Review by Fabiano “Deimos” Backpack
Video Review (Xbox 360) Shift 2 Unleashed - available on GamesVideoTV
This kind of event unlocks a large part of the whole game, the fleet and of course the upgrades. In short, if you do some track races and then dedicate yourself to Drift, be sure that in the middle of the afternoon, you can safely archive the game. What does this absurd choice entail on the part of programmers? Basically it leads you not to properly experience the part dedicated to the career that without the help of Drift races, it also becomes tedious if you are not able to find a clean driving model. As far as we are concerned, this kind of choice remains an ugliness or a simplification that is really too accentuated, unlike the previous chapter.
ALL ON THE TRACK
We shift into gear and start in fourth gear. Shift 2 is a joy for car collectors and real track enthusiasts. As for the roaring engines, know that the game comes to offer something like 145 cars for a total of 36 manufacturers: Lamborghini, Porsche, Aston Martin, Macerati, Pagani, Alfa Romeo, Shelby, Bugatti, Wolkswagen etc are only the first names that jump into my mind. The real novelty of the cars, however, concerns their cataloging ... we will no longer have dozens and dozens of useless or underperforming cars but we will be able to concentrate only on the top of each brand: from small to large-displacement cars. On the track front, however, big surprises: 35 tracks (almost double the first chapter) with a very varied and well balanced design including the famous Monza, Suzuka, Brno, Brands Hatch, Nurburgring, Enna Pergusa, Monte Carlo etc to finish up tracks invented from scratch by programmers and obviously the city ones.
Returning to the bombs on the cars and therefore on the aesthetic side of the latter, know that as you advance through your career, you can unlock new upgrades and items dedicated to pure Tuning such as paints, aerographs, spoilers, ailerons and so on. Really a lot of space has been dedicated to this factor which, as always happens in the NFS series, becomes an essential element to differentiate the various cars in our / your fleet. Finally, know that there is full support for both visual and mechanical damage - you can even lose your wheels… and goodbye to the race.
WANT BAD THINGS
So we come to the really very bad things of the title.
First of all, we must report a truly terrible artificial intelligence, both in terms of tactics and trajectories on the track. More than once, strangely given that the game is based on clean driving, we will be bumped and thrown off the road not only by one car but also by all the others that seem to have problems with slips ... that is, one jumps off the bridge and others follow. The driving cleanliness of the opponents is so poor that at times it feels like playing a destruction derby rather than a track racing title. Other times, I happened to see an opponent knocked off the track by myself and then found him on the podium at the end of the lap, which is really incomprehensible and crazy if you think that when we put even a tire in the grass, we are almost planted inside ... the others, on the other hand, will come out of bad trajectories in a very simple way. Overcoming these problems becomes a kind of game within the game because if at a normal level of difficulty you can also save yourself from certain attitudes, in the higher levels, it seems that the AI ​​becomes totally unstable even among several competitors controlled by the computer and not. it is difficult to see rear-end or detached rear-ends that really leave you speechless.
Another thing that has left me really perplexed is the work done on the graphics engine.
Technically, the development engine is the same as in the first chapter, embellished for the times thanks to a series of very beautiful effects but what leaves you speechless is the heaviness that an almost ninja computer requires to go really fluid - oddity because at par of the previous chapter, things were going really well on the same machine where the title was tested. Unfortunately, as an addition to heavy graphics, the programmers gave us a series of bugs like I haven't seen in a long time: entire textures that disappear during the race, really weird slowdowns even with only one machine on the screen (mine), freeze of the game and finally, exit to the desktop when you least expect it. Anyway, we tried to decrease the graphics settings, not only going down the resolution (from 2024 to 1680px) but also setting a few shadows and zero effects such as blur and anti-aliasing (from 16x to 4x) - let's say that things improve also talking about frames rate but it is really inexplicable to see a Crysis 2 running at maximum detail (so to speak) without making a turn and seeing Shift 2 snap on the same configuration. We therefore hope in the arrival of some corrective patch (perhaps already in development) that will improve performance.
DO I TAKE IT OR LESS?
Concluding with the review, is Shift 2 a game recommended or not? It is difficult to give 100% correct advice for every taste of the players but we can tell you that if you loved the first chapter and wanted some sort of improved game, personally I think you will be quite disappointed by this new chapter: there are no improvements if anything cuts to that which was already considered an excellent game. Unfortunately, various cuts and changes have influenced not only a really incorrect artificial intelligence but also a graphics that all in all can be seen but which do not enhance.
Among the super news, I have not forgotten to talk about it but I wanted to do it in closing, I point out the addition of the phantom vision from the pilot's helmet. This new choice mainly involves an almost total identification with regards to track racing and I think it will delight many players who want to feel right inside the driving cockpit when they play. For all the others, on the other hand, those accustomed to the external view of the vehicles, I think it will only give the headache. I close by mentioning the excellent audio effects (the title is all in español) and obviously the present multiplayer mode: called Autolog that NFS fans will know by heart.
Final vote 7,9 - 8,5 / 10 - Double vote really very necessary to do for Shift 2. The 79 basically concerns the PC version, the one that has been tested and therefore did not convince at all as regards the graphics and the heaviness of the game engine and above all the frame rate on a very powerful machine (to be improved with a future patch). The bugs among other things, are really very annoying and inexplicable for a game like this. Ultimately, the 85 can be safely given to the console version which certainly won't have the same problems as the PC counterpart.
