This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. @Neons
Dude youre seriously mistaken there.
All the features or bad things you talking about are ADJUSTABLE.
Lol
Maybe read the manual for the game or maybe you should stop playing games the way they are :D

To the game !
SHIFT 2 is a masterpiece.
Working physics (handling,RWD,FWD,AWD, working suspension, car reacts to every action you do, the new inside helmet view is awesome) , overall the game is a huge achievement!
Well it has some flaws too , some cars missing the "arm wheel" movement sometimes, flickering textures,shadows...
These are all just small bugs compared to an overall great game !
Good job SlightlyMA :D… Expand

UNBELIEVABLE INPUT LAG. Believe it or not, people, this is a driving game with broken driving. Don't buy this game, until EA fixes the incredible input lag. You can easily find videos of this on youtube. What were the game "journalists" doing? Which incompetent journalism school dropouts wrote these "professional" reviews and gave this turkey an 85?

I'm really not sure what to say about Shift 2. I guess the fact that its taken a more serious role as a sim is improvement but other than that... Its got to be the worst NFS game i've ever played. The performance of this game is abysmal... I honestly really tried to play this game, but the driving what just unbearable. And forget skipping video cutscenes in this game. Your forced to watch them, well maybe your not. You can do exactly what I did with this piece of console ported turd. Uninstall and save that 60$ for something better.… Expand

I cannot understand why they let the PC controls be so terrible. The cars are terribly uncontrollable in this game with a keyboard. I just can't understand why it seems they didn't put any effort towards making the game work well with a keyboard. Also, my mother ****ing 86 civic handles better than these stupid ****ing cars so don't try and tell me it's because it's a "simulator." Also the menus are pretty bad, and there's not enough drifting. Go play grid.… Expand

I regret spending my money on this game. I play it with Logitech g27 and I can tell that this game doesn't stand near GT5 feeling of driving a car. Car handling feels very unrealistic, you have to learn to drive by the physics of the game and not of the real world. Also very disappointed with 3D VISION support as there is none. Only things that looks great is a headcam and maybe night raicing if you not playing it with 3d vision, but handling spoils it all… Expand

even with it's shallow presentation, where shift 2 truly excels is in its driving experience. albeit the steep learning curve will ward off casual racers from finding out what really makes shift 2 stand out, dont be fooled. Need for Speed is FINALLY back.

1-Graphics not better then was in shift1 (just the same). 2-controls not better then was in shift1 (if game`s hard to control - it`s not meant that it`s a sim). 3-tracks are boring just like in shift1 (Nurburgring track is sic - trees are plastic & castle often flying in the skies). 4-night mode is much worse then in hot pursuit. 5-no rain/fog/snow at all. 6-"new" camera is useless (better cam still from bumper).
In total - Shift2 in fact is shift1,5. or even 1.2 - maybe EA want to sell 60$ DLCs… Expand

Sad attempt for a game, if I want reality I buy Codemasters products. Most Wanted was last NFS I've seen which actually was worth playing 'Carbon' was already a sad case of idioticy.

All these new NFS games literally sucks, they are not fun and they have no value to be bought. It took me an hour to download the thing, 5 minutes to fight with activation, 60 seconds to play and determ I don't ever want to see this game again and another 2 minutes to uninstall and watch activation to spam my firewall.… Expand

Overall a very good game. The Helmet cam is an interesting concept, I would it worked well on the early races in the slower cars, however when it comes gets to faster cars and trickier tracks then other views are far easier. The graphics are nothing special, they are clean and crisp but the textures and anti-aliasing could be deep and higher. The AI is still aggressive and can be frustrating especially with some of the erratic braking they make. The handling is good, but by no means perfect. With all settings turned off the cars are lively and react how you would expect. The force feedback is very good, by tuning the car you can actually notice a difference in the car's handling in the force feedback with is defiantly a positive. However at times the steering seems a little to light and a little twitchy. In terms of content the 130+ cars and 35 locations with 80+ track layouts will keep you amused for hours. Some of the new tracks added are fantastic including the tracks based on Monaco and Shanghai. The Dubai Autodrome is also a breath of fresh air with plenty of hair raising and exciting corners. The rate of unlock in the career is nice, by the time I had finished the first set of races I had unlocked over half the career races meaning I had a big variety of races to choose from. Perhaps my biggest concern with this game is the drift mode. No matter what ingame settings I turn on, or alterations to my wheel set up I make I found it almost impossible to drift round a single corner never mind link drifts. Many people are moaning about no rewind feature, however most of the races are around 5 minutes therefore if you bin it on the last lap it isn't that big a deal. I haven't booted up the game online yet so I can't comment on that aspect.

