Need for Speed: Shift

Despite the fact that most of the most anticipated releases of this fall were smoothly flowed into 2010, with car races this year, everything seems to be in perfect order. Alone Gran Turismo 5 And Forza Motorsport 3 should be enough for the rest of the life of the current consoles, and after all there will be Colin Mcrae Dirt 2 , Blur and a few games smaller. We are used to the series Need for Speed Against this background, it usually looks like the most inconspicuous feed, relevant for those who play only PC (where there were always few alternatives) or simply does not know about the existence of other races.

But not this time: it is not known what golden head is Electronic Arts I thought of entrusting the next part of the series to the British Slightly Mad Studios , But what we got in the end is little like both the usual Need for Speed ​​and other recent races. And what is more important – Need for Speed: Shift It turned out not just the next experiment on the turn of the series in an unfamiliar direction (as, for example, before Jackpot Charm Casino sister sites Prostreet). This is a really good and integral game that has a recognizable face.

A new broom rushes in a new way

Moreover, Shift is not too much comparisons with an venerable arcade series, they only gravitate it. In common with old versions of NFS there are only key models of cars, the tuning system that came with them, and perhaps all.

What we play no longer in Need for Speed, it becomes clear after the first pair of turns in Brand-Hatch, where we are launched for a trial race. If you inadvertently do not know the features of this old English route (where Formula 1 races were held in the past, and now the body of the WTCC and DTM will start), then almost certainly ruin a couple or two bmws and lining the new BMW. The traditional NFS reception (in the training level to give it to steer with an expensive and powerful machine, so that you will take it away from you immediately) here) is not needed here in order to give a dream to the dream, which you will have to save half the game then. At this stage, random people from thoughtful and accurate motorbikers take place at this stage.

Those who did not follow the development of the game, of course, awaits shock. A year ago, they bought a Need for Speed ​​“to ride”, and now there are some strange tracks and naughty shaitan machines. But even if the most difficult racing game in your life before was Burnout Paradise , Feel free to learn to go again. The game will tell you how this is done: it will draw an ideal trajectory on the road (where the braking sections are indicated in red, and green – acceleration), will throw the track easier and allow you to configure anything you want. At the level of Casual's complexity, you only need to put pressure on the gas and not to miss the turns (that is, to do exactly the same as in the previous parts). The car itself will gently brake in front of the turns and will not slide along the asphalt, and the rivals would politely give in the road, as if your car is equipped with a blue flashing beacon and siren.

However, you need to understand that the meaning of Shift is not this. Having learned the tracks more or less and learning to win at the initial stages, you do not need to dwell on what has been achieved-deprive yourself of a lot of pleasure. The game is truly revealed only on the complexity of Pro, before which it is even considered difficult to fade Need for Speed: Prostreet. The most important rule (which Alexander Kuzmenko has already mentioned in the summer report with EA3): do not forget to use the brake pedal! A rare turn here passes with gas “on the floor”, which means it will have to be slowing down almost less often than accelerate – just like in real car racing.

Just on real car races the game is most similar. Fenced ring tracks, in sporting painted cars with variegated sponsors throughout the body. Even pathos nitro slipping is now completely optional to install and use (rivals in this case will not do this either). Some will remind someone a version of Prostreet or even Gran Turismo 5: Prologue , But the most correct guideline will be Race Driver Grid. Despite the serious difference in physics (cars behave much more convincing here than matchboxes from Grid), schedule and structure of these games, Shift is related to last year's race Codemasters A similar feed style. Here no one beats a ruler on the fingers for the slightest mistake (for this there is still a Gran Turismo series and company production games Simbin ), instead, the game carefully creates a sense of sports festival.

This is what the races from the TV screen look like. Girls in branded baseball caps hold signs with the name of the player, the radio engineer catch up with the illusion of the working atmosphere, and reporters fix the last seconds before the start. The engines growl, the traffic lights and cars go out, turning the wheels (the smell of smoky burning almost seeps through the monitor), break off the place.

Sparks from the eyes

The segment from the start to the finish line is the most important minutes of Shift, and everything else here is given a humiliatingly little time. Plot with living actors, as in last year Need for Speed: Undercover , Such a game is completely useless (it is replaced by very beautiful and dynamic screensavers with cars), the need to dig into the garage for hours – the tuning is simplified to the limit and is performed by a couple of clicks. And the authors prudently hid the ability to change the angle of attack and the rigidity of the shock absorbers.

