision and aggression like the single player does.

One area where the single player game can be a bit frustrating though, is the AI driving of your competitors. The Need for Speed developers tied AI performance strongly to your own. In idealistic terms, this means no matter what your skill level is, your opponents will be evenly matched. In reality it means if you lose speed by taking a corner to wide and end up on the grass, your opponents all slam on their brakes and wait for you to catch up. The same thing happens in reverse when you’re driving exceptionally well: the AI drivers will also be driving exceptionally well, not only making them very difficult to beat but also lessening your sense of accomplishment at how well you ran the course.

Need For Speed: Shift offers an enormous variety of excellent courses and cars. It’s not without flaws but overall it’s an extremely fun ride.

Review Based On PS3 Version

This arcade racer has some hardcore appeal, but casual gamers will fall in love instantly with it. While many other racing games focus on buying new cars, customizing cars and climbing event ladders, that can be a bit intimidating (not to mention frustrating) and some gamers just don’t enjoy focusing on those aspects. They want to sit down and drive, and that’s what GRID offers. You can choose to race muscle cars through city streets in the US, touring cars on racetracks in Europe, or head to Japan for some drifting action in souped-up Suburus and the like.

GRID still has a system where you earn money, buy new vehicles and move up a hierarchy of events, but it doesn’t feel like it because the moment you start to feel muscle cars or urban environments becoming tedious you can head over to Europe and it’s like a whole new game. If something is getting old or simply frustrating, there are always two completely different things you can be doing. There are also no vehicle upgrades. You just sell your old one and buy something better. For hardcore gamers that might be a check in the minus column but for casual players it’s one less level of unnecessary complication standing between them and their next race.

The control scheme is also very accessible, which won’t give racing sim aficionados anything to cheer about but again is a feature that makes the game very accessible to less experienced racers. You’ll also see some sophisticated damage modeling and cars will begin to have performance quirks and problems as they take more and more damage to specific areas of the vehicle. Minor damage won’t affect driveability at all but a heavily damaged car can be virtually impossible to get across the finish line.

There is also a flashback feature that allow you to jump back in time to replay a portion of track where things went seriously wrong for you. This is not just helpful for when you accidentally drive straight into a wall, but also for when you’re thrown into one. Yes, the game’s AI opponents are extremely aggressive. This adds another level of excitement and challenge to the game, but because of the flashback option it’s unlikely to frustrate even the greenest driver too much.

Purists are still rewarded though, your prize money at the end of each race is determined in part by what difficulty level you raced at (which in turn controls how many flashbacks you can use) and is reduced somewhat every time you use the flashback feature. In this way the game remains accessible but the hardcore faithful will get better pay, and therefore better cars earlier in the game.

GRID’s graphics are smart and really add to the feel of the game. The AI opponents drive in a challenging, but realistic manner. You can also play online with up to 11 other players, and you can use any of the tracks or vehicles from the single player game during multiplayer as well. This game isn’t all things to all players but it doesn’t try to be. What it is, is just plain fun.

There is a notable lack of racing games for Nintendo’s Wii platform, a fact that has frustrated many a Wii owner. When a console’s top rated racing game is a kart racer, you may have a problem. Not that there is anything less than great about Super Mario Kart Wii. It’s just that sometimes you want to drive a Ferrari, and Mario doesn’t have one. That’s where Need for Speed: Nitro comes in, or at least where it *should* come in.

Don’t get me wrong, this game is extremely fun. The flaw is in it’s long-term appeal. Nitro suffers slightly from a lack of content and variation in the career mode and course selection departments. There is also only one camera view (chase cam), which is extremely unusual for a modern racer. For those of you old enough to remember what a video arcade was, this racer is much like the racing games of yore: you sit down, plop a quarter in and BAM! You’re speeding down a track and having a blast. Nitro is exactly like that, without the quarter. Or the leaving your house to go to the arcade.

Since it’s for the Wii it better have a great control scheme, and it does. Several, actually. You can use the Wii remote by itself to steer, accelerate, drift and nitro boost similar to the controls for Mario Kart and other racers, or you can use a number of other control schemes including one where you can use the control stick on the Nunchuk to steer. That will appeal to folks more used to racing controls on the Xbox or Playstation platforms.