Overall 9/10

Gameplay -9/10, some issues with AI aggression and drifting. However the helmet cam is fun and the handling is good. Night mode is a great new feature
Graphics - 8/10, nothing wrong with them, however plenty of scope for improvement
Content - 10/10, loads of cars and loads of tracks no complaints… Expand

I felt the need to add my comment since I felt the user rating was far lower than it should be. I have been a fan of the racing genre for many years enjoying both on and off-road titles. Obviously if you're looking for a pure arcade racer and are allergic to using the brake button this is not the game for you. It may not be the most hardcore racing sim either. What it is is a very satisfying racing game that leans more towards the sim than the arcade. One particular joy of mine is the feeling of weight to the cars. Many of the racing games I have played recently I have felt that this is sorely lacking. Collisions also have a real meatiness. Whilst there are not hundreds of tracks I never felt like I craved more (like I did for the rally tracks in Dirt 2) and I was so delighted to see Bathurst's Mount Panorama. The game is also very pretty and on more than one occasion I was forced to let out a "Damn that's pretty" at my screen. If you're a fan of challenging racing games then I really cannot recommend this enough. *Oh... one disclaimer. It does have a bit of that godawful Dirt 2 "Cool" American race driver patronizing banter that I cannot stand. You can turn the volume of it off but you still have to watch a cut-scene every time you unlock a new race type. It's only a brief annoyance but excruciating whilst it is going on. I'm not mentioning it as it's a deal breaker but in the vain hope that a developer reading this decides not to do it in their game.… Expand

I was hoping that Slightly Mad Studios had learnt from the mistakes of Shift 1; that marketing what is essentially an arcade game as a simulation was a big mistake. Since they were pushing the idea of a good physics engine this time round, i figured that maybe they'd simply decided to make Shift 2 actually feel like a simulation, but i was let down for a second time. The physics are just as terrible as the first; make no mistake, this is nothing like a simulation and i can assure you that the handling isn't even fun when taking it as an arcade game. There is, as another reviewer pointed out, a very large lag between you turning using your controller or wheel and your car responding in game which makes it all but impossible to drive in the first place. The other problems are that it feels like you're driving on something like jelly; your car slides sideways at every opportunity and is very unstable in all situations. The feel of grip is appalling and the collision physics are the worst i've seen in a racing game. Do not buy, don't even think about it.… Expand

Shift 2 is not a enjoyable game, It's far like race simulator, which means if you made some mistake in the game to get behind other cars, you better restart that race, unlike other light racing games like hot pursuit. What I really angry about this game was I got spin by opponent car in first race, got 5th/6, and I... you knows. I don't want to torture myself by playing like this - run, say **** and restart.

I dropped difficulty to easy and driving skill to novice, then shift 2 provides many assist features like auto brake, but I feel dumb whenever I have nothing to do but push forward always and push left and right sometimes I needed to. What I feel bad too was auto-moving racer point of view. I can't explain this exactly, but I feel it I'm not one who race but someone does.

If you want something 'REAL' races, go for it. but if you need something to enjoy, find other way rather than shift 2. It's torture.… Expand

So normally i dont post reviews, but this is **** This is by far the best racing game of the year, no.. THE MILLENIA. Giving a game a poor score because you are a poor driver or because you want a second chance is the same reason that games like Ultima Online and Darkfall Online wouldnt make the fully populated long haul. Once the carebear mobile is set in motion ALL THE **** JUMP ON BOARD and then what happens? All the hardcore players, risk takers, people who like thier games hard, take the fall for it, because there are more **** and whiners in this world than people with nuts. Oh i hear you, "Its just a game Kinglame" Well **** you, youre the same **** that would sue me for tripping your ass and kicking in your teeth. So yeah, buy this game. Its amazing.… Expand

This game really did give me the feeling that i'm really in the car
I don't know why did people say that the night is much worse than HP
Of course! What do you want on the track? Some fabulous neon light?
This is a brand new game for me
It's great
If you want fog or stuff like that
GO play GT5
I'm enjoying what I have now here

