... The physics make it feel like a sim, but everything around it just screams Need for Speed...
I think this quote ultimately sums up my feeling after playing last night for about 4 hours. I started to write a review and found that after a few paragraphs, my thoughts sounded overwhelmingly negative and that's not really the impression I want to give because it does plenty of things right. Speed is a play in contradictions. As others have said, it has the heart of a Sim masquerading itself as an arcade game. And unfortunately at times, it has the effect of a 3 Ring Circus playing right in your face, with the clowns doing a juggling act in your peripheral vision and seemingly distracting you from the task at hand.
I want to make a few disclaimers before getting into my review. I sit in front of a 55 inch, 1080P, Plasma TV and I play with a G25. So my comments on the visuals may seem a bit harsh. My goal was to start right from the beginning in PRO mode with no assists and dive into things head first without a parachute.
The (PS3 version) automatically installs itself on the PS3 the first time you load it. The process takes about 10 minutes and uses a little over 3GB.
A cautionary remark--it hangs for about 2-3 minutes at the 99% mark but it doesn't freeze so don't panic.
Once the game is installed, you're treated to this opening video:
I was impressed with this video the first time I saw it. Much less so with it playing on the screen in front of me and it became readily apparent that if you really want the photo-realistic looking images and game play that we've seem on some of these HD videos, you'll be buying the PC version. At 720P, looking at comparable screen shots between the Xbox360 and PS3, you're hard pressed to tell the difference. But you can clearly notice a difference between the PC version graphics. It's not to say the graphics are "poor". Some of the tacks are beautifully rendered. But over-all, they simply did not live up to my expectations. I was expecting a rival to GT5P and it isn't.
One nit-pick which kind of set me off was that it did not automatically recognize my wheel, even though it was plugged into port 1. I have an old USB keyboard plugged into port two and being a Mac keyboard, it has two additional USB ports built in, for which I normally attach my controller (also assigned to port 2) and I use the other port to charge my headset when not in use. Just like with the Dirt 2 Demo, after several attempts, the only way I could get the game to recognize my wheel was to restart it from the XMB and unplug my keyboard from port 2. Prologue works fine. Ferrari Challenge works fine. Supercar Challenge works fine. I don't see why this is such a challenge for developers.
(Sorry--here comes the negativity again--down boy, down!)
But since I'm already on the subject, the game does recognize the G25 but there's only one configuration available. And neither of the buttons on the wheel itself are mapped or mappable. So if I want to change views or look back, I HAVE to use the buttons on the shifter. I hope this is something they address in a future patch. Those with a similar itch, might want to
wander over here and offer your thoughts. But I'm happy to say that the shifter does work in H pattern and there is an option to use the clutch. And yes you can stall.
Not being an active gamer outside of racing sims, I wasn't really familiar with the whole process of registering your game with EA and your EA friend list (which seems like the PSN list with a different font) but I was able to merge my recently created Ea account with my PSN ID and log in. Once that's done the game forces you to have a 'try out' race with an E46 BMW at the Brand Hatch Indy circuit. The first time around you don't have an option to adjust the settings. Shifting was automatic, the racing line was on, the car felt a bit 'odd'. After the first lap you can adjust the settings. I put it into full pro mode and tried it again.
Biggles, you're right. I do need to get used to it. It feels quite different again from the games I'm used to and it took me about 3 laps to develop a feel for it. The brakes are very sensitive and without ABS, you can easily lock them with a good jab, even if you don't press the pedal all the way to the floor. The FFB is pretty good and you have a good feeling going over curbs and it gets lighter when you crest hills or get a little air. But in general the car seems to transition constantly between oversteer and understeer with nothing in between. By the end of the night, I was able to overcome this slightly by just being more sensitive with my steering and throttle inputs but I think it's still a little extreme and lacks the precision of GT5P and the sense of weight transfer from FC/SCC. But it has a unique style all it's own that I probably just have to get used to.
After this first race, the game judges you and gives you some credits to buy your first "Tier 1" car. Four tiers are available and unless you unlock the tiers by earning points in various different ways, you can't 'buy' cars from the higher tiers. I chose a VW GTI as my first car as I figured a neutral front driver would give me a good place to start. The game allows you to change the color, add livery options or choose a 'sponsored livery' for your car. There are also tuning adjustments and performance mods you can buy or add.
Rather than starting my carer, I jumped right into 'single race', chose Spa and did a few laps to familiarize myself with the car and the track. The track is beautifully rendered, if not quite as impressive as the PC version. And I thought it was great that you can knock over cones or styrofoam cubes and they'll sit there on the track.
Images like the one above can be taken during the Replay mode after the race. Photos are not saved on the PS3 but automatically uploaded to your account on Needforspeed.com. BTW, if this photo is too large or annoying I"ll take it down but it's in native resolution so I thought it was a good example to put up. It looks pretty nice here. But when it's scaled up to fit a 55" TV....hmmm....yeah.
I saw one of my buddies was online and playing Shift so I invited him for an on-line race. As previously mentioned, the game does allow you to choose the car, track, conditions, number of players (up to 8), etc. And one thing that's nice is it allows you to drive 'select' other cars in an on-line race even if you don't own them. So you get to try them out. I did about 5 races with
Solidmic (thanks my friend) all at Spa, in the VW, Mazda RX8, Lamborghini and Maserati MC12. The faster cars really give you a sense of speed in an amazing way. I liked the cockpit view but the blur effect did get annoying in that you couldn't see your shift points or mirrors. I switched to bonnet view and realized there were no mirrors (sorry solidmic). LOL.
Back in the lobby, the clock is always running. You have two minutes to choose your options and car and the race starts. You can start the race early if everybody is ready but otherwise, ready or not, after two minutes you're racing. So no long time to think, no in-lobby tunning, and no extended pre-post race chats. But there IS live chat in the lobby and during the race (thank goodness) although even with just one other person, I found it a bit spotty.
The racing itself though was smooth and lag free. In fact, it was some of the best on-line I had ever experienced. No bouncing, disappearing cars from Ferrari Challenge, no wild swerving and blinking from F1:CE, no wilding flailing cars from Prologue--just smooth, stable, crystal clear tracking. Now granted, there were only two of us in the lobby but it was really well executed and for all my other complaints about this game, it's one feature which really shines.
Unfortunately, it's a little hard to see because things are popping up in the HUD non-stop the entire time, like ducks in a shooting gallery. And the points system is ridiculous beyond the pale. You get points for seemingly everything. You're on the racing line: point. You're drafting another car: point. You took that corner very well: point. You ran off the track: point. You hit a wall: point. OK, I'm exaggerating but you get the...point. And instead of being able to just race, the HUD is a constant hodgepodge of information being thrown at you, non-stop. There's an option to minimize it and I'll have to try it.
It's still hard for me to quantify this game because I have to come to terms with what it is and check and balance what my expectations were. I'll try to play more tonight and maybe I'll be a bit more enthusiastic. As Biggles, suggests, maybe I just need to get used to it and get a feel for the physics. It really has some impressive features and some good things going for it. But the overall impression I was left with after a few hours, was that this game would have been a lot better if the SMS guys had just controlled everything in house and EA had kept their hands off of it.
As Solidmic said in the lobby last night, "It's not SIM enough to please the hardcore sim guys and it's not arcade enough to please the traditional NFS guys. So it's going to end up alienating both". I think there's a danger trying to be all things to all people. And we may be seeing it here.
More to come. Right now, I'm still on the fence.
Nice touch in my opinion... I have not tried drifting yet so I cannot say much about that... 
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