Amigos, fans e simpatizantes de simuladores... Vou começar pela conclusão:

O jogo é excelente, está de parabens, a fidelidade é incrivel. Recomendo este jogo para aqueles que querem ter uma EXPERIENCIA REAL de pilotagem. Abaixo vou listar alguns pontos que fazem as opniões divergirem:

1- Como falei o jogo tem uma mecânica real de pilotagem. O que deixa muitas pessoas irritadas. Afinal já estão acostumadas aos jogos de arcade e similares que entram com tudo nas curvas e saem ilesos, sem nunca ter usado o pedal do freio na vida. Neste jogo as curvas tem que ser feitas de 80-100 km/h, o que é muito dificil de controlar, já que tem carros potentes que podem ultrapassar os 300km/h. Esta é a maior complicação, estar acostumado a sempre dar o maximo que o carro pode. Neste jogo não pode ser assim, vc tem de dirigir com cautela, pois em altas velocidades o carro fica instavel.

2- A sensação de pilotagem é excelente. E voce tem de aceitar A VERDADE que é: VOCE NÃO TEM EXPERIENCIA EM PILOTAR UM CARRO DE CORRIDA DE VERDADE, não importa quantos jogos como top gear e grand turismo tenha jogado. E pilotar um carro popular para ir trabalhar e um carro preparado em pista são realidades bem diferentes. Então vá com e aproveite o jogo, vá aprendendo e com o tempo voce vai estar profissional.

3- A dica que dou é: comece jogando com carros menos potentes, carros mais proximos dos que usamos no dia a dia, eu recomendo o Honda Civic. Para ir se acostumando. Faça o teste, pilote um Honda civic de começo e um carro super potente e veja, de inicio voce vai preferir e se dar melhor com os menos potentes, pois estes, nós já estamos habituados a dirigir no dia a dia.


Espero que ajude. E eu me divirto muito jogando isso com meus amigos do trabalho. O melhor do jogo é isso, competir com os amigos do dia a dia.

Sept 2023 Update.
Once again unable to access the game.
---------------------------------

Excellent game.

However.

EA's policy on 3 installs stops you playing it.
If you have to reinstall this game more than 3 times, you cannot continue to play without getting support from EA.

Read on to see how difficult it is to reactivate!


---Update--- Customer service.