Surprisingly very nicely done racing game with realistic feelings. not simulation at all but its a fun to drive these expensive cars (elite mod with helmet camera+steering wheel) and sounds are just brilliant ! very similarly like a grid game. good job ! ! ! sry for my english.. :)

Oh look, it's another tail-happy arcade-racer from EA that's pretending to be a "simulation!" Shift 1 had some challenges with controls that are pretty well documented by now, but Shift 2 takes it a step further by making them almost inexplicable. Even after a rethink of balancing out the deadzones and sensitivity (on an XBox 360 controller, which was autodetected, and really should have a decent standard setup, right?), it's still a mess. Noticable lag in control inputs, followed by overboosted and inconsistent resonse. You're constantly encouraged to be "smooth" with the controls, which is fine, however I'm not sure that it's really necessary on the straights. This is particularly hilarious with the rear-engined cars, and I'm not sure actual 911 owners will be pleased to see their cars represented as unintentional Tokyo-Drift machines.

The engine notes all sound auto-tuned: there are noticable steps in the pitch that are poorly synthesized. Seriously, how long ago did Polyphony and Turn 10 sort that out? I own one of the cars featured here (Evo IX), and the engine note isn't anything like this. So the problem sure doesn't stem from managing real-life recordings.

PC-specific notes? Surprise-surprise, it's a pretty shallow port. The UI makes no sense (and is compromised on an Xbox 360 controller as well), the graphics engine needs work (just ask anyone with ATI/AMD hardware) and FPS can dip and swell like a rollercoaster through corners, goofing with your rhythm. The graphics issue is kind of puzzling, because frankly, it's not much of a step up from Shift1.

I bought this new yesterday for $18, less than a month after release. I wish I could say that I got my money's worth from it.… Expand

Not up to standards set by previous games in the series. What is worse, we lose LAN support and instead get the same POS facebook clone that came with Hot Pursuit. Enough social BS, EA, we want good games.

Last EA game I buy, especially since offending moderators in their forums with bad words like d*v*l will now ban you from your own games.

I will be honest with you, this is a bad game. Starting right of the bat with the poor graphics that look ported from the old ps2/original xbox days. Even with all the graphics options turned on high, this game still suffers from poor textures and lighting. In some maps the shadows are so intense that you can't even see where you are going. This is supposed to be a racing game, yet they included no drift, yep, you cannot drift in this game, and what is worse: get this, your car automatically brakes for you on turns. The NPC cars do not face this restriction, so you are constantly getting overtaken by 4 to 6 cars on the turns because your car slows down by itself, and the others don't. NPC cars smoke you like nothing, there is no cutting them off on the track, instead you have to follow a green path behind them in order to catch up, which is bad because you cant go through them if you want to pass them. When you think your about to win, about to hit the finish line, even if you are going your fastest an NPC car smacks you from behind and three or four of them whiz past the finish line, leaving you in last place. So what is wrong with this? you were about to win the race and about to cross the finish line, but all of a sudden you get smacked from behind and a cars pass you like nothing across the finish line and you loose...WOW so much effort for nothing. The physics are horrible, car is hard to steer even with xbox360 gamepad on PC, I will probably not try it with the keyboard ever. Camera options are a joke, ans your view is constantly getting blocked by your own car. Overall I would not recommend this game to anyone who is into racing games, Instead I would save my money for Dirt 3 by Codemasters.… Expand

First of all, disregard the reviews trying to compare this game to Forza or Gran Turismo. Those games are about physics calculations and getting it so that that EVERY car handles EXACTLY as it does in real life. Shift 2 is about making you feel like you really are driving at 180 mph in a Gumpert Apollo. The new helmet cam really conveys the g-forces you feel when taking a turn on a track. It takes some getting used to, but once you master the shifting view, it becomes very immersive. The performance of cars has been greatly improved as well. Too many cars in the last game were essentially useless due to unpredictable handling and poor power. That has been changed. Even the lower cars on the totem pole are still a lot of fun to drive. The graphics have been improved, with much better damaged modeling, though the effect on the cars on-track health is still negligible. On the up side, tires throw up debris as they race across the surface of a track and the in-car view has gotten even sharper. The cars do sound a bit samey, but the cool part is that cars sound different when you swap out engines. Still, the engines sound good and the tire-screeching and exhaust flares sound great. The soundtrack can feel repetitive, but the remixes of licensed songs sound good and fit the racing dream/nightmare presentation that the Shift games are known for. The voice over by...uh...that drift racer is adequate, though honestly I prefer the unidentified British pit boss from the first game. On the PC, there are some patch-worthy problems, such as no SLi support and control issues. but as long as they patch these, which I'm sure they will, I don't see that being a problem. So, long story short, lots of improvements over the first Shift, and NOT for the fans of the boring, plastic racers like Forza or GT.… Expand