If you remember, at one time, the developers said that they are making a real racing simulator, only dedicated not to count the work of the Porsche racing pendant, but to the feeling of a rider while driving. And this is pure truth. The standard view in the game is from the cab (for this, for the first time since the time of Porsche Unleashed, it was necessary to simulate in detail the machines salons), the camera is shaking violently, and during the shocks and accidents the image on the screen is blurred, simulating the teeth for the steering wheel. The feeling of speed is very cool, which intensifies “voluminous”, not glued to the screen, swaying along with the camera: after a couple of hours of the game in Shift, it seems that cars in the same Gran Turismo 5: Prologue do not go, but crawl around the distance.

However, in order not to get a marine disease for yourself, the camera can be transferred to the usual plan behind the car. The main thing is that in no case do not go on the track alone (and who came up with these races for a while?), since it is at such moments that Shift suddenly becomes boring. Despite everything, this game does not give sensations characteristic of any real simulator, in which each circle made faster than the previous one is perceived as a great personal success. Accustomed to management, you can easily find the limit of the capabilities of each machine and start setting records one by one, without meeting any resistance or return.

Everything falls into place only during races with rivals who will not let you get bored with all means. They are mistaken, arrange mass blocks on the highway and ram you (sometimes even too rude) in the most unexpected places. The damage model is convincing, so if some suspension lever suddenly bothers, then the race is likely to start again.

Despite this, the game manages not to annoy and keep the peppy pace – to repair the car between the races (as in Prostreet or Porsche Unleashed), and especially protect it – also. In the career mode, the race is quite fleeting, and no one, fortunately, won at all costs. You can earn stars (opening access to new routes and championships) just regular finishes in the point zone and the execution of special surveys like “overtake that silver“ Audi ”. For each, even the most insignificant success, the game generously showers with small coins: they reacted in time at the start, purely passed the circle, overtook the opponent or just lasted five seconds in his “air bag” – get a few more points for your driver's profile. Shift notices everything and writes everything like a office bore.

All these bonuses are invented mainly for the online regime, but there is also something to do in the single. There are ordinary races (a maximum of 15 participants), a duel of two cars, a drift that has become much more complicated than anywhere, as well as long endurance races.

Horses are picky

And the most pleasant thing-the normal replays were finally returned to the series, which was so lacking in the same Prostreet. When you watch perfectly set, with a constant change of cameras and close plans, the races of racing, it becomes clearly visible how beautiful Shift is still. Yes, half of the models of cars inherited from past parts-because of this they slightly cut the eyes with inconspicuous corners and low resolution of the texture of painting. But the engine is completely new! The own development of Slyightly Mad Studios was originally designed to draw the forms of expensive Ferrari from the still non -anons Ferrari Project (which should be seen sooner or later), and even with more modest Japanese and American cars, the engine is all the more with a bang. Any current PC-Auttorus (and not only PC) at the sight of such textures, special effects, smoke, reflections and depths of sharpness should crawl under the cabinet without talking and burned there with shame. An exception can only be made for the same GT 5: Prologue, which, although it contains much more landfills per square centimeter, looks easier and somehow sterile. SHIFT The same riot of colors only to the face.

A great merit here belongs to artists Slightly Mad. These people, as you know, have been engaged in car symbolics and better than anyone else, what a real racing track should look like. We will not watch colorful graffiti added to create a carefree NFS atmosphere, but even they (like a lot of non-existent buildings over the sides) do not violate the overall picture. Shift routes are the most beautiful of all the released car races. Real autrods (such are the majority here)-Brand-Hatch, Silverstone, Spas-Frankoshamp, Laguna-Secret, Nyurging-Nordsdyaifa … But just in case we report that there are a couple of city routes-in London and Tokyo. The last track is copied from Prostreet, as it was one of the most difficult and successful.

From Prostreet and Undercover the game got most of the machines, and among the new models, truly racing cars that came to the game from official tracks are surprisingly dominated. BMW M3 GT2 (cm. cover), Audi R8 LMS, Porsche 911 GT3, MASERATI MC12 GT1, Dodge Viper SRT 10, PAGANI Zonda R, Bugatti Veyron-in a different way, all these cars could easily meet in some GTR 3 , exist in nature. Only Ferrari is missing for all this set, but knowing that Slightly Mad Studios has a license for “red stallions” for a long time, it can be assumed that they can add a couple of three of them as DLC. It would be nice, because the final packs have already come out to the previous parts, and the lack of cars and tracks is the main thing that will bother in Shift after the first passage. Still, to the level of Gran Turismo in this regard, still far away.