Chat Started: Monday, March 09, 2020.
Chat Origin: ********
Agent Mohit B
( 2s ) Mohit: Thank you for contacting EA HELP, my name is Mohit, may I start with your first name please?
( 1m 14s ) P: Hello Mohit, My name is *****
( 1m 23s ) Mohit: Hi *****, I hope you are doing good.
( 1m 39s ) Mohit: I can see that you have contacted us regarding game access would you like to elaborate a bit here?
( 2m 7s ) P: Sure, I have Need For Speed Shift 2 purchased on Steam. I cannot play it
( 2m 22s ) P: Shift 2 unleashed
( 4m 33s ) Mohit: As per our conversation I get that you are not able to access the game that you have purchased via Steam Am I correct ?
( 4m 58s ) P: Yes
( 5m 26s ) Mohit: may i know if you have updated the password of both the accounts ?
( 5m 45s ) Mohit: Sorry the message was not for you
( 5m 53s ) Mohit: I would have felt the same way as you are feeling now, if I would have been in your position.I will surly provide you the best possible assistance .
( 6m 6s ) Mohit: May I ask you few questions here so that I can locate your account, verify if required and help you to access the game in right manner?
( 6m 15s ) P: Yes please
( 6m 46s ) Mohit: Thank you for allowing me
( 6m 53s ) Mohit: Could you please share the Email address linked to your Origin account ? So I can locate your account .
( 7m 8s ) P: I don't have a Origin account
( 7m 52s ) Mohit: Alright , are you trying to launch the game via steam ?
( 7m 59s ) P: Yes
( 8m 51s ) Mohit: Thank you for mentioning that , let me have a look
( 9m 39s ) Mohit: Thanks for waiting
( 10m 7s ) Mohit: i would like to inform you that you need to contact Steam to fix the issue as we don't have access to those accounts .
( 10m 26s ) P: Steam can't help
( 10m 41s ) P: It is the activation limit set my EA
( 10m 52s ) P: by*
( 11m 18s ) Mohit: Sir , we don't have any control over Steam accounts , I would have done that right away if the option was available here .
( 12m 20s ) P: All the support on Steam says I must contact Ea to have the Limit raised.
( 13m 13s ) P: It is a limit placed by EA on serials.
( 14m 12s ) Mohit: Alright , let me check with my team once
( 16m 16s ) Mohit: Thanks for waiting
( 16m 57s ) Mohit: I just checked with my team and trust me you need to contact Steam regarding the issue as we don't have access to the Steam accounts
( 17m 39s ) P: I have previously contacted Ea and had the issue fixed by unlocking the activation limit
( 17m 58s ) P: So have others on the steam forums
( 18m 4s ) Mohit: Alright , please help me with the case number once
( 20m 19s ) P: all I can find is the following email.
( 20m 34s ) P: Dear *****,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.
I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to you. I have increased activation limit of your game key. Now you will be able to activate and play your game without any problem.
Should you require further assistance about this or any Electronic Arts games in the future, please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledge base
****Link removed****
Best Regards,
Akhilesh
Electronic Arts - World Wide Customer Experience
( 21m 4s ) P: ****
( 21m 32s ) Mohit: Please wait once
( 21m 43s ) Mohit: Let me have a look again
( 22m 52s ) P: I have found the case number
( 22m 54s ) P: Case ****
( 23m 56s ) Mohit: Thanks for waiting and sorry for miscommunication
( 24m 5s ) Mohit: Please try to launch the game now
( 24m 28s ) P: Still won't activate
( 24m 48s ) Mohit: You need to download the game again
( 25m 17s ) Mohit: Please try to download the game via Origin
( 25m 33s ) P: No, I purchased the game on steam I do not want Origin
( 27m 24s ) Mohit: alright , please share the game code with me
( 27m 32s ) P: ****
( 28m 11s ) Mohit: Just a minute , checking that now
( 30m 9s ) Mohit: Please try to launch the game now
( 30m 29s ) P: It now works. Thank you.
( 30m 38s ) Mohit: I'm glad to hear that
( 30m 48s ) Mohit: Sorry for miscommunication
( 31m 1s ) Mohit: You can also enjoy the game via origin now
( 31m 8s ) Mohit: Is there anything else that I can help you with?
( 31m 9s ) P: No thanks
( 31m 15s ) Mohit: Thank you for contacting EA Help.
For any queries with EA games, you can always contact us or please check our knowledge base at ****Link removed**** for self-help options and ****Link removed**** for in-game queries. We'll send a follow up E-mail after this chat summarizing our conversation. Thank you for contacting EA Help
( 31m 21s ) Mohit: Wish you a beautiful day ahead
( 31m 27s ) P: Thank you for your assistance Mohit. Good bye
Chat Ended by: Agent
Chat Duration: 31m 29s

Um jogo que qualquer fã de sim racing deve experimentar, apesar de ser de 2011/12 tem quase o mesmo detalhamento que os jogos atuais. O unico ponto fraco é o facto de não ter pistas como Le Mans, Estoril, a configuração Oval de Monza (como pista própria sem ultrapassar os cones que a bloqueiam no traçado de 1958), a configuração de 24H de Nurburgring, etc...
Mas no geral recomendo o jogo.

Product key will run out of installs - don't buy this on steam

estava pegano normal agora de parou de funcionar nem abre o jogo oque eu faço ?

sim e nao
a jogabiidade online ta uma &(#%

Also known as "...oh yeah, Shift has a sequel".

Shift 2: Unleashed is a racing video game developed by Slightly Mad Studios and published by Electronic Arts.

Career Mode
Under the wings of Formula D Champion Vaughn Gittin Jr. you will start a journey to improve your driving skills by participating in a variety of motorsports, from retro car racing to endurance series and drifting, with ultimate goal being reaching and becoming a FIA GT1 World Champion. In game only.

Gameplay
Unleashed offers more of "authentic and dynamic" racing simulator gameplay known from first title, this time with improvements and few additions.

It follows same concept resolving around completing races, earning plus spending hard earned money for vehicles or upgrades, and gathering experience to unlock new racing categories.

Events contain multiple single-races where your goal is to simply be first at the finish line, with occasional series races that can span out even into 5 races per series.
Most of them features lap race format and to make things interesting and variant, contain multiple restrictions like specific production date of a vehicle or performance level.
Like mentioned previously, events are organized so you can experience a variety of motorsport branches, but they still contain known events like elimination or beating a set lap time record.

