Since time immemorial, EA Games’ Need for Speed series has pretty much ruled the roost, when it comes to arcade racing games. They were addictive, fun in multiplayer, and basically gave you a bunch of exotic cars in well done locales around the world. NFS 2 was amazing fun, especially in split screen mode. Police chases found their way in NFS 3, and a proper career mode in NFS 4 : High Stakes. It’s popular consensus that the series’ popularity peaked with the release of Most Wanted. I’d like to agree. Most Wanted was fast-paced, kept you on your toes, especially at heat level 5, 6 and 7, plus, it looked great at the time. Thing is, NFS hasn’t always been arcade.

OK, so fine, it occasionally dabbled with pseudo-simulations like Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, which was, to put it mildly, quite a mad game, but satisfying once you mastered. Then there was ProStreet, widely acknowledged as a bad move. The games was nowhere close to being as sharp as stuff like Gran Tourismo, plus the removal of a city to cruise around, with police cars fishtailing madly in the rear view mirrors didn’t go down that well with the fans. After that, it pretty much went downhill, with the godawful Undercover. The physics were unimaginably daft (go into a corner at just the right angle, with no gas, and come out of it 50 mph faster!), the graphics weren’t all that great (there was a strange glow all over the game that really made me think the protagonist was buzzed or something), and the voice acting and cutscenes were downright irritating. Plus the fact that you couldn’t drive up to events and had to select them from a map was really irritating.

So, EA goes back to the drawing board, with real racing drivers to refresh the series. And boy have they outdone themselves. First thing’s first, this is not an arcade game, it’s intended to be an out an out simulation. There is not city to roam, no cops to shake off, no street cred to build up. There are race tracks, and tournaments, and driver duels.

The game starts you off with a little test to see how well you can drive, and accordingly sets up difficulty levels and driving aids so that you can enjoy the game, instead of struggling through it. Thing is, I just have a keyboard, and the game can be excruciatingly difficult without a proper gamepad or a driving wheel. The reason for this is that you have absolutely no throttle control i.e. it’s either on, or it’s off. There’s no way you can feather the throttle going into a corner. Speaking of corners, it’s nigh on impossible to negotiate high speed corners unless you’re really careful, because the turning too, is like a switch i.e. either dead center, or full lock.

Still, I soldiered on, with no driver aids except ABS (Anti-lock Braking System – will do a post on that later), and Stability Control on low. It is impossible to brake with the ABS off, the car will just spin off if you hit even a slight bump, because there’s no way you can give gentle corrections. As a thumb rule, 4-wheel drive cars like the Lambhorgini Gallardo and Murcielago are easier to drive than rear-wheel drive cars like Porsches and Corvettes. You can slide around quite easily on the 4-wheel drive cars. They’re much more forgiving, and you can make occasional mistakes with them. The rear-wheel drive cars are not like that. Go into a corner just a bit too fast, get on the grass just a bit, or just steer too much, and wham, you’ll find yourself in a wall. Now that that’s out of the way, I can concentrate on the reasons why this is a great game.

You have a great variety of cars to choose from, ranging from the lowly Volkswagen Golf, to the Bugatti Veyron (incidentally made by the same company .. ). All of them feel great to drive. The career consist of 4 tiers of cars of increasing performance, with the ultimate goal of winning the NFS World Tour. You need to work your way up the tiers, winning money for races, updgrading your car, taking on challenging drivers along the way. Although there are no don’t-you-mess-with-me-cutscenes, the curt voice that guides you through the game provides ample warning. The real tension is on the track. These bosses are pretty good, and can be agressive. Speaking of aggressive driving, edging someone off the track is not that easy, especially if you’re using a keyboard.

You earn profile points depending on how you drive. The points can be divided into 2 categories : Precision and Aggression. As the names suggest, you get precision points for clipping corners just right, clean sections, clean overtakes and stuff like that. Oh, and if you can’t be bothered to play Mr. Nice Guy, you can always get aggression points by smashing into other cars, edging them off, and drafting opponents. Rack up enough points to fill the meter, and you get a 2x multiplier for a limited amount of time. At the end of each race, your points get added to your overall tally, which helps you advance your driver level from 1 to 50. Each driver level unlocks some stuff for you, like special invitational events which allow you to drive cars that you haven’t unlocked yet, and stuff like limited edition vinyls. You also earn stars for special achievements, like podium finishes, reaching certain profile points thresholds, or other specific targets, like owning 75% of the race line in a lap.

Apart from that, if you’re in a car you can handle well, the game’s a dream to run. There is no greater joy than stringing a couple of perfect corners at the Nurburgring in a Gallardo. Honestly. It’s only the fast corners that stuff gets hairy.

If the normal game mode is tough, drifting with the keyboard is impossible. And I mean it. It’s tough enought with a wheel, much more complicated than the drift from previous games, but with a keyboard, with no fine controls, you just can’t drift. Luckily, the game lets you progress through the career without worrying too much about drifting.

The game looks amazing. The attention to detail can really be seen when you watch a replay of a race. One look at the detailing on the cars, the track, and even the spectators, and you know that this is really, really well polished game. The cars are modeled beautifully, with every little detail, right from the rims to the wipers looking just like the real deal. And I haven’t even got to the cockpit yet. This is where the game really stands out. This game is meant to be played from this view. The dials and switches look good to be true. You get a real sense of speed in this view. As you blast past 150 mph, everything becomes a blur, literally. Everything, including the cockpit, turns into a haze, except the corner in the distance ahead. When you accelerate or brake, the camera moves accordingly to give you the sense of g-force. Crashes are spectacular. Damage is modeled really well, with bits falling off if you smash it up too bad. If you have a high speed crash, you momentarily lose your bearings. Everything becomes a blur, and you breathe deep. It’s awesome. Plus, by default, the game has no in-game music. Just menu music, along with drift music. You can turn on the in-game music, but it doesn’t get very loud. It’s best you leave the compositions to the V8s and V12s…

There are a couple of real places like the Nurburgring, Spa, Laguna Seca, but then there are plenty of make believe circuits as well, but that’s OK. They’re all done really well. The game may be tough, but is extremely entertaining at the same time. If only I had a wheel to play it with…sigh…

My Rating : 8/10

Tags: Games, NFS, Reviews, Shift