* * *

But what will surely bother those who want to just approach the game is so that the system requirements matured along with the complexity. Shift loves quadrous processors, gigabytes of memory and top video cards. We talked about incomparable beauty? The reckoning for them will be brakes on computers that easily rotated the same Grid or (if you take an example of the fresher) Burnout Paradise. As an option, you can play the game on the consoles-everything goes smoothly there and looks only a little worse.

One way or another, no one has canceled the holiday because of this: for the first time in several years, Need for Speed ​​turned from a statist’s lipstick lipstick into the main racing surprise of the year. There are little chance that future games of the series will be sold complete with a racing helmet and gloves (the next part, according to confirmed information, is already being developed CRITERION Games , The authors are through the arcade series Burnout), but the first departure of the asphalt outlined by striped curbs was recognized as quite successful. Do not forget your undergraduate!

Reigracy – yes

Cool plot – no

Originality – no

Easy to master – yes

Evidence of expectations: 90%

Gameplay: 9

Graphics: 9

Sound and music: 8

Interface and management: 8

Waited? In order to breathe a new life into NFS, it was necessary to rebuild the game again for the forces. What happened turned out to be little like NFS, but it does not care about anyone – playing is still interesting.

Mania rating: 8.5

"Great"

[Break]] I’m Going Slightly Mad

The new NEED For Speed ​​developer studio is based in London and is noteworthy primarily because her backbone was working on the most realistic PC-authors-GTR, GT Legends and GTR 2. But how, because Simbin released them still exists to this day – you ask? Everything is true, with the only difference being that their new games, starting with Race: The WTCC Game (2006), do completely different people. While Jan Bell, the former head of the Simbin game unit, founded his own Blimey Studio in 2005! Games, which managed to release only one free carriageway BMW M3 Challenge and before Shift was engaged in the development of the Ferrari license simulator. Which, apparently, served as the main aggregate donor for Shift – the engine and part of the tracks were taken precisely from there. We hope that after the release of Shift, he will still find the publisher, who will lead the game about the prancing Italian stallions to a successful finish.

Roll on all four sides

Autopolis

International Avtodr, discovered in 1990 in Japan, but has never received an international-level race other than one stage of World Sportscar Championship in 1991. By the way, the young Michael Schumacher won that race at the wheel of a prototype Sauber-Mercedes. Today is a home for various domestic championships, including the D1 drift Grand Prix.

Brands Hatch

One of the oldest British tracks, the configuration of which has not changed much since the 1930s. The combination of blind turns and constant descents makes it similar to the American slides. The most interesting segment is the Paddock Hill Bend turn after the direct “start-finish”, where at high speed the asphalt seems to go from under the legs. Most of the accidents and departures from the highway occur there.

Laguna seca

Perhaps the most famous American road type. The Laguna-Secret Laguna was opened in 1957 and has since received the whole color of the motorsport world, except for Formula 1 (in 1990 there was an attempt to hold the overseas stage here, but the track was recognized as too small and remote). The most interesting place is Corkscrew chican, which is accompanied by a 90-meter height difference.

Nordshleife

The famous 20-kilometer northern loop of Nyurgurging is located around the village of Nürburg in southern Germany. Since in 1976, during the Formula-1 Grand Prix, he had an accident and almost burned down in Nicky Lauda, ​​the track was recognized as too dangerous for F1. But life on the Nordschlyifa does not subside even now – half -amateur endurance races are held here, and the track has not become less dangerous over 30 years.

Silverstone

Local fans love to call Silverstone the house of British motorsport, but for a year this highway has been in the balance from losing its stage F1 in favor of more modern Donington. And it all started with a former military airfield, on the territory of which this track was built. It recalls the airfield now – wide, with very high -speed bundles of turns.

SPA-FRANKOSHAMPS

The racing highway in Belgium, which accepts the races since 1925 and is a loved one for most pilots who at least once performed here. And this is understandable – such a combination of long, direct and high -speed turns, height changes are not anywhere else, and the unique climate of the Arden mountains guarantees forever unpredictable weather. The most interesting place in the route is the double turn "Red Water".

For pumping

The Need For Speed ​​series has long been unthinkable without tuning, and to throw it out of Shift to EA, of course, did not dare

The SHIFT tuning system is most reminiscent of the one that was in the latter NEED for Speed: Undercover – three upgrades of upgrades regarding the main components of the machine. For the body and kokpit, you have to use ready -made blanks: now it is impossible to screw the anti -wing on your own, but it is a pity. This is how it looks from the side.