Mario Andretti famously said, "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough".

Few racing games have managed to nail that sensation of being on the edge of control at top speed the way Need for Speed: Shift does. Sure, this has more to do with visual effects and camera animations than the way the cars themselves behave, but the first time you near a hairpin after a long straight at 250 kmph, you will genuinely fear the consequences of being even a fraction late getting on the brakes. And when you perfectly negotiate that corner despite this fear looming large, the feeling of accomplishment is brilliant. Need for Speed: Shift then, makes a great first impression. The question is, though, is it a lasting impression?

Unfortunately, no. Shift is a massive improvement over the three games from the Need for Speed series that came before it (although that's not exactly hard to accomplish). But while it does a lot of things right, it does an equal number of things wrong or inadequately.

Let's get to the car handling first. The racing simulation club on consoles (especially this generation) is an exclusive one, and one where it is nearly impossible for a new entrant to gain acceptance, with Forza and Gran Turismo bullying away anyone else that tries; just ask SimBin or System 3. So the folks over at Slightly Mad Studios have been very clever in not using the S-word. Instead, they call Need for Speed: Shift a 'realistic action racer'. But they've made their intentions and their target audience very clear over the last few months by calling out Forza and Gran Turismo for their apparent lack of realism.

That didn't seem like the smartest thing to do at the time, and it seems even more foolish now, because in terms of realism, it doesn't come close to either one of them. Instead, it tries to toe the line between arcade and simulation, which the PGR games did brilliantly in the past. Shift offers various levels of driving assists that will either make driving very easy or quite challenging. But at the easiest setting, it won't win over those who loved recent Need for Speed games, and at the hardest setting, it won't impress the hardcore. It falls uncomfortably in between, where it's too much of a grind for the Burnout lover, but not true enough to entice the purist. It isn't bad by any means and most people who spend enough time with the game will really start to enjoy it. But it doesn't play like the Need for Speed games we're used to, so it will alienate a few people.

In that sense, it is closer to a simulation than an arcade racer, and everything else in the game backs that up that facade. There are close to 20 locations to race in and they're comprised of mostly real-world circuits like Spa and Laguna Seca, with a few fictional tracks and city circuits thrown in for good measure. There are about 60-70 cars to drive in the game, and barring the Ferraris, there's pretty much everything you could want. You also have the options to fit your cars with performance upgrades and customise their look with vinyls, custom paint jobs and rims.

Before getting to the event types, there's something peculiar about the way cars handle that needs to be mentioned. They drift. A lot. Even when they shouldn't. It's clearly a game design decision taken by the developers to keep the player in the game, so to speak. While in most simulations, turning or braking too late will send you onto the grass and/or into a barrier, here, the cars drift at the slightest provocation, sacrificing speed to keep you on the track. In practice, however, it's very disconcerting, because there are times when you could do everything right and the car will still oversteer, and doing away with assists doesn't change matters either. What makes it worse is that the AI will drive flawlessly, making you feel quite helpless because the only way you can avoid the excessive oversteer is to go into a turn very slow, allowing AI to easily overtake.

So with cars drifting around corners without even trying, one would think that a drift mode is just what the doctor ordered. But Need for Speed: Shift has one of the worst implementations of drift racing I have ever come across. The drift events are like an entirely different game and none of the rules of physics that apply to the rest of the game matter here. One may argue that drift vehicles are tuned and set up specifically for drifting, so they're bound to handle differently, but it's just unmanageable here. It is a serious challenge to even successfully perform a proper drift around one corner, let alone chaining drifts together and making it around the entire track unscathed. Thankfully, the game doesn't force you to compete in all events, because if I was forced to compete in drift events, I'd stop playing the game right there.

Another new race type is the head-to-head face-off. You have a choice of two very similar cars, like the Ford GT and Dodge Viper SRT-10, for example. You can choose either car to compete in a best-of-three event. Races are won by either taking a five-second lead or being the first to complete a lap. It's a nice concept, but severely flawed because all it takes to open up a five-second gap is to knock your opponent off the track at the very first corner.

Elsewhere, the standard lapped races make up the bulk of the career mode, which really won't hold your interest for too long. There's a Quick Race option outside the career that lets you race or set lap times on your chosen car and track. Online, you can either participate in standard ranked or unranked races, or Driver Duel, which is similar to the one-on-one best of three face off from the career mode, except now, both drivers have the same car. You start in round one, and each win moves you to the next round in a knockout format. If you keep winning, you move to the final, but lose, and you're back to round one. Since it's a one-lap race, the players that usually end up winning are those who drive dirty, because being knocked off the track will lose you too much time. So while Driver Duel is a good idea, it doesn't quite work out because it rewards players for driving dirty.

Shift has somewhat stopped the Need for Speed franchise's sharp downward spiral. Considering recent NFS games, we'll take what we've got in Shift, but only as a statement of intent for what's to come in the future. On its own, it fails as much as it succeeds. The brilliant driver perspective and the renewed focus on racing above all else is welcome, but it falls short in its attempt to appease both casual and hardcore racing fans. Its simplistic career mode won't hold your attention for too long, and outside that, it's a little short on things to do. So enjoy the ride till something better comes along or just stick to Grid or PGR4 instead.

(+) Best cockpit view in a racing game yet
(+) One of the better looking racing games around

(-) Career mode gets boring fast
(-) Cars over-oversteer
(-) Shockingly bad drift mode

Score: 6/10