Need For Speed: Shift...again.

This is a link to the first entry I wrote about NFS Shift, back in January this year.

http://therubbishgamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/need-for-speed-shift.html

Note that I have lazily used the same pictures for this entry as for the earlier one.

I have not been playing Lost Planet, as I said I would, but have played NFS: Shift incessantly since my last entry.  It is a lot more fun and less serious than I remembered it being; the demolition derby that I have now unlocked and raced being an example of this.

I have made progress in the game and have now tried almost all of the Tier 3 competitions.  They are pretty tough and the speed of the cars makes them hard to control.  Going back and trying the Tier 1 races after doing these I wonder how I ever had any problems.

I have made several new observations about the game.  The first is that the guy whose voice reminds you of a few blindingly obvious facts (like telling you to go at the start of the race) is annoying.  Another is that the loading times for the races are very long.  I've been playing Colin McRae Rally 2005 on the PC today and loading is almost instant.

There is tyre smoke in Shift.  This might seem like a small point but I saw an assessment of a trailer for the new F1 game and the person reviewing it pointed out that this would be the first F1 effort to feature smoke during wheel lock-ups, so Shift beat them by four years, though I'm sure other games did too.

See - just the same as before, only bigger.

The AI controls some cars very aggressively and I have often been the victim of what can only have been deliberate pushes off the road by an AI competitor.  I do not often watch touring car racing but I suspect that this would be illegal in the real thing and for that reason Shift is not as much of a simulator as I originally imagined it to be.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  You can get points towards your career progression by knocking others off the track and it's good fun to do so.  You can get points for all sorts of things; some are for precision racing and some are for aggression.  My experience so far tells me that the dark side is quicker and more seductive.

Although I imagine myself to have improved in this game I have only just won a minor badge for winning 20 races (that's races only, other contests like time-attack don't add to this).  The game has masses of different minor and major badges you can win for achieving simple goals or very difficult ones, as well as Playstation Trophies.

And so to my performance.  I am going to mark myself very low for intelligence because I don't look often enough at the mini-map and then I look at it for too long and crash.  This is not bad observation.  Observation is about noticing things which my or may not be there.  I know the map is there and that I need to use it but still don't because I'm an idiot.  Speed through the game is also poor because it requires good performance to unlock the next level and move on and I'm usually rubbish.

Speed through the game:  3

Intelligence:  2

Reactions and Accuracy: 5

Observation:  5

I seem to score myself lower every time.

I don't yet know what I will write about next time.  I am bidding for an Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on ebay but I probably won't have that till the end of the week.