Need For Speed Shift Review
The Short Version: No other racing game comes close to the way need for speed simulates the experience for the driver within the car. On-the-track racing is an adrenaline filled ride that’s well worth the time. Unfortunately the game feels lifeless without a story mode leaving you longing for the glory days of NFS Cop Chases near the end of Shift’s Dry Career Mode.
The Review:
What you’ll Like:
• Hands down the Best in-car experience out there right now.
• Excellent Sense of Speed, Simulating the Drivers Experience within the car during a race.
• Gorgeous Graphics
• A good amount of events and variations
What you’ll Hate:
• Career Mode is devoid of Life. No more In-Game Story Videos.
• Customization seems more difficult to view “at-a-glance” than previous NFS Titles. (Fewer Previews for your changes)
• Drift racing feels way off.
• Annoying, Loud, and Poorly Composed Ambient Menu Music
• NO COP CHASES 
Final Verdict:
7/10
39 Comments
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You really should review NFS: Hot Pursuit for the 360.
I absolutely loved NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 for the PS2, and I still break it out today.
I got Hot Pursuit hoping that it would be as good, and it was! No control freak modifying, no worrying about whether your car has neon lights underneath. Just pick a car, a color, and drive like hell.
You play as a racer or a cop, with a campaign for each. The controls are great and the A.I. are just the right amount of hard to make it challenging and fun.
Also, the Autolog leaderboards with your friends are pretty cool. Leave a taunting comment when you blow away their best time. Always satisfying.
The best part,
THERE ARE COP CHASES! Not in all of them, but plenty of them.
Definitely a good buy.
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Yea where is the most wanted sequel that game was the shit back in the day i played the hell out of that game, best racer EVAR all the new ones are fine but not as awesome as Most Wanted
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hope he does a review of need for speed:Shift 2 Unleashed
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Hi Joe there actualy was a need for speed sequal…..it is called need for speed carbon
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Hi Joe there actualy was a need for speed most wanted sequal…..it is called need for speed carbon
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You know that NFS World is coming out soon right? U can play the beta for free and it’s like both Most Wanted and Carbon in one, the cities that is. The chases are more like in Most Wanted and the customization is shift like for the time but is gonna be made more like Most Wanted. Although there are no crappily done video sequences like those in MW or UC, as I liked the ones from Carbon, but only the ones with Emmanuelle Vaugier i.e. Nikki, though based on the storyline from UG2 she should have been played by Jessica Simpson or Jessica Biel, but still she’s the best!!!! And here’s the site for the game http://world.needforspeed.com/ Enjoy!
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what about need for speed undercover
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You can’t give a bad review for things that it’s missing, but what it offers is it good or bad… It needs no story it’s a sim, they want to go againts Forza and GT series… Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit will come back.
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Alright I just wanna say that I had my 360 for quiet a bit and then it died (complete bye bye to it) and I had a cheap 360 wheel,well it was enough, but now I’m fully PC gamer and ah well yes Joe you need FFB to fully immerse into the game,but not one like that,not plastic.I’ve a wheel for twice the price of official 360 wheel, it’s from Logitech,it’s real hand-stitched leather and stainless steel.Of course it weighs few kilograms but I’ve also 3 pedals (massive ones btw.) . another thing it’s not normal 270 degrees oh no it’s something you pick in special controller settings from 40 degrees to 900! and finally it doesn’t have 1 FFB motor.It has 2 for even better immersion into the game. btw. I’m a massive into racing simulations(unlike nfs shift which is an arcade after all) so I know my bits
. I payed 200 euro for this baby and I do not regret it 
.Oh yea it works with PC PS3 PS2 and not sure about any more. 
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joe u might see most wanted to cause this year in noviember u’ll see need for speed where u run away from cops
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Haha joe you turbocharged you car? nice.
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this game looks great and i plan on buying it
but while I’m here
fix where you put your links
i keep accidentally pressing a link to the same page when I’m going to a different tab after waiting something like 20 minutes for the video to load
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I didnt really care for this game alot (mostly due to the fact that i was more hooked on the Forza 3 demo)…but i might pick it up now thanks to your review. By the way Joe, you hear about the Need for Speed: World?
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nice car seriously, good review by the way but the car is sexy
i just got a mazda rx7 1992 and i begin to learn how to drift with that beauty
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I wish it had 2 player split-screen, like all racers on consoles should.
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Joe please do a review on forza motorsport 3 its the most realistic console racer to date!
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I always loved the cutscenes, they were so terrible it was hilarious.
The games themselves were awesome, I was always more of a Forza fan. I can’t say I’m glad what the effect this game and the Fast and The Furious movies have had on car tuner culture though. Suddenly everyone’s a racer if they stick a spoiler on their Honda Civic. It really does ruin it for real car enthusiasts.
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Not much too say, not a big racing fan, but i did like the first one, where your driving around and trying too get away from the cops, that was fun, but now it doesn’t have the same feeling you know, that magic it used to have!
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Hope you will do Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age Origins rewiews too
Hope i get Cod as a christmas present 
Im very exited about those, but the bad thing is I DONT HAVE MONEY!
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this game seems awsome but it needs cops and chasing and a story NFS is a STREET RACING game it should be on the STREET not a pro track if they keep the concept of the crashing and blurry vision and all that and make it like most wanted then this game will pwn
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I tested shift to day…..
