We love game console car action here at Top Gear, and this year is building up to be a fine vintage. We’ve already brought you the GT5 vs Forza 3 battle, and now a new player joins the game – Need For Speed: SHIFT…
It looks to carry over the frenetic charm of the NFS series, which has traditionally been much more about arcade screams rather than serious car handling realism, only this time it’s based around actual racing rather than tooling around on the highway.
And with the likes of the Pagani Zonda, Corvette ZR-1 and BMW M3 GT2 on offer, we’ll have itchy thumbs until it arrives on September 19th.
Now it’s a three-way battle, where’s your money going to be?
im going for both gt5 and nfs shift, because i dont got a 360 q:
and im first
Live for Speed for the win. Google it
gt5 is the king. the rest are dirty peasants
gt 5 definitely.but ill probably still get the other 2.
NFS is trying to be GT5.
It needs to realise it can’t!
NFS should stick to the arcade like, tooling around on highways and cities, Hot pursuit, Underground kinda games.
NFS 3 Hot Pursuit was the best NFS game ever made.
NFS Hot Pursuit 2 comes in at 2nd and Underground 2 comes in at 3rd.
Thats what NFS is good at and thats what it should stick to.
NFS, please don’t try to be GT5.
It tried that even before with ProStreet and no one liked that awful game!
Leave the racing simulation to GT5. They’re best at it and you can’t beat em no matter how hard you try!
For me, if NFS:Shift combines the sheer excitement and adrenaline-rush of Grid:Race Driver with the impressive realism of a GTR2-style PC racing sim – i’ll be well happy!! I lean a little more towards preferring sims and I always go for the in-car cam-view but it’s got to be fun too – I can save the ultra realism for..er..driving real cars!
I guess it will still end-up a little too ‘arcadey’ for some but as long as it is a bit more sim-like than Grid but whilst retaining the buzz, I have high hopes. The GT and Forza series are really great but leave me a little cold for some reason (I don’t have a console anymore anyway – just a fast(ish) PC which is fine for me).
Either way, all these quality racing games are great news for all car/game fans
Keep up the good work TG 
Btw, FUEL is a great game to compliment GT5.
While GT5 is all about precise racing simulation, it can get a little cold and dry at time.
So for a little change of scenery, there’s FUEL.
It doesn’t have the driving dynamics and physics of GT5 but its really fun just roaming around scenic roads in the enormous world they created for the game! Its a lot more exciting than any NFS game out nowdays.
Until there is a release date for GT5 (who knows when it’s coming out), I am getting tired of waiting for that game, so this might be a nicer alternative.
Just bought a Logitech steering wheel for my racing games in anticipation for GT5, prologue wasn’t enjoyable enough….
I’m surprised NFS is going in the race circuit direction, the game has usually focuses on the street race aspect.
NFS games seem to be getting worse.
NFS Porsche, HP2 and Most Wanted very,and still are, very good games in my opinion, whereas carbon is too easy (unless trying to play the game on a nintendo wii!), and prostreet was truly terrible.
I hope this game breaks this trend.
ALSO –
Comment 3 – Yes, live for speed is a good game.
would not go for forza – hate xboxes. not sure about GT5. GT3 good, gt4 quite hard and confusing.
Apparently, NFS has been doing very poorly with their street games, so they’re trying something else to keep the franchise alive. To me, it seems like a pop artist doing an acoustic album to seem like he/she has some amount of “artistic merit,” but in reality it’s just the same crap just dressed up a little bit.
I’m still going to go for Forza because I have an XBox with no plan to buy a PS3 until they actually develop a library of more than four games that are good.
The thing that I hate about NFS is that its just too comlicated and every new model gets worst.
If NFS shift can have the storyline of NFS underground 2 and the realisim of NFS ProStreet (or undercover) then it shoold be a great game
I say NFS should just go back and re-release an updated/revised version of NFS 3 Hot Pursuit with modern graphics and driving dynamics. Then i’ll love it.
