In 2007, EA Games took a different direction with Need For Speed, the most successful racing game franchise of all time, with Need For Speed ProStreet. Unfortunately, it was a flop. Many of the things that had brought Need For Speed to enormous worldwide markets from 2003 to 2006 were missing, and the "legal racing only" approach was not popular among the gamers that had enjoyed the most extreme virtual police chases on the market for the previous two years. In 2008, they tried to return to the mid-noughties Need For Speed with Need For Speed Undercover. This was not particularly successful either so EA tried to go down the legal racing route once again with Need For Speed Shift in 2009. However, Shift was, in my eyes at least, the worst racing game of all time.
There have been poor racing games before. GT Racers, a 2005 game on the PlayStation 2, was biblically awful, largely due to having a budget so small they couldn't even give their cars the right names, so they left an option to change the names of the cars and let you correct them. There was also Corvette by General Studios Software, which was rubbish as well. Let's also not forget Enthusia: Professional Racing, another 2005 effort by Konami. Enthusia is widely acknowledged to be the single worst racing game of all time, but I'm not sure. For me, Shift was so hyped-up before it's launch that the result felt even worse than it actually was, which made it the worst game ever.
Then, in 2011, EA decided that surely three wrongs must make a right when they launched Shift 2: Unleashed. To reduce the pressure, they kept the Need For Speed name out of sight, with only the new logo an indicator of the pedigree of the game. But the pressure really was on EA Games this time.Not only were they taking a huge gamble by making another Shift game, but they were now struggling to keep the declining series going. Add to that the enormous success of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit at awards ceremonies the year before (although I didn't think much of it) and you have a situation where there can be no excuses. This game had to be good.
Trouble was, it was awful!
From the moment you first start up the game there are serious issues. Firstly, you can't skip the intro until all of the developing studios have got their logos involved, which gets annoying in, ooh, about fourteen milliseconds. Then, when you start the career mode, you have an irritating Formula "D" (it's DRIFT for God's sake!) driver that nobody outside of EA Games has heard of 'guiding' you through the tutorials, although it's more just him blabbering on through an unskippable cinematic that is supposed to be dramatic but actually looks cheap. Very cheap. The tutorials themselves will infuriate more accomplished gamers and utterly bewilder novices to the genre. "Race a lap of Suzuka" he says. Unfortunately, you sail off at the first corner as the handling system is poor, but we'll get onto that later. Then, at the start of damn-near every career race you enter, you will have his stupid voice drowning out the sound of your car saying "green light! Go!" What else am I going to do? The tango? Build a Meccano set? Turn off this rubbish and play Forza 4 (I wish)?
There are more problems as well. Loading takes forever and all the time the loading "music" is someone going "OooooooooooOOOOOOOooooooooh" over and over again. Of course, you may try to drown out the sound of the man seemingly giving birth in slow motion by reading some of the information that is there to 'help' you in the build up to the race. Information such as what a race is. Personally, I am glad it tells me what a race is, as I always thought it was some kind of pudding eaten in exotic locations. Such as Norfolk. Oh, and the saving is excruciating as well. I mean, how long does it take to save a game? I could have completed a Where's Wally book in that time, as Wally is playing the game. Trust me, anyone who plays this game feels like a total Wally.
Let's move on to the actual driving, shall we? And we'll start with the presentation. The game has a HUD as you'd expect, but this one seems to have come about because someone sneezed in the design office. There are so many meaningless numbers, letters, bars and a multicoloured track map for some reason. Of course, you can't actually read most of these letters and numbers as the blend in almost perfectly with the sky. It seems that nobody noticed this when they were testing the game. In fact, there is so much stuff crammed onto your screen it's actually amazing that you can see the road in front of you. Then, there is no way of telling what numbers you are actually looking at as the lap counter and position indicator are not labelled like they are in 'normal' driving games so you have to look at the map and see. Which means you'll crash.
The HUD also moves about during corners, braking, accelerating and over bumps. Because that's exactly what you need. You'r going through a corner and just checking your current lap time, but it moves constantly so you can't read it and you crash. Because nobody noticed that when they were testing the game either. Then there are the mud splats that appear on your screen whether you are on the racing line off the racing line or off the track altogether. It is completely random and completely annoying. You are looking for an apex when it is obscured by a mud splat that came from absolutely nowhere, so you miss the apex and crash. They must have missed that in the testing too.
Then there is the ridiculous black and white line appearing wibbly wobbly thing. When you crash, the screen goes black and white and lines appear and it gets distorted. Because that is exactly what happens to you in a crash. Ask Niki Lauda what happened at the Nurburgring in '76 and he will tell you "The world went black and white and lines appeared and it went all wibbly wobbly!" Yeah right. Of course, this also happens if you just scrape the wall (or indeed another car) whilst moving above a couple of miles per hour. Then you can't see and crash. Wait a minute, did they test this game at all?
However, all of this could be slightly forgivable if the handling was similar to Forza 4, the game that humiliated Shit 2 or Gran Turismo, but it seems that EA Games and Slightly Mad Studios have never even head of these games.The cars feel far too heavy, there is a delay of about a second between any steering input and the movement of the car (presumably the steering wheel is connected to some huge vats of treacle that drip onto the axle to change direction) but the absolute worst thing about this miserable game is how the cars turn. In most games, the cars turn, but in this they just pivot and then understeer wide, so you apply full lock and slow to a crawl. to back steps out (but kind of doesn't as it pivots rather than following a circle) and then you watch in horror as you still slide out onto the gravel, where the car miraculously straightens itself despite you still applying full lock to extend your stay in the gravel trap. The handling is dire, and for that, all of the game's sins are not forgiven.
GAME SCORE: 2/100
"It doesn't even deserve the Need For Speed logo"
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