Year of construction: 2009
Genres: Arcade / Racing (Cars) / Simulator / 3D
developer: Slightly Mad Studios / EA Black Box
Publisher: Electronic Arts
System requirements for maximum rendering quality recommended by the gameGPU website:
The minimum
Operating system: Windows XP SP3, Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 256 MBRAM Radeon HD 4650 or GeForce GT 8600
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 8 GB free space
Effective
Operating system: Windows XP SP3, Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MBRAM Radeon HD 4670 or GS GeForce 8800
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 8 GB free space
Optimal
Operating system: Windows XP SP3, Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Quad 3.0 GHz
RAM: 3 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MBRAM Radeon HD 4850 or GeForce GTX 8800
DirectX: DirectX®9
Winchester: 8 GB free space
Official description of the game
Need for Speed SHIFT is a new stage in the development of the legendary racing series Need for Speed. You have never seen such a “need for speed” before! Illegal racing on the streets of night cities is a thing of the past. Now you will find big, serious motorsport, where serious passions flare up in the standings, and cars on the track reach speeds that are inaccessible to any sports car on city highways! Need for Speed SHIFT focuses on spectacular and unprecedented realism. Here you don’t just see the car and the track, but feel every turn, every hill and every pebble under the wheel. Driving a car with a view from behind the wheel will give you an unforgettable experience. The game perfectly conveys the sensations of a driver rushing at great speed along a winding road. You roll slightly when turning, tossed up on hills and mercilessly shake, roll over and shake in accidents.
Features:
• The screen will turn into a windshield. The game so accurately conveys the sensations of the racer that the familiar surroundings disappear, and the screen turns into the windshield of a car rushing at insane speed. Looking at what is happening through the eyes of the driver, you will feel the influence of inertia and gravity, and also see with your own eyes how the world transforms when the speedometer goes off scale. At enormous speed, vision is completely focused on the road, and all nearby objects seem to blur.
• Who you are? A specially created Driver Profile system tracks your evolution in the game and creates your unique image as a racer. It takes into account many parameters, including driving style, number of victories and the number of points scored for masterfully completed turns and overtaking. Driver Profile affects career development and even how new cars are unlocked.
• Unforgettable car accidents. Colliding with another vehicle or a static obstacle can truly feel like you’ve been involved in a serious accident. A complex combination of sound and visual effects creates a stunning illusion of presence. Is it easy for real racers to continue racing after a collision at high speed? Now you will find out for yourself!
• Comprehensive tuning! The car is in your power, do whatever you want with it. Tuning is necessary for two tasks. Firstly, it allows you to get the car to behave on the track that you need. Secondly, it makes the car unique. You can experiment with both the appearance of the car and the interior design.
• Photorealistic cars and tracks. You can get behind the wheel of 70 cars, meticulously copied from real-life cars. These include the Pagani Zonda F, Audi RS4 and Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. The races take place on real tracks, such as Willow Springs and Laguna Seca, and on fictional routes, such as in central London and Tokyo.
• Collective racing. In addition to the single-player career, the game features several collective online modes.
• From the creators of GT Legends and GTR 2. Together with the Black Box studio, the Slightly Mad Studios team, famous for the serious sports car simulators GT Legends and GTR 2, worked on the game.
Review: Playability
We expected the worst. The fact that the GTR developers made the game did not bode well for fans of arcade racing. It seemed like the game would repeat the story of the boring Pro Street. But fortunately for us this did not happen. Although the game was positioned as a simulator, there is something arcade-like in it, something that you don’t see, but you feel…… From the very beginning of the gameplay, the game adapts to our level of driving and allows you to drive without greatly straining the nervous system. Although some associate the game as a parody of GRID, this is not so – the game has its own unique feature.
The tracks are varied, the races too, there are a huge number of cars – what else is missing for a full-fledged drive? Of course, crazy races through night intersections with constant clashes with law enforcement agencies. We hope that the EA publisher will have mercy on gamers and pamper them with high-quality arcade racing games in the near future.
Review: Game Graphics
As for the game graphics, everything is in perfect order: the cars are amazing in their detail, the tracks are made of very high quality, the physical model is excellent. Of course, the environment doesn’t reach the level of a solid component, but it’s also done at a very high level.
If NFS Undercover, released last year, had a similar level of graphics, it would undoubtedly have become a hit.
Review: Resource-intensive game
As for the performance of video cards, it turned out to be up to par – almost all participants did an excellent job at their resolution with maximum graphics quality settings. The only exception is the budget class, where more than half of the subjects were outsiders.
The Achilles heel of this game may be the performance of the central processor, and it is clear that the game gives greater preference to those with more cache and cores. We recommend using a Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz processor to avoid FPS drops in the game.
Testing at maximum Low End quality settings at 1024×768 resolution
Half of the lower class turned out to be outsiders, but like everyone else…
Testing at maximum quality settings Midle End at 1280×1024 resolution
The middle class, with the exception of one video cards, looks very decent.
Testing at maximum High End quality settings at 1680×1050 resolution
Well, above all, everything is smooth with FPS and the owner of these video cards has no reason to worry. In general, it is quite comfortable to play on most video cards from both manufacturers, but it is clear that the game gives preference to NVIDIA video cards.
Conclusion: This game will clearly bring pleasure to hardcore simulator players and just those who like to drive. The game has decent graphics. In total, 29% of tested video cards were unable to cope with their task.