Shift 2 by far is the best looking NFS, and the most realistic driving experinec ever in a PC game. The graphics cannot get much more detailed and perfect..they just cannot. I have Shift and Shift 2 setup in a driving sit-down arcade cabinet with steering wheel, 6 speed shifter, racing chair, 28" HD monitor, 5.1 surround, and clutch, gas, brake pedals....and Shift 2 runs as smooth as real life at 1920x1200. Smooth perfection. I cannot understand why some comment it runs slow, useless, uncontrollable, etc... Maybe their PC's are bad. Mine is just a 4GB, AMD Quad 965, and Nvidia 260 video and it runs flawlessly....yet I've seen people with better cards and i7's not be able to run it as well, all depends on the crap on their PC's. That said, its a 20/10 for me. Way above 10. Now if you are using a game pad or not old enough to actually drive for real, dont even bother with the game as the skills and handling of it requires skill unless its on easy. A wheel is almost a necessity. It does not handle like NFS World or Hot pursuit where its more an arcade like response. Shift 2 is more realistic to what a real car would handle like.… Expand

This game has no captions/subtitles, therefore not suitable for deaf/hearing impaired players. I will NOT purchase any games that show disregard for disabled players. Anyway gameplay is similar to NFS:Shift 1. But if you can run NFS:Shift 1, then you can run this.

Straight up, i have no qualms identifying myself as a casual racing fan. Racing games that i have and love are Dirts 2&3 and GT5, but i would consider myself a novice at best at those games and simply really enjoy playing them.On the whole, there are a lot of great ideas in Shift 2, and the quirks don't bother me too much: the stylised, oversaturated graphics can be shrugged off as a NFS hallmark, the non-optional music is AWFUL unless you are 16, but you can turn that down low, the 'Yo Dude, that was AWESOME' kind of encouragement you get after winning is a pain, but you can grit your teeth and bear it. What lets this game down TERRIBLY is the awful and synthetic handling. The cars turn on a centre pivot, so there's never any feeling of weight shifting or traction being lost. I seem to recall one review mentioning this as if it were a minor quirk, but as far as i'm concerned it ruins the game. Ridge Racer has a more solid handling model than this. Even after you've sorted out the dead zone issues with the wheel and ticked the driving aids that keep the car from going into a slalom while you're speeding down a straight, the handling is just extremely unsatisfying.
As far as i'm concerned, all the other niggles can be dealt with, but this is the fundamental aspect of what makes a racing game tick and Shift 2 just falls desperately short in this regard.
Other things that are negatives but don't actually affect my scoring is that there seem to be problems with NVIDIA graphics card drivers, those might have been fixed but at first i needed to reboot my system before launching the game to prevent broken textures and lighting; also the apparent lack of DLC for PC customers is just a slap in the face.… Expand

its a good game with few flaws. the requierements are a bit too high (altough i can play it on max in fullhd with anti aliasing on high, the game requires an good pc to be played with 30fps+) i will say that this game is in between of an arcade racer and a simulation. its not as static as gt5, but its also not as arcade as grid. it a good experience thats worth looking onto (check this game out if you haven't already. its not a racing game for everyone, but you may like it… Expand

This game fills a niche nicely. The wheel/controller support needs some work, but overall the game is still very playable. The AI leans a bit too far on the aggressive side and in a real race would get black flagged.
Graphics look great. Sound is spot on. The tracks are all there, especially for GT races. Oh yeah it has Mt Panorama, Bathurst, in there. :)

O jogo está ótimo, belos gráficos, e jogabilidade excelente, ...diferente do GT5 que mais parece carrinho de bate bate.
O menu desse jogo é diferente de tudo que você já viu, é impressionante, os carros e seu interior, as modificações que você pode fazer estão detalhadas e simples, você não precisa ser um mecânico pra se dar bem no jogo. rs, esse jogo me lembrou o bom NFS Pro.… Expand