Or they could release a Hot Pursuit 3 and base it on the old Hot Pursuit games.
It’ll save them the effort of coming up with new storylines, designs and crap and we’ll have an amazing updated version of NFS’s finest games!
Games that made NFS as popular as it is today.
Seeing as NFS is (hopefully) going to be the only one available for the Wii, i’ll go for this. But I did love the free roam and cop chase in Undercover, just didn’t like how detached from reality it was (Carrera GT doing 300mph, realistic? No)
i agree with comment 3
if u like realism, Live For Speed cant be beat
for all the arcade nfs fans, criterion (of burnout fame) are doing a differnt nfs title to shift thatll be more like the hot pursuits of old (hopefully). lookin like a good year to be a console sim racing fan. shift should fill the gap before gt5 anyway!!
I remember playing the original NFS on the Philips 3DO, and it’s come on a long way technically since then. Unfortunately the series has slowly deteriorated with the brief respite of Underground 1 & 2 bucking the trend, but Pro-Street was terminally dull and Undercover was nothing short of painful. There was a promo video for that showing revolutionary (their word) new features like drifting, burnouts, and the camera following you when you reverse..
As for this one.. seems like they’ve just stolen Racedriver: GRID wholesale. If you’re going to copy an arcade racer then that’s a damn good starting point, but a little originality wouldn’t go amiss.
Looks a lot like GRID. I mean, A LOT.
Thing is, NFS: Shift has very little to do with the other NFS games, they just share the name.
It’s a new studio developing it, Slightly Mad Studios, chech out http://www.slightlymadstu dios.com/about/
ALL of them have been working on GT2, so SHIFT will probably be much much better then the last 4-5 NFS games which were all rubbish.
I have been expecting so much from NFS, but they never delivered… Most Wanted was quite good, but after playing NFS: High Stakes (wich is my favorite by far..) or Hot Pursuit, or Porsche I realized that they have lost the way…
Trying to copy GT is stupid, I played NFS precisely because I got bored of GT at times… The Underground’s weren’t that good in my opinion, so I guess NFS is no longer for me, I’ll have to go with Forza..
Well, daniel89, they’re actually going to be putting out another arcade-y NFS in addition to this more realistic one. It’s going to be called Need for Speed Nitro.
That’s the good news, now here’s the bad. It’s only going to be for the Wii and DS, so no next-gen graphics and it might be even too arcade-y. Worryingly, the studio (EA Montreal) hasn’t produced any racing games in their past.
NFS was better in the past when it was just supercars vs. the Police (Lamborghini Diablo Cop Car anyone?), no silly modifying, no trying to be like a movie, just awesome racing in awesome cars in awesome locations (and Scotland). Recently it’s felt like they have no idea where to take it, what with Pro Street followed by Undercover followed by Shift going in no straight line at all, so I think they should just go back to the Hot Pursuit format.
I’ll still buy it though. The only NFS game I don’t have is the 1992 original.
that, PGR and Forza sounds nice to me.
or just a track day or 2 with a rental sports car..
Oh for gods sake, another children’s arcade game. I so miss the old days. I had the original, I spent much time on NFS2 and 3, and I adored NFS porsche and NFS HP1 (or highway challenge I forget the name). But NFS HP2 was easily the best: great cars on great roads, with the fuzz thrown in to make it interesting. Then Fast + Furious came out (I’m glad to say as a petrolhead that I haven’t seen any of the 4), and they went all pimpey with UG1!! WTF? even the handling used to be sort of OK, but then they made it all drifty and NOSsey with the blurred lights at 70mph.
I am totally infuriated. The gangstas have replaced the ferraris with Hyundais, and are raping the best driving fun ever.
So for the new one, I’m begging EA:
Remove any car that costs less than $50000, get out of the cities and give me a lime green Diablo in Monument Valley.
In other words, feed my Need for Speed!!!
^That is the most annoying thing about the new NFS games.
I got Pro Street thinking, hey its NFS, its gotta be good!