It blowed!(If you comper whit MW and Carbon and to tell the truth Undercover)
They how maked this game was only makeing this game for money whis is why they make games but IF THEY WANT US TO BUY THIS GAME you need a fucking story,if it had a story it shuld OWN =)
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Hey Joe
Any truth to the time old saying “Big Car, Small dick?”
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The overcompasating thing? sometimes yes lol… best guess is to see how much the guy insist on his car if do it a lot he is probably overcompasating, if he is discreat about it he is probably not
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Heheh I see.
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Yeah, I’d agree with this. It’s the obnoxious ones I can’t stand.
I really couldn’t care less how big your muffler is, it still makes your car sound like it’s dying.
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ahh i missed those days runnin from the cops beating punk racers in any given mode and the gils but hey the’ll probubly bring it back
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I loved Most Wanted. It was just plain fun in every way.
But really, I’m not that much for racing games, so without cop chases etc etc, it’s not the least bit intresting to me.
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I agree, I was a fan of NFS from the very beginning. It’s not quite as fun without the cops. This still looks amazing though.
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You know, I think this is a big brother of GRID ( by Codemasters ).
It has NO NFS in it!
NFS’ were going to go downhill after NFSU IMO, because it seems to me, that the games developer are putting effort into graphics and forgetting the origin of the game.
I’d give it 3/10. Flashing images are just for rich and wannabes.
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i think they need to get back to what they right with most wanted. the cheesy story and cop chases were awesome, and i would still go back and play it now if i could find it again. while carbon was a technical sequel to most wanted, i didn’t come close to the awesomeness that was most wanted so i don’t consider anything they call a sequel a real one since its all crap.
you need to be a developer, joe. every time you pitch a game on here of what you think a game should be it sounds awesome. the day job and night life sounds cool, but to give it some cheesy tension not only are you living in 2 different racing styles, you have to keep your lives seperate, because if you get caught street racing you could lose sponsors or break your contract and if the other street racers find out you are a sell out pro racer you lose your street cred, or something. could be full of lies, backstabbing and blackmail. it would be cool if it got worked into gameplay, like if you had another pro racer find out he might want you to start losing to him in races for him to keep your secret, and you have to deal with the consequences on what you do. less money and loss of sponsors for losing or you win and you might get rejected by your owners for breaking your contract, and have to work back up to where you were. tho the cheese factor is nice, it would be cool to have a game with a deep story and branching paths depending on how you race and the decisions you make and several endings that make you feel like your path was unique and make you want to go thru the game again to see everything else.
even tho this looks like the best NFS game in a while i think financially i need to skip it. MW2 is my top game right now and i to save til it comes out to get it without having to trade in any games.
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Joe the if you like most wanted you should have played the first Need For Speed where you ran away from Cops which is Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit. Another thing is the reason you might not see Most wanted 2 is cause Need For Speed games aren’t all made by the same team. EA sold the name and different companies make each Version. The people who made Most Wanted aren’t the same People who made Need for Speed Shift.
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They already made a sequel to Most Wanted. It’s called Carbon.
Then they made a sequel to that called Pro Street.
Then they made a spin-off to that called Undercover (which wasn’t all that good really).
They’ve pretty much had a new one out every year since Hot Pursuit 2. It’s like the racing equivalent of Tony Hawk.
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True, I worded it incorrectly. I’m looking for a true successor to MW without removing some of the features that made it great (like Carbon did).
I should have instead made the point that I hope we see another MW with the Features and Mechanics of Shift.
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Well there is Need for Speed Undercover. Its pretty much like Most Wanted… Not sure if it was released for Xbox360 though.
And now about Shift. I dont really like it. Maybe a 5/10 at max. The most interesting thing about NFS was the story, running from the cops. Like you said without that NFS loses it’s charm. The only good thing for me is the realistic experience from INSIDE the car, because the crashes don’t seem realistic enough for me.
Race Driver GRID (again don’t know if its released for xbox360) is the superior professional racing game. You may not FEEL like you are there but everything is realistic.
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YES Most wanted is my favorite need for speed im not sure am i gonna by that shift because im pretty sure i get forza and im damn broke running outta money quick. Damn i almost thought you were gonna say i see you wonderful people on the show just like in the happy Joe Show. By the way nice car!
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NFS Most Wanted I miss you! NFS Shift is a good game but without a story line it gets terribly boring to me after 30 minutes
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Looks like Need for Speed is back on track, and I have to agree with Joe, Most Wanted was the best, it had the best soundtrack, boss races and of course, the cops. I still remember a helicopter acting as a roadblock.
NFS might go back to Most Wanted as Shift was made by an outside company in collabaration with EA, plus the fact that there are another 3 or 4 NFS games in develpoment with one from the original devs EA Black Box, and one from the devs of the Burnout franchise, Criterion Games.
As long as the NFS games are closed-circuit racing like they have been since the beginning I won’t complain.
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It looks alright but as Joe said you need the wheel to play it with so a £40 game becomes a much more expensive one.
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I don’t know ….. I’ve lost hope for Need for Speed .
I remember the good times with NFS2 , High Stakes , Hot Pursuit etc. , but after Most Wanted i’ve just lost hope for a good NFS game .
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