I noticed some reviews claiming that this was very similar to Shift 1. There is some truth to this as some of the basic bits such as the car tuning and visual customizer for the cars is basically the same. Sadly, everything goes downhill from here. Let's start with the fact that this is atrocious console port. It has a calibration screen for TV's and when you click on "controls" you are greeted with a picture of a Xbox360 controller. The menus are very difficult to navigate due to the transfer from controller to keyboard and the mouse integration is pretty sad. The graphics also seem to have taken a hit by the port-hammer as they have actually manged to look worse than Shift 1. I set my settings to the highest they can go and headed for the car garage to look at the new vehicle additions. Upon seeing the cars, I immediately went back the graphics options to see if there was a mistake. Nope. It's just that ugly. I figured the cars would look better on the track like in Shift 1 but I had to change the game to windowed mode because Shift 1 and 2 do not have color/brightness/gamma control settings and this is the only way to fix it. Upon being told to restart the game, I came to the realization that the intro videos are NOT skippable. This became annoying extremely quickly. Anyway, enough of this, let's get on to the actual meat of the game. They have kept the zoom-around-the-car-thingy at the start of every race from Shift 1 but this time the female sign-holders are basically completely nude. You also have to view this everytime you restart the race, which you will do A LOT since the cars handle like elongated buses. Shift 1 was infamous for it's shoddy handling but this takes things in a completely new direction. The cars handle so bad that I could not complete any race without hitting the barrier when going around every single corner. (And for the record, I beat Shift 1's career mode using the same control setup). While acelerating the controls were very twitchy and when I got to a corner the wheels on the car turned but the car itself just kept going straight and into a wall. Is there some DLC I missed that includes steering? This is a pretty big problem considering the game is about racing and driving cars around corners. I have seen city buses take corners faster and more ferociously than a Lotus Elise can in this game. I'm basically repeating what has been said in the other reviews. The cars are essentially undrivable. In conclusion, you're better off saving your money for something else or just go play Shift 1 again because this is vastly inferior.… Expand

Ok first out, the car handling is attrociously poor compared to just about every other game on the market (except maybe the equally terrible Test Drive 2 Unleashed), I've been a big fan of driving games over the decades but even with a dedicated steering wheel this game has very flakey handling. Ok so what about the rest of the game? well the graphics are above average, theres a decent set of cars and modding options, and it's probably the best of the NFS titles thus far.... but seriously it's not a patch on GRID or DIRT2 and with DIRT3 due next month.... I'd save your pennies for that.… Expand

Pretty much what WillKIll said. Tried to sell itself as more sim than arcade but ends up being neither...good driving isn't rewarded but neither is arcade style. Also some serious issues with stuttering on this system that weren't present in Shift 1.

I was surprised by the dismal user score for this game. I was never a fan of NFS series in general and this game on launch day was definitely incomplete it is definitely better than 5.8 and much better than Hot Pursuit, which was a joke.
I regret buying it at launch. It appears it is always better to wait for a couple of patches to land before giving this a shot unless you know where to go for mods/tweaks (nogripracing) to make handling decent and your wheel work as it should. At first I was very disappointed but once I had a couple of mods up and running that fixed car handing issues and sorted out driving wheel annoyances the game was fun to play. Not as fun as I hoped it would be though and I wish I didnâ… Expand

I really tried to like Shift 2. I've been a Need for Speed fan since the beginning of the IP when I was learning to tie my shoes. I was optimistic when I picked up this game; however, my optimism soon turned into aggravation as I played Shift 2. The cut scenes canâ

I'm a big racing fan but it has to impress me. I got a PS3 just to get Gran Turismo 5. Needless to say I was unimpressed by the graphics, game play and lack of being remotely realistic. Shift 2 isn't completely realistic but the graphics are stunning, the game play fun for hours on end and the realism borderline enough to keep me playing often. The engines sound legit and powerful, the braking noise blows me away and the tires on the pavement don't have that dull boring noise that Gran Turismo has been well known for. This game is the first since Race Driver GRID to just make my jaw drop. I also really love the damage realism. Although even if your entire front end is gone you will still see headlights. They should fix that. If they had more car selection I'd score it a 10. I also like that every car can be viewed from the inside and they are all detailed to the actual car. Gran Turismo 5 can't even do that.… Expand

