Videogames: Good crashers earn more than good racers

After the last few disappointing installments of Need For Speed, EA Games took the reins from ITS Black Box development studio, creators of the previous seven NFS titles, and passed them to Vancouver-based Slightly Mad Studios.

The result is Need For Speed: Shift. Instead of the well-worn formula of illegal street races, police chases and C-grade plots, we have a genuine attempt to create a more realistic racer.

Popping the disk into the Xbox 360, I was thrown directly into a race, thanks to a kind of automatic way of setting the difficulty curve without needing to ask for player input. The game adjusts not only the AI skill level, but also the sensitivity of the controls and the driving assistance of the brakes and steering. All of these generated settings can be quickly changed in the options menu.

Once the controls were set, I was off in Career Mode to make my way to the top of the NFS World Tour. You start out as a Tier 1 driver with access to an odd range of suitable cars, from the Honda Civic Si to Nissan 350Z. As you win races and complete objectives, you earn the stars you need to unlock the higher tiered cars and races.

In a way, it feels geared toward players with short attention spans, because you generally only have to complete half the races in a tier before the next tier is unlocked.

Adding to this instant gratification, you don't even need to earn virtual cash to buy cars; if you're flush with Microsoft Points, you can simply buy your cars and upgrades with real money. For example, a McLaren F1 costs 240 points, or about $3.50.

The in-game racing is actually a lot of fun. It's the first NFS game in a long time that managed a good balance between realism and arcade. While I wouldn't say the game feels as real as Gran Turismo or Forza, it's close enough that fans of either series won't feel like they're sitting at the kids' table.

The bits of realism that have been shaved off were done to give Shift a real sense of speed. Cars no longer turn on a dime as in the previous games, but when you're driving at full throttle down a long straight you feel like you're going the 200 miles per hour the game says you're going – an effect that's not so apparent in the more realistic sims.

And there are a lot of subtle effects that add to this arcade sense of speed. When you accelerate, the camera position shifts back like it's being pulled back by the G forces; when you brake, it moves forward.

A touch I particularly like is when you crash at speed: the screen goes grey and fuzzy and you can hear your artificial self gasp and your heart pumping hard. It really makes you cringe as you smash into the wall.

The highlight of NFS: Shift is probably Car Battle mode, which puts you in the seat of a race- prepped car like a 911 GT2 and pits you head-to-head with a similarly balanced rival car like a Nissan GT-R Spec V. The race tends to be close, alternating between one car leading and the other chasing; the best of three races is the winner. It's extremely fun.

One place NFS doesn't quite satisfy is the weird middle ground between the old smash-'em-up NFS and this new more race-oriented version. Besides earning stars, which unlock new races and cars, you also earn driver points, which can result in sponsorship and is sort of a generic way to track what level of racer you are.

There are two kinds of points you can earn: precision points, for following the racing line or cleanly passing opponents, and aggression points, for crashing into other cars, spinning opponents off the road and generally doing things that would get you thrown out of a real race.

These points seem a bit out of place in a more realistic game. And it's a lot easier to earn points by smashing opponents than driving cleanly, which means that when playing the multi-player version of NFS, it's more like a NASCAR demolition derby than a real race.

Sadly, this game also lacks a split-screen two-player mode, so if you want to play with your friends, prepare to do it alone at home.