Redi's review - NFS:Shift from a sim racer's perspective

[redi]

Here's my review and personal opinion of NFS Shift: Download link (http://85.214.125.189/GT%20Legends/Mini%20League/ReDis%20review%20-%20Need%20For%20Speed%20Shift%20from%20a%20sim%20r acers%20perspective.rar).

[David Wright]

Nice review. Quite close to my own opinions. The Level 2 and 3 cars are IMO even better than the level 1 cars but the level 4 cars have come as something of a shock :)

Shift definitely takes some getting used to physics and FFB wise. It didn't strike me initially as a step forward on what we have already. But spend a good week with it then go back to say GTR2 and you really feel the difference.

[f0xx]

Nice review with a personal side to it.

I have to say that I specially agree when you say that many people criticize Shift for its "unreal" physics even though the majority of them have only driven their slow cars with their bad tires to work :P

[JonP01]

Yes, nice review and very close to my own take on it as well. The more I spend with NFS Shift, the more I appreciate it's good points, including the physics. As for what is more realistic, I like to look at it this way. If I stay away from games such as iRacing for even a week, I feel totally lost and it can take me a solid hour of practice to get back to my times of a week before. And in that hour I will be sliding off, crashing, spinning, you name it. Even GTL was similar, just not to the same degree. I just wonder how realistic that is - to feel "at sea" for so long if you haven't been practicing daily. With NFS, it takes the same amount of time to get back up to speed as it would with a real life 15 or 20 minute practice session where you might actually be in the race car once every couple of weekends.

As for Force Feedback, I am using a Fanatec 911 wheel and I now think the FF is better than any other game out there. Yes the effects are subtle as you say, but then again what goes through the steering wheel of a real car? OK, the only time I drove at speed in a real car was when I did my advanced driving courses at Amaroo Park, but I sure did not get a "better" feel through the wheel than I get with NFS Shift. Actually, they felt very similar indeed! And when people get in their own road cars, they should just concentrate in precisely what is actually going through their wheels only. It is a lot less than they think. If we actually got the FF effects in most racing games through our real car wheels, we would be booking the car in for a service immediately because we would think there is something seriously wrong with it! NFS Shift is so good in other areas of feedback - visuals and sound - that it can afford to tune the wheel effects down closer to reality because there is not the dire need for them as there is with older games where the feedback in other areas was found wanting.

Just some other comments about the review:

Regarding practice and tuning, I have found the easiest way is to just have a quick race, but change the number of opponents to 0. That way, you basically have a testing session. If you set the race for something like 10 laps, you just need to remember to quit out of it before the 10 laps is over, otherwise you will get "marked" on it. Although I would love to be able to go directly into the garage and back onto the track, in reality it is just that I need to go through more menus. But who knows if future patches might provide this functionality.

As for not having got through the game, I think it is very important for everyone to realise that the more advanced tuning options make an incredible difference. For example, take my favourite car in the entire game - the humble Datsun Skyline. You need to work yourself all the way up to tier 3 (80 stars) to avail yourself of all the Datsun tuning options that we would have had in old games like GTL - even though the Datsun is tier 1. So it took me something like 8 hours over 3 days to work my way through all of that, even though you can actually buy the basic Datsun itself within 5 minutes of starting the game.

And I have to say that those advanced tuning options really make a huge difference - more so than any other racing game I have used, even iRacing. I used to muck around with diff settings in every other game and wonder why I hardly seemed to ever notice anything - even in iRacing. And if I thought I noticed something, I often wondered if it was a placebo effect. Not so with NFS Shift - for the first time I can notice clear differences with diff tuning and it really makes a positive difference in the way the cars behave, just as I expect it ought to in real life. A lot of people have complained about the way the cars oversteer for example, but getting a correctly handling car is not just about tyre pressure, roll bars and springs - it is about the diff settings too.

Infact I would go so far as to say that NFS Shift above all other racing games is very reactive to car setup and that the changes are obvious when you make them. Perhaps this supports the argument that the physics are actually what SMS claim them to be.

[Hired Goon]

I've criticized the sh*t out of Shift in every post, but your review is well written and useful to anyone who hasn't yet bought it. I still disagree with how the cars feel to drive but the rest of what you've said, I think, is accurate. Nice job...you should consider writing for autosimsport.