What a joke this game is! The input lag is tremendous, the game does not even recognize a very common wheel (360 Wireless Racing Wheel for Windows) forcing a custom configuration, but all of this is irrelevant in the end as the input lag, which exists regardless of input, makes the game 100% unplayable. Beyond that the graphics are not even good, the awful videos cannot be skipped, and the game's primary selling point, the "simulation" aspect for us hardcore racers, is quite simply "Ultrasuck". The feeling of the cars is all wrong. Inertia, motion, and gravity are apparently modeled after some other universe because ours simply doesn't work like this. As someone used to reasonably accurate sims (rFactor, modded F1 2010, Forza, GT) this game is an utter insult. I am truly sorry I ever wasted money on it. It's beyond bad.… Expand

Shift 2! The game were everything is serious. Commercials glide you through tire smoke and ashes, drivers use clever words to talk about racing dramatically, and this game promises to bring the driver experience to you. The camera shakes with car movement, the dash rattles, and it's like driving a race car, except one thing - the physics are arcade like. Cars drift easily like it's Ridge Racer. This wasn't a mistake either. The devs wanted a "fun" way to drive. But then why did they say it was going to be a lot more realistic? They tried to appeal to the sim audience with cool videos, but then throw out physics.

If you go in and play after getting past that, it's entertaining, but unfulfilling. There's a good car selection and the game feels like a baby GT5. The game added new voiceovers for this game. No more monotonous Englishman, now there's some unknown drift racing guy telling you to win. I like the change, but Shift 2 lacks the engagement other games like Dirt 2 have. The menus are dull, but a step up from Shift 1.

Final thoughts are don't get this if you want to really race (I played this with a wheel), get it if you want an arcade game with realistic cars.… Expand

A few years back, I was anxious to try the first NFS:Shift, but it was ruined by the input lag. The graphics were lush, but the game was ruined for me. At the same time however, Codemasters released the game "GRID", which was EXACTLY what I was looking for at the time. Controls responded very well, and the sense of speed was jaw-dropping.

Now, many years after the original SHIFT was released, I wanted to check if the sequel had worked upon and fixed these issues. In one word "URGHhh"

The first thing that was apparent, were that the UI / menu system was HORRIBLE. A complete muppet could have devised a better way to navigate the menu. U and I (!??) would navigate through the panels, and if you wanted to change the key settings, you needed to use the letter F (!?!?) to re-assign. This is whilst the key was completely free mind.

Graphically, the menus are really over-complicated. We should return to the roots with a KISS system (Keep it simple stupid!)

As almost all of the new racers, the game is full of FMV / pre-rendered sequences. The most irritating is this guy that runs you through everything, which you CAN NOT SKIP. WHY OH WHY!? Changing video settings and then re-loading the game would have you watch the intro screen AGAIN.

Ok, so how is the actual gameplay?

The game is a standard, win cash, get cars, upgrade cars, rinse repeat affair. You gain XP from doing small missions within the races (stick to the race line etc) - Maybe a few good ideas in place here. I recall an Alfa Romeo game on the PS2 which really went APE on the XP system- which was fun.

As the original Shift, this game is great- graphics wise. Albeit, the rear view mirror is tiny!

The controls.... *cough* Input lag is apparent. maybe its a hundredth of a second, but.. for a game that should be a racer- going fast and then deciding where to go in the blink of an eye, controls should be SHARP. Don't attack me on "its your cars suspension settings" or any of that crap. It involves even the acceleration, braking, the controls are flawed.

I tried fixing this with a small modification of a control file, with no luck ;(

It seems like EA can still not create a decent race-track racer.

.... I'm reinstalling GRID!

