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.

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!

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.

i have played all NFS games ever, well, almost all of them. and i have played my share of other racing games,
i will put it simple and useful, lets go through the features;

Gameplay (+)
---------------
lots of cars, lots of tracks, realistic driving
i have played Grid 1 and 2, this game is more realistic tan the two.
i have not played Assetto Corsa, Project Cars (is not released yet) or Grid AS, but driving in this game is realistic and enjoyable.
I thave set the Traction Control and Stablitiy Control nad Best Line to "off", Handling Mode to Elite, Steering and Braking Assist to "off", Anti-Lock Brakes and Damage to "on", and i cant ask for a more REAL, challenging driving experience.
Old cars are harder to control and newer cars (meaning newer technology) are easier to control.
very enjoyable experience. im playing with a XBOX 360 Controller for PC, and the vibration adds to the feel of driving alot.
no, you cant handbrake in the tight corners like other NFS titles, you have to learn how to control your car.
so a new track means hours of trying and learning with those "elite" settings.
this game has a real, working car tuning options, so for instance reducing or increasing the pressure of tires really change the way your car behave in corners.
<<THIS GAME IS NOT ABOUT HOW FAST YOU CAN DRIVE, ITS ABOUT HOW GOOD YOU CAN DRIVE.>>
i have only seen this real tuning settings in one game, and that was VW GT.
this game consists of a very nice replay system, after your race you can watch your driving. intense stuff!

AI (+)
---------------
your competitors learn from your driving and your behaviour, so if you tripped them out of the track they will do the same to you if they catch up to you.

Graphics (+)
---------------
for a 2011 game, it looks amazing.
it sure looks better than Grid 2 and Grid AS.
there is a real damage to your car and your (track) environment. you can crash your car, break your windshield, bust one wheel out and still drive if the damage did not destroy your engine. but you wont get too far!
my pc (FX8350 and GTX780) can not maintain a solid 60 fps on everything maxed.

you can watch a video of mine, displaying the game's amazing graphics here.

Vehicles (+)
---------------
you have access to lots of vehicles (around 160).
these consist of Supersport cars, street cars, customized old cars, performance cars etc.
you have a wide selection of car customization, tunings, visuals, decals, vinyls, engines, gearboxes etc.

Races (+)
---------------
missed drifting and drag race from NFS Underground?
they are back in this game! more realistic and a lot harder though!
you need to learn to tune your cars to get to that millie second which makes you the winner.


Game Performance (-)
---------------
Crashes, low FPS issues and freezes are common.

Sound (-/+)
---------------
music mostly is horrible, repetetive and boring (depressive?) but the sound effects and car sounds are realistic and great.


overall (+)
---------------
this is a great game. replayablitiy is high due to difficult challenges and there is a still alive multiplayer and competition going on.
9/10
Recommended!

You have to disable steering delay/damping in the config file (DampeningEnabled="0") and it plays great.

I played this game using the unofficial community patch by nogripracing, so I have no experience with the Vanilla version. Also I didn't delve deep into the tuning options and online.

As of this writing I clocked in around 37 hours and I am confident to say I really love this game. I played through the first SHIFT and it was my first ever racing game that made the cockpit view comfortable to play with. SHIFT 2 refined the experience with their new Helmet Cam -- The camera is attached to the driver's helmet and it mimics the head movement and shakiness when driving, gives you tunnel vision, and it blurs your vision when you hit a wall. A lot of people say the camera is disorienting, but personally I don't really think so. I was not once disorientated, confused or the effects got in the way of the gameplay. SHIFT 2 is arguably the only racing game that lets you truly be the driver, rather than be the car itself. You feel how scary speed is when driving at 200 miles per hour, underestimate the car, and the car will severely punish you. This what made this game so great for me.

Now for the negatives. The menu system is stylish, but atrocious. The key assignments for the buttons are all over the place. I am playing using the 360 controller and the game can't reassign the button icons to match the controller's.

Earning money is way too easy. Want to buy that certain car? Grind in Quick Race once your driver level is high. Select the Dakota Oval track, set it to one lap and no opponents, and bam, $20,000 per 35 seconds.

Visual customization is basic and practically useless.

The slightest bump and the slightest touch to the dirt will send your car spinning. To be fair, I haven't rammed a car or drove off-road in real life before, but these annoyances can ruin the entire race because the AI suddenly bumped into you or you get sucked to the dirt like a black hole.

Some of the DLCs are way too easy and one DLC broke the game's pace. The Speedhunter pack gives you the drag racing career, quarter mile career and access to some highly tuned cars. The problem is the cars are free to acquire. I won the drag race and quarter mile career without breaking a sweat because I had free access to the stupidly fast Nissan GT-R. Some of these cars can be used to your default career and I breezed past some of the events.

My narrator-guy-person-thing is annoying. I loved the British guy in SHIFT 1 and while the new guy is alright, he's too, uh... Not... I dunno. He's not British-ey and kawaii enough.

I hate drifting. I hate drifting in SHIFT 1, and I hate drifting in SHIFT 2.

The title of the game is stupid. Really? SHIFT 2 Unleashed? What's next? SHIFT 3 Insurrection? SHIFT 4 Reloaded?

Overall I love this game. The negatives are there and noticeable, but the core gameplay, the cars, the races, the tracks, the sights and sounds, are all great.