Then it handed me some crappy Nissan to race around some crap makeshift track with no serious competition to beat but the time. Took me about a week (wasn’t playing it like 8hrs a day) to manage to get something decent which was a Lotus Elise. It had a Lambo but i just couldn’t imagine driving a lambo on that horrible tight circuit, hence i returned the game.
I was also disappointed when i found out there were no Ferraris and Lambos in Underground. Most Wanted looked like some gangster rappers dream and well, NFS just went downhill from there.
So i went back to playing NFS HP2.
You start off with a choice between an Elise and VX220. Two brilliant cars. The tracks are amazing and scenic. The competition isn’t dim witted neither are you racing against michael schumacher.
And its a pleasure to drive every car in that game cuz they’re all class cars you wanna drive in games. Cars you wouldn’t normally get to drive everyday.
Also you don’t have to like play the game for 2 months to be able to drive all the cars there. You have the freedom to chose between the cars. Only modification is color and transmission. No tuning and modification crap. Just plain racing on great roads!!
This is what a racing game should be like.
If i wanna drive a Nissan or a Mini on a crap road, i can go for a drive on the motorway rather than starting at a stupid tv screen.
I paid to be able to experience some excitement of driving fast exotic supercars. That is all i’m asking from the game!
So any car less than €50k/£30k should be not be allowed in racing games. Only sports and supercars starting from Lotus Elise level upto the Bugatti Veyron!
NFS, dear NFS, where did we go wrong?
What started out as (and carried on till Hot Pursuit 2) every petrolhead’s fantasy game, has since deteriorated into a marketing-driven mess.
Where else could you pit every new, desirable exotic against a pack of other exotics in beautifully constructed fictional locales with nice, winding roads? Every great supercar showdown you ever fantasized about could be yours.
It was like living out every TG episode in your living room.
Then came Underground, which was nice, but should have been a separate franchise, since not everyone likes tuners.
Then they said – oh, but we’ll throw the exotics in as well, and let you dress them up the way you like with Most Wanted, Carbon and Undercover. Pininfarina doesn’t design Fezzas so some kid can put spoilers, body kits and decals on. Please. No.
Somewhere in the mix was the vomit-inducing ProStreet.
Now clearly, EA Games doesn’t pay attention to its customers, because every reputable gaming website forum on the interweb is full of NFS fans pleading for the good old days, but what do they do instead? Make a contrived abomination like Shift, which is just trying to be Forza or GT5 – and not core NFS. Argh.
Please, please EA, just give us our exotic cars, locales and twisty roads back with a nice coat of HD sheen, and we won’t hurt you (or your sales).
And also this is a thing i don’t like about Gran Turismo too.
You start off driving rather dull cars and only after you win a good few races can you afford to race the more exciting cars.
Also don’t like the controls on the GT. If you’re using the game controller, all controls are either “on” or “off”. The accelerator, breaks, steering, everything! Result is you end up with bad handling problems you wouldn’t really experience in the real world. Not very good for a simulator.
I think the game can be more properly appreciated with the driving force steering wheel thing. You can have more precise control over the steering, gas pedal, breaks and all…
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson in the Fiesta road test:
“It’ll almost certainly be SHIfT..”
Af, the buttons are pressure sensitive – try not mashing them all the time. Or configure the accelerator and brakes (that’s b-r-a-k-e-s) to be L2 and R2, i.e. the triggers, for finer adjustment. I’ve never had any problems with it. The steering is also fully sensitive, the more you move the analogue stick, the tighter it steers – magic!
I agree with you in comment 26, though.
^In GT, that is. NFS physics have been rubbish since, well, Underground. Far too arcadey to compete with GT or Forza, like they want to do. You can corner without braking, for christ’s sake! How rubbish is that?!
MAKE HOT PURSUIT III EA!!