This time progression is not tied up to collecting stars, but to experience points you gather during the race. Each driver level unlocks new events and rewards you with cash, vehicle, or visual customization like new stickers.
You earn experience by position at the end of the race, performing all kinds of action during them like overtakes, mastering corners or driving optimal track route, and by achieving basic secondary objectives, driving a clean lap, beating a set lap time and so on.
There is no "Driver style" anymore, where specific actions would count towards aggressive or precise style of driving- every point gets put into one basket.

Driving itself hasn't changed from the first entry, still closer to simulation, focused on detailed handling and precision with realistic senee of speed. That's why I once again recommend playing this title by using a controller or obvious steering/racing wheel.
And just like other racing title, it has a decent amount of difficulty options and mechanics you can turn off or on for increased/decreased challenge, allowing everyone to find settings that will fit.

New additions include night-time racing for even more intense action on track, in-helmet camera for better experience and Autolog, an online system used previously in Hot Pursuit, adding elements such as friends ranking during events.

Numbers time. Shift 2 features over 140 vehicles from almost 40 manufacturers, with majority of them being available to be customized, upgraded and tuned, from average hot hatches and classic American muscle cars to super/hyper cars and GT vehicles.
Game also contains over 35 different tracks, including legendary circuits such as Spa-Francorchamps, Suzuka or Mazda Raceway to city-based tracks in London, Shanghai or Miami.

Playtime, replayability and other modes
Completing every single event/100% a Carrer Mode took me 35-40 hours.
Unless you skipped some events and want to return in order to complete them, I don't see a reason to replay it, considering it is packed with content even for one playthrough.
There is Multiplayer mode but very, very inactive and unless you will grab yourself a group of friends, you won't be able to play it. And even if you do, mode gets shutdown September 1st this year so you won't play for long.

Pros and cons
Shift 2 Unleashed offers one of the best first person driving experiences when it comes to racing games, even after entire decade since it got released.
It's quite impressive how it nails the actual feel of driving from this perspective thanks to new camera viewpoint. It moves just like the head of an real racing driver, from side to side as you prepare, enter and take corners, it snaps forward when hard braking or a crash occur. Screen will start to become blurry on higher speed as tunnel vision effect will appear. During the night-time races lower visibility will also become an important factor. Taking a "Corkscrew" on Laguna Seca, after uphill apex and then dropping in blind into Turn 9, ending up down 18 meters from the top never felt more exciting and scary, unless you count in pure racing simulators or actual real life.
Outside of new camera experience, better organized events and progression, with bigger track variety are a massive positive aswell. You are no longer dropped into biggest versions of some circuits and instead move through smaller national variants to learn them, making it less repetitive and closer to motorsport steps.
Game also fixed balancing issue with upgrade system, where in previous game upgrading a vehicle had no impact upon vehicles of other drivers, resulting in one sided fight. Now improving your machine means everyone else also has a better car aswell.
Elements such as driving style or customization remain the same and that is a good thing, didn't had any issues with them.
Great audiodesign, a good set of tracks used in main menu and loading screens, while engine sound great from both exterior and interior.

AI is a mixed bag, wacky moves such as first driver going off the track to drop into last place have been fixed, but late game it lacks reaction, often giving away positions with no defense.
One of weirder maneuvers is decreasing experience level cap by more than half of what previous game had. While now with reworked progression system, first few levels have to be easy to gain in order to give player a freedom of choosing events, I don't see a reason for such massive cut, it makes a big chunk of the late game pointless, as you gain xp and can complete secondary objectives just for the sake of it.

Unfortunately game doesn't deliver same magic when using different camera angles. Sense of speed and blurry screen are still there but during contact, corner taking or wheel-to-wheel battles other angles fall flat in comparision.
Performance wise game is very poor. Multiple crashes upon different stages of the game, with one even resulting in career progression lost.

Final words and conclusion
If you want to play this title you have to grab a shovel and dig into third party sites across the internet to get a key as game is not available to buy on online stores anymore, including here on Steam.
Second element worth mentioning is that Unleashed automatically contains additional free content packs that increase amount of vehicles and events, those are Legends and Speedhunters Packs.