~I've put an embarrassing amount of time into this game on my 360, so coming back to it on PC has brought back alot of good and bad memories. Mostly good. I understand there's some sort of connectivity issue with autolog so for now I'm just gonna review some of the singleplayer experience, and whatever stuck out to me the most after all these years~

Welcome to Re;Project CARS, where every Honda comes out of the factory with straight cut gears and Vaughn Gittin has sage-like track experience in countries he's probably never heard of. This is one of my favorite racing games of last gen next to Gran Turismo 5 and Blur, but for now I'm just gonna list a few reasons why I think it's at least worth the 5 bucks it's listed for as I'm typing this.


So, the goods:
+Good selection of cars. You got your 20 special edition 997s as per usual, your straight piped automatic savage title G35s, your weird topless Sterling Moss thing, and sooo much more real tuning options than an NFS game deserves. You can p much make almost anything competitive in endgame if you know what you're doing. Not too much in the way of cosmetics but on that note, Shift 2 probably has the best selection of wheels in the entire NFS franchise. All things considered, it's not bad for what's essentially a spinoff series.

+Lotta lotta tracks, fictional and real. Nordschliefe to Bathurst to an abandoned Kmart warehouse in Nevada. Pretty much everything you wanted for Christmas except Tsukuba and Nikko. Want to jump your AP1 at Willow Springs like that one guy on VTEC Club a few months back? Yes sir of course right this way sir. Want to do Thursday Thunder at Irwindale? RP to your heart's content, it's there. Wanna see the animals at the Ebisu zoo? I'm sure there's a mod for that.

+Signature NFS sound design. If there's one thing this godforsaken franchise is consistently good at, it's this. The NA 13b sounds like trash, just how I like it. The VQs don't sound like trash, just how I like it. The LS7, oh my gosh. Best sounding LS7 ever put in a racing game IMO. Sounds like the downpipe is routed straight into your face.

+Wrecks are as horrific and violent (albeit inconsistent, more on that later) as the rating allows. High speed rolls automatically zoom the camera out to spectator's perspective so you can post on liveleak. How embarrassing...

+Visuals hold up pretty well for a 10 year old game. Not too much else I can say here, but the sense of speed is great, and night-racing coupled with my favorite cinematic helmet cam in the genre makes for the best survival horror experience I've had since 2005. Properly scary.


Some not so good stuff to watch out for:
-Unfortunately, part of what makes this game scary is the SUPER wonky contact registry and damage. If you so much as brush someone's door, the other driver will use their fricken Royalton Industries™ spear hook and you're both stuck like glue until someone hits the brakes. It's weird, like you feel magnetized to other cars for a bit. Eitherway, skirmishes almost always end in manslaughter. (Speaking of which, why is it that understeering into a corner at 80mph equals dents and hurt feelings but getting rear ended within a 10mph speed difference sends my wheel flying off? Why does it gotta be that way?)

-In my opinion, the handling feels good - Accessible, but hard to master. But, it gets a little floaty with the higher tier cars. Can't really tune that out, and the game doesn't care what kind of tires you run either. Mostly prevalent in 4WDs and FFs, it could just be a sin of SMS's simcade model but I don't remember it being so noticeable in Shift 1.

-The AI drivers are a bit too mindless for my taste. Even at the highest difficulty they tend to deviate from their lines just enough to get in your way during time attack, but not enough to avoid pileups on city courses. Example being on most of the Tokyo Bay circuits, their pathing can vary from "kid looking for his mom in the parking lot" to straight up dangerous.

-Chris Rado's sideburns.


So, I'm not great with x/10 ratings or minus 5 stars with these track based games cause at the end of the day, they're mostly all the same. But I can run Bathurst alone for hours and be entertained as long as the cars feel good and sound good. They do and they do, so. Is good, I think you'll like it. If not, then like cmon dude, It's less than one of those stoner combo boxes at jack in the box.*








*Like, what's the worst that could happen? A bad Steam port that most people can't get to launch let alone run past 20fps with a full grid? Ain't happen to me, so just buy a PS3 copy or something if you're that pressed for a good rig. Review the games, not your hardware issues.

DO NOT BUY THIS: Unless, when you do, you immediately use the CD key and redeem it on the Origin store. I am still recommending this because it runs PERFECT via Origin, and is still a fantastic sim-cade racer. For steam, all setting medium, I got a mere 30 FPS. On Origin, all settings MAX, I got 60 FPS smooth. It does not matter whether this is due to ignorance, or malice on EA’s part, it’s just a reality for some PC's. Try it first on steam, if it works, great. If it is struggling a bit, redeem the key on Origin. I hate Origin so this is not a plug. Best of luck!

This game has really grown on me in recent weeks. I am currently in the process of attempting to reach 100% career mode.
I was reluctant to buy this game at first. A lot of steam reviews claimed that it didn't work properly, or that you would be locked out or something if you didn't link with EA. The truth is that, yes, you do need an EA Origin account. I had already linked my accounts in the past, so this one was no problem. This game had been running on my Windows 10 gaming laptop with no problems whatsoever. This is an easy buy if you are interested in racing games, cars or professional motor sports. Be warned though: this game has more in common with Forza motorsport than it does with NFSMW or Carbon. This is NOT an arcade racer. If you're comfortable with that idea, than I would say go for it. The game functions on Windows 10 and features full controller support. I have experienced NO DRM problems so far.

Shift 3, where are you? :(