There is a massive amount of screenshots, videos, interviews, etc at: http://www.virtualr.net/c ategory/need-for-speed-sh ift/ but while you are there you have to check out the other categories, especially rFactor, GTR2, GTR Evo, Race07, iRacing, etc, these are games you want to play if you want a proper driving/racing simulation rather than the arcady console games that clam to be a sim namely GT, Forza & NFS, all of which have only just recently included cockpit views (how can you call yourself a sim with out cockpit views).
What a stupid trailer! All I see are cars crashing, with some good looking graphics. I buy the games for the racing, not the crashes!
@Mikeado: Are they? It doesn’t seem to work on my controller though.
Maybe something’s wrong with my controller… But no matter how gentle or how hard i mash in the buttons, the outcome seems to be the same. Instant accelaration and decelaration with jerky steering movements..
it looks exactly the same (gameplay and graphics) as Race Driver Grid which is 2 years old now!
stick to tooling around highways guys!
u tried taking racing off the streets with pro street…and it failed
what do people think of “race driver grid”?
Af did you use the official PSX/PS2 controller?
Need for Speed, much like GRID is aimed at the more casual gamer. GT5 and Live for Speed are for the hardcore racers. There’s nothing wrong with liking both types of game. I’m not always in the mood for a serious race on GT5P, so I switch over to GRID for my adrenaline fix
cool, thanks for the advice
Where’d my post from yesterday go?
Last year at Le Mans there was a massive playstation stand and you could play the Le Mans Circuit – about 20 racing chairs, pedals, steering wheel etc. You raced around in a R8.
Must have been for GT5 no?
I struggle to see any comparison between the three. If you have a PS3 you only have the choice of two and the same with a 360. GT5 is a serious gamers game and NFS will be much more arcadey, the same with Forza 3 and NFS. The only battle will be for people that don’t have either consol and can’t decide which one to get. For me though, having a PS3 it’ll have to be GT5 then round to my mates for a bit of NFS action on the 360.
i think the person playing thought it was burnout, he seemed to spend a lot of time crashing. You can’t compare games like Forza and GT to games like NFS, one is about realism and one is about a world with “street cred”, “rep”, “crews” and so on.
@Wat: yup, its the dualshock 3 one… Wasn’t too long ago i got it. I might take it to the store for the guy to have a look at it and if it really is broken i could maybe exchange it for a new one…
dont forget pgr5 is coming out soon people. thats gonna be a proper racer
GRID FTW
It looks like it ought to be good but I won’t touch it unless I know for certain that I can use my Logitech G25 Racing Wheel setup.
Bought Codemasters Fuel and while it looks slick it doesn’t support anything other than Keyboard & Mouse or the XBox 360 Controller – You CANNOT drive with either of these!
blatant copy of race driver grid!!
wooo 50
I went to the need for speed european drift championships at brands hatch and there was an exclusive (UK or European, not sure) of this game being played on the xbox 360. It looks awsome. I didn’t play it though, I would have been waiting ages.
GT5 still looks better.
GT 5 is said to be released in Europe on november 27. Its the head developer who have said it!
I love forza motorsport 2, and I will love 3, but i have to admit that gt5 will be an amazing and better looking game, but I think it’s funny that NFS is trying to not only fight these 2 much bettter, more experienced franchises, but to attempt it with about 1/5th of the tracks and about 1/6 of the
cars, sorry I forgot a word
oooooohhhh
I wonder when will TG test drive aston’s new one-77
It is the best looking aston ever made
gt5 and need 4 speed shift i have no xbox bt a ps3
they wshould make forza 3 on ps3 so we can compare the gameplay and they would make a lot more money
this is going 2 be a good battle because NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT is coming out then FORZA3 as well as GRAN TURISMO 5 and the game no one has talked about COLIN MCRAE DIRT 2
it will be a gd battle between those 4 games
I’ve already pre-ordered FM3 a) because I don’t have a PS3 and b) because Shift seems to be all about driving racing cars, rather than racing ordinary cars which you can then customise to a pretty extreme extent. If I get a PS3 (which is possible) I’ll get GT5 as well. Then, you get the best of both worlds.