[Hired Goon]

Nice review with a personal side to it.

I have to say that I specially agree when you say that many people criticize Shift for its "unreal" physics even though the majority of them have only driven their slow cars with their bad tires to work :P

Well I'm no race driver, but any day I have access to 997 911 Turbo, '04 Lambo Murci, BMW M3, Dodge Viper, and and Jag XKR. Let me say Shift doesn't quite feel the same. It doesn't feel as good as R-factor, GTR2, or Evo, at least not yet.

[[RWTD]-Barbie-[GKR]]

It's just too bad you get all the great cars, nurburgring nordschleife to drive them on and they saddle you with brain-dead AI that stop in the middle of straightaways and ram you and each other into oblivion.

[Empty Box]

Well I'm no race driver, but any day I have access to 997 911 Turbo, '04 Lambo Murci, BMW M3, Dodge Viper, and and Jag XKR. Let me say Shift doesn't quite feel the same. It doesn't feel as good as R-factor, GTR2, or Evo, at least not yet.

If your not joking, I HATE YOU. Can I atleast have the Viper, I mean.... you could always drive something else, no? I'm sure donating a supercar to a poor college kid would be a tax write off! :laugh:

I find it interesting that a LOT of people seem to think that it's impossible to catch a car in GTR2. Honestly, of all the sims I've had a serious go at, GTR2 is by far the easiest to catch. I found Evo atleast 10x harder, which is backwards from what everyone else seems to say.

Even when GTR2 was new I had no issues, so it isn't acclimation. Am I just a freak, or what? When I read that it is easier to catch than GTR2, I'm laughing my head off.

But like you point out in your great review, it does seem as if there could perhaps be something there, but there are far to many drawbacks for it to take the new standard. Also, am I the only one who thought that their promo screenies looked trash, but the actual game (at some points) looks quite well done?

[noroardanto]

right on the spot! very good unbiased review!

[redi]

As for Force Feedback, I am using a Fanatec 911 wheel and I now think the FF is better than any other game out there. Yes the effects are subtle as you say, but then again what goes through the steering wheel of a real car? OK, the only time I drove at speed in a real car was when I did my advanced driving courses at Amaroo Park, but I sure did not get a "better" feel through the wheel than I get with NFS Shift. Actually, they felt very similar indeed! And when people get in their own road cars, they should just concentrate in precisely what is actually going through their wheels only. It is a lot less than they think. If we actually got the FF effects in most racing games through our real car wheels, we would be booking the car in for a service immediately because we would think there is something seriously wrong with it! NFS Shift is so good in other areas of feedback - visuals and sound - that it can afford to tune the wheel effects down closer to reality because there is not the dire need for them as there is with older games where the feedback in other areas was found wanting.

Yes, I have been thinking about that too and you're probably correct on this. However, I do like the more informative FFB because it compensates for the lack of seat-of-the-pants feeling that you do have in a real car. The effects that are there, which are mostly related to weight transfer of the car, are very good though and indeed I am appreciating the FFB more and more the more time I spend with the game :)

[redi]

... Also, am I the only one who thought that their promo screenies looked trash, but the actual game (at some points) looks quite well done?
Well I think that the graphical qualities of the game only become apparent when you see it moving. Even though I'm still waiting to get smooth 60+ FPS with my system, seeing some of the track sceneries and driving through them is just breathtaking :)

[f0xx]

redi try the migf1 v1.1 custom wheel @G25 Settings post :)

The best FFB feeling so far :D

[Brainbug]

great review, redi. :thumbup:

one thing only: u should have been waited and tested some TIER 2 and 3 cars.
imho there are even more great things to find out related to car-tuning and "feeling" every little change in car-setup.

well, maybe u´ll find the time for "review update" when u drove the "beasts". :)

[redi]

great review, redi. :thumbup:

one thing only: u should have been waited and tested some TIER 2 and 3 cars.
imho there are even more great things to find out related to car-tuning and "feeling" every little change in car-setup.

well, maybe u´ll find the time for "review update" when u drove the "beasts". :)
Yes I am aware of that now :) But it may take another two weeks before I get there :mrgreen:

I didn't have time to test online racing either, may give an update later on that as well.

[kenpat]

Thanks for the review Redi, well written and an enjoyable read whether you agree with its findings or not.
Looking forward to the update.:-)