There is a career mode that spans five locations, and while it’s fun it isn’t nearly as deep as most racing gamers are used to. The arcade mode on the other hand gives you exactly what you might expect: Just pop into arcade mode, pick any one of ten tracks and choose from over 40 different cars, then hit the pavement with your tires spinning.

Nitro offers six different game modes and a star-based rating system that rewards you not only for winning races but also for precision driving aggression in the form of specific challenges. The more stars you earn in career mode, the faster you unlock cars, locations and other goodies. Customization options range from decals to painting your cars by hand — literally, with your Wii remote.

Visually the game won’t impress PS3 or Xbox 360 owners in the slightest, but Wii owners will recognize that the  developers did a great job pushing the graphical limits of Nintendo’s system. Considering the console’s reputation as a casual gaming machine, most Wii owners will probably enjoy this game a great deal. The only real flaws lie in the fact that Need for Speed: Nitro’s career mode won’t keep your interest for hours on end. I almost feel leaving the career mode out entirely would have been an improvement in the sense that the game wouldn’t be trying to be anything that it’s not, but of course that’s silly because some people are sure to enjoy the career mode option. Nitro’s true strength lies in it’s accessible, sit-down-and-play arcade mode though.

With double the number of tracks as its predecessor, boasting better graphics and even cooler course layouts, plus the addition of monster trucks, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift is fully prepared to blow away those who were blown away by the original. And if you haven’t seen the original Motorstorm, you may just find Pacific Rift to be jaw droppingly impressive.

The new courses are fiendishly designed with multiple tracks through, hairpin turns, bottlenecks, cliffs, even a claustrophobic run through the inside of a building, not to mention oodles of other innovative additions that will frustrate and delight. As if that weren’t enough the courses aren’t just brilliant, challenging and whatever the polar opposite of ‘boring’ is, they’re also drop dead gorgeous. Every one of the 16 courses has its own unique look, and even throughout each course the scenery is varied and consistently spectacular.

Add in a dynamic environment and the races go from interesting to riveting. Objects get knocked around as the race goes on and obstacles aren’t always in the same spot. Parts of courses with puddles or water can get muddier and ruts get deeper as races progress, causing handling problems for vehicles that try to drive through them.

Other games have a speed boost mechanic that you can only use once, or you have to recharge. Motorstorm’s boost is similar to the latter except instead of waiting for the speed boost to power up, you have to wait for your engine to cool down. It might sound like it’s just a semantic difference, but it isn’t. You can keep your speed boost running as long as you want, provided you can keep your car from exploding. In some cases there are actually nearby lava flows that will  raise the temperature of your engine, preventing you from using the speed boost as much as you normally would. In other sections there are sprinklers to cool your vehicle down.

Whatever the circumstance, the speed boost is an important part of winning. One way to use it is to power it on and keep it running until the last possible moment, especially on straight sections of track, then wait for it to cool all the way down. Another way is to constantly run the booster in short bursts. I imagine there are probably even better strategies but these two seem to work well when applied to the right sections of track. The main thing is you want to maximize the amount of time you have your booster turned on without losing control of vehicle (or exploding).

Multiple vehicle types also make this game a riot. With so many different types of vehicles on the course at once (12 racers at a time in single-player matches, and up to 12 in online mode) you’ll have monster trucks up against motorbikes, crashes, aggressive driving from AI opponents, and general chaos. Certain tracks through a course favor certain vehicles, and different vehicles handle very differently. Motorbikes are very nimble but crash a lot. Monster trucks can’t make sharp turns at speed, but they can knock the heck out of anyone else on the course.

This naturally leads some players to want to select the same type of vehicle over and over because they know it fits their driving style. Unfortunately in the single player campaign certain events are limited in what types of vehicles you have access to, so can’t always drive your favorite. It’s not so bad though, because it encourages you to get comfortable trying out and driving all of the vehicles the game offers, and learning each of their advantages and quirks. Online of course strategies also change, and a player who normally prefers motorbikes but finds himself beset by super-aggressive opponents might do well to get behind the wheel of a monster truck and dish out some damage of his own.

Motorsport: Pacific Rift is a truly a jewel of a game. It’s the type of racer you can consistently lose at, flying off cliffs and the like, and still have a blast. Definitely check this out no matter what your gaming background.