Shift 2 delivers more of great driving experience from first entry, with improvements and new additions, while suffering from poor performance.

Check out my curator page for more reviews!

"Activation Limit Reached. Contact EA support"

Supports solution is to add it to my Origin account. Nah, rather use Steam.

Too bad, guess I'm never playing again.

This is by far one of the best Need For Speeds ever made if you are the kind of guy who likes simulated driving and realism. Great camera and great graphics. This game is not as good as it could be from the start though. You have to patch the game up a bit before it really is the best of the best. If you go to a website called nogripracing.com and sign up, you can download all the mods for this game. What I recomend you do, and this will be confusing to most of you your first time, but download and install the unofficial patch from no grip racing, then install PTMu which will give very realistic handling and car manuverability. At that point this game becomes an absolute masterpiece. I cannot stress enough how much fun this game really is. If you enjoy tuning and testing cars out, and then getting to race them, then I don't see a reason as to why you wouldn't love this game. You don't even need to play career mode, just buy a car and mess around with it. Too bad this game isn't as popular as it desserves to be and I'm afraid for that reason that EA won't make another "Shift"... Please EA, this game is already very good, just make a refresh with better graphics and the PTMu time mod integrated and you'll have an extremely realisting yet very fun and challenging experience. Btw you should at least be using an xbox controller to play this game if not an actual wheel, that will give you much better control.

Forza 5 is the racer I really want to play but this game is scratching that itch for me at the moment on PC.

The handling is very sensitive and each car takes some getting used to but is eventually very satisfying to drive. A good range of difficulty settings and driver assists which you can switch off means you can give yourself a fair challenge and feel satisfied when you drive well. The helmet camera and head physics were my favourite feature from the first Shift game and they return in Shift 2 to make the sensation of racing at speed only just in control of your car, really engaging. Unfortunately the immersion for me goes no further as there is no support for the Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel which is my wheel of choice on PC, although in fairness plenty of Logitech wheels are supported. This limitation plus the distinctly floaty nature of the cars' handling causes me to play this game as more of an arcade racer than I do a game like Forza 4, but it is still enjoyable when played with the right expectation. The trusty 360 gamepad is supported and works very well for racing as you would expect. The menus are mostly easy to navigate with the 360 pad but all the on-screen button prompts are for the keyboard. It took me a while to work out how to save settings with the controller (press start) but after some trial and error I can deal with the menus well enough.

Shift 2 has a wide selection of real cars and tracks plus a smattering of fictional courses, some of which return from the first game. Full car customisation is provided allowing you to upgrade the performance and customise the appearance of the vehicles quite dramatically. Cars are given an overall performance rating and using this are separated into categories A, B, C, D just as in the original Shift game and familiar to players of other racing sims such as Forza Motosport.

The game looks pretty good in 1080p and on my machine (i5, 7850, 8GB RAM) with all presets set to High runs at 50-70 frames per second on the whole, though on certain corners of certain tracks framerate drops into the high 30s. I would like to tweak my settings a bit more to achieve a minimum of 60 but the game offers no benchmark mode so checking the effect of a graphics setting takes a long time - many changes even require you to restart the game. It is also disappointing that the low resolution cutscenes were clearly pre-rendered with consoles in mind which makes the unskippable cinematics during the career mode look very out-dated - cinematics should be used to flatter a game, but in the case of Shift 2 it's a relief to get past them and into the game which itself looks very attractive.

The Autolog and Online play require an EA Origin account (though the game does not require the Origin client). Unlike some players on the community hub I had no trouble at all activating the game or fighting with any DRM. The game installed and played easily from Steam just like any other game. Steam Overlay popped up showing me the product key when I first launched the game but I dismissed that as I have never had to type it in yet. I have tried to get an online match on two occassions and both times I was the only player online and had to create a lobby. Hopefully the sale weekend will get some new players lobbying up but I would not recommend this title if you are looking for multiplayer racing. It does provide a satisfying single player experience for players who enjoy racing against AI and testing themselves on simulations of the best cars and circuits in motorsport.

To my mind this game was a good buy at the recent sale price of £4.99 but I would hesitate to recommend it at the current full price of £19.99. It is true there are not a lot of other games of this type available on the PC which have the same degree of polish as Shift 2 Unleashed, but there are definitely better experiences out there on Steam for your hard-earned £20.