SHIFT 2

Pros

+ Graphics

+ Many licensed cars

Cons

- Terrible UI

- Input LAG / control issues

- FMV sequences non-skippable… Expand

THE game that is mandatory for every single racing fan. The driving is very nice. The cars act pretty much like in real life, maybe a little (but just a little) too forgiving. The graphics are up to date, very detailed and much better than in SHIFT. The driving helmet camera doesn`t exaclty catch my taste as it is completely useless, although the standard pit camera is also available. There is really lots and lots of content for a pc game - something like 30 tracks, almost 200 cars of which all are customizable. Career presents many different events, very varied with car type, difficulty, track types, time attack, invitational, old vs new, contructor races, american, japanese etc. In this respect nothing short of Gran Turismo. The interface is very well done, again much better than in SHIFT. Everything that is needed to be customizable has been made like that. The optical and mechanichal tuning of the cars is though tiny compared to FM or GT. Still, the racing never gets boring as the Autolog feature lets you make all sorts of racing against your friends - who`s the fastest, who has the most badges, who made the most points, who dominates online and so on. I`d say : until your buddies use this game, the replayability of it is unlimited. In my opinion it is the first NFS title that reaches to the same quality level as the Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo. You just want to take those cars for a ride, even if you were the only guy on the track - because every car feels unique. What I`m saying is - you can take the Alfa Romeo Giulietta to the Nordschleife and race it for 10 minutes - you won`t get bored because what SHIFT series accomplished is the feeling of speed and inertia even at 140km/h. And if what I write isn`t enough go to youtube and see real folks say the same : that car in the game almost perfectly resembles mine.
I won`t write on which features SHIFT 2 is better than SHIFT, but believer when I say it - there are lots of examples where it is visible that the devs took notes and changed the things that were bad in SHIFT (ok one example : the user garage can have infinite number of cars). In one sententce I`d say that SHIFT 2 is a well thought racing game that gives much satisfaction from driving and which progressed significanlty over its predecessor.… Expand

Very good racing game. I'm really surprised that you can do anything more on the genre! Pluses: menu design, customization of racing style, head movement on corners, good game quality all around, good music
Minuses: hard to engage in this game for longer then an hour or two... not enough diversity and motivation I think

This is the worst racing sim that I've ever played. The car physics is all wrong. The cars bounces around like they have blown shocks, there's massive steering lag on release (the community patch fixed quite a bit of that), the drift physics is bs for a sim game. The cars feels like they are skating on ice in drift mode. EA need to give the devs proper funding and time for development, and they should fire Slightly Mad Studio right now, their game engine is not good. EA needs to find someone talented to actually make a good physics engine from scratch. This is the only way they can compete with Forza and GT.… Expand

The only thing that kills this game is driving mechanics, they are just horrible, the cars are absolutely uncontrollable, it's almost impossible to beat this game even on easy difficulty! I dropped this game half way through cause I just couldn't struggle with this anymore!

I desperately tried for almost 15 hours of gameplay to like this game, and I failed.

Yes, the new helmet-cam feature is an awesome addition to any racing game, the car selection and customisation is cool and the visuals aren't bad (if you ignore a handful of horrendous background textures), but the driving mechanics... they're the stuff of nightmares. This game seems intentionally designed to be borderline unplayable. Does this make the experience more challenging? Sure... but so would tying your shoelaces together before a 100 meter sprint. It doesn't mean the challenge is fair, and it certainly doesn't make it more fun.

If you want sim racing, stick with GT and Forza. If you want a fun Need For Speed title, pick up last year's infinitely superior Hot Pursuit by Criterion.… Expand

The main concern about this game is that it takes a lot of tweaking to get it working properly. I have never played it with a controller so I cannot comment about how it drives with one, but with a wheel one has to do many adjustments to get it to feel correct. Because of this I would not recommend this game to someone who wants to just pick it up and go. If you have patience and are looking for a solid simulator using a wheel, then I would highly recommend this game.
There are a few problems I see that people keep complaining about in this game. 1) It is too hard. One must understand that the Shift series is a simulation based racing game, not arcade like most NFS games.
2) Cars are impossible to drive or they don't feel like they should. This is a problem most people are complaining about. The main underlying cause of this is the car setup. For some strange reason the stock set up of every car has the spring rates at 0 and the tire pressure at 50 or so. Due to this, it makes all the cars feel like they are boats. With this floppy set up it makes the car very unstable and uncontrollable in a corner or a slide. To fix this problem one must tune the tire pressure down to around 30 and purchase a suspension that can adjust spring stiffness and adjust it to at least 3 for normal cars and higher for race cars. Every car has to be fixed in this way, which can be annoying to some. After they are fixed you will find that Shift 2 has extremely good physics and car dynamics.
There are many internal settings for the wheel that can be adjusted, this makes Shift 2 more dynamic and customizable if you know how to adjust these settings properly. I found that the easiest way to adjust the wheel is to set it up so that it drives and turns properly with a normal car, which will have the highest degree of turn. After that, one must go to tune setup for every car to adjust the steering sensitivity for that particular car. The higher one tunes the sensitivity on a car, the less one has to turn the wheel to make that particular car turn. By doing this one can adjust race cars to turn with less degree of movement in the wheel than normal cars, without having to readjust the wheel every time you change cars.
In conclusion there is a very good game hiding inside Shift 2 but it takes some adjustments and digging to find. If you have to patience to work out the problems then it is a fun and solid racing game.… Expand

