There are hundreds of racing games out there now. It seems to be what everyone wanted out of every portable gaming system and stationary console. I remember my first computer, a Tandy, and the only giant floppy disc it came with was a simple racing game that was unbelievably boring and easy. That was my first taste of racing games, and I didn’t like it. Then I got an N64 and discovered Mario Kart for the first time. I was hooked on that game. I played it like a fiend. After that things kind of went downhill for me and the racing genre. I went on to FPS games and have been there ever since. The Fast and Furious movies re-sparked my fascination with street racing and I started moving back in that general direction. Only video games are nothing like the movies. Did you ever play the official game of F&F? Sucked. It got the bone.
So when I saw an online ad for the PSP port of Need For Speed: Shift, and watched some gameplay on Youtube, I had to check it out. Street racing, time challenges, drifting… all in one? Had to be pretty sweet, and the graphics looked great even on the small screen. So I scored a copy of it, got it home, and with high hopes and a full battery I gave it a good run. I found excitement and disappointment alike, but who doesn’t with most games today?
The PSP was just one of the many gaming options that Shift was made available to. It also came out for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Retailing at $39.99, you can purchase it at any gaming location or from the official EA store. I strolled on down to Gamestop and got my copy for the retail price and proceeded to do most of my testing in the parking lot outside. I got some strange looks from the people in the Subway next door, but screw ’em. If they knew anything they wouldn’t be at Subway. They don’t matter.
The graphics, to be honest, are very nice for a PSP game. Right up there with Daxter and God of War, the detail is beautiful on the city streets of the various countries that this game covers. EA did a great job of bringing realism to the cars themselves, with reflections in the side mirrors as you speed down the streets as well as on the paint jobs. There are many races where the weather is less than favorable, with rain falling on the road, making it shiny and slick. Keeping control of the car is much harder in these conditions, and the third-person perspective is a little blocked (not enough to really throw you off) by raindrops hitting the screen and streaking down. It’s little details like the trail of thrown water behind the car’s rear wheels that give the game such depth.
Game control seems to have little to no learning curve. Each car handles differently, but they all seem a little touchy. Hit the brakes wrong or at the wrong time, let off the gas while going around a turn without tapping the brakes, confusing the foot brake with the hand brake (I did this several times), or accidentally hitting the Nitrous Oxide when you are not on a straight-away can lead to disaster every time. The game requires very fast thinking and reflexes to keep you from obliterating your car or losing to the NPC cars around you. This gets me to the actual racing in the game, and why it is so ridiculous.
One of the first races in the game, you have to drive a street legend’s car as you try to collect as many time extenders as possible. Each one adds around 10 seconds to your time. You have to beat the legend’s amount of collected time checks before the timer runs out completely. This is next to impossible even after you get halfway through the game. The learning curve on this is blatantly retarded at best.
There were two things above all that I disliked. One, there is no multiplayer other than Ad-hoc gaming. Nothing online, I’m sorry to report. Racing games lately are notorious for their online playability in order to compete against other racers around the world. No such luck with Shift, if you’re not sitting in a room with your opponent, you’re not playing against them at all. The other problem I had was the lack of choice in cars. As you progress through the game you unlock cars throughout, starting with a Charger, then a Porsche, then a SuperBee, a Cayman… yada yada yada. Only you don’t get to choose which cars you get next, and you don’t know until you get it what it’s going to be.
Couple these things with the lack of a difficulty setting, a crappy soundtrack, and streets that don’t seem to change much no matter where you are located on the globe, and you have a perfect example of pretty graphics set in a redundant piece of crap game. That four hours that I spent in the parking lot was all I could take and I took it back in to get my money back. This game is good for a rental and not much more. If you want action, get a girlfriend. If you want to repeat the same impossible races over and over with cars that you can’t choose, then by all means go grab Shift.
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