With G27 Shift 2 do somehow really feels like real thing, and totally enjoyable. The graphic setting is a total console port, but eventually you can tweak it on your own, and it looks way better than GT5. Besides that I have nothing to say about Shift 2, it's simply a great fun racer (or simulation) for people who want to have a taste of some real racing.

at first i was down on this game , its real easy starting out upgrade you car you blow you competition away . Challenge comes from you vs the speed and the speed keeps you on the edge the whole time .. its not much of an improvement over shift 1 more cars and more tracks . still limited customization . grfxs is just more bloom then shift 1 the car models are grate tracks look ok performance is not grate but not terrible dips to 28fps for me at night at the start of the race but picks it back up the game looks so ugly with no aa so you gota maxx the aa at the end of the day if you want a intense racing game pick it up… Expand

My first review. I recently just got a G27 so i've been getting into the racing games lately. I have it set up on a monsterous projector so it's about as real as it's going to get. I've been playing Dirt 3, F1 2011, and GT5, and now Shift 2. And it is by far the most frustrating of the lot. It is dressed up with pretty menus and soundtracks, but underneath it lies a game which feels like they've missed the mark. The first frustrating thing i encountered was having to restart the game each time i wanted to make a change in the video section, not to mention the weird controls of pressing "U" or "i" to scroll left or right when in a menu. The second and most frustrating is the actual game. Racing is incredibly difficult and completely AI biased. If you tap a car slightly, you'll spin out. If another car taps you slightly, you'll spin out. And while you're meant to adhere to driving lines and giving other cars space, the AI will crash right into you causing you to spin out straight away. The worst part of the game is actually after you do spin out. You have absolutely ZERO chance of catching up and winning the race, let alone complete all the mini XP tasks. So basically, in a nutshell, you have to get a perfect launch, lead from the get go, and stay in front. Otherwise, you'll be hitting that restart button. So really, the whole premise of competing and playing the sport, has gone out the window. There is a LOT that needs to be addressed before my score can be raised.… Expand

After getting used with driving in this game you get to like it. It isn't easy, but if you spend the time it gets rewarding.

I scored it 7 due to limited tuning options. There is a lot in there, but not as far as I would like to see. Any tuning you do is not that obvious unless you spend a lot of time for EVERY circuit and EVERY car.... A bit boring.

And the game should have more cars.

Okay did the developers of this game ever drive any of the cars featured?

I bought the lastest NFS and found it totally unrealistic but fun for 3-4 hours. This one didn't even last that long. I removed it after playing for only 2 hours. Nice but repetative intro graphics. But really, if you want racing realism, GTR 2 is SOOO much better. And it is like 7 years old. That says more about the lame effort from Shift 2 than GTR 2. The drag racing is so easy my 5 year old won every race on the first attempt. And yet I couldn't drive 1/2 the cars on a race course. They just kept wandering left and right. I got news for the developers, when I hit 120+ in my S600, its pinnd to the road on rails. It doesn't wander. Don't waste a dime on this if you actually know how to drive. You will be very sorry.… Expand

Poor controls,Poor graphics as compared to shift 1.I play all games high difficulty level but in this game i am playing with novice mode andeven cannot overtake a single car when i have spinned away by mistake.

I do not recommend this game!!
Looks terrible, controls lag, and runs slow. I'm pretty sure it's a console port.
Only takes advantage of one graphics card, and only utilizing %30-%40 maximum on it. Ram and CPU max utilizing only %40. AA is horrible even on highest setting, jagged edges all around, when you accelerate blur blurs out the interior of the car, and the car feels like a boat. Horrible, really let down by the "Need for speed" franchise in recent years. Best racing game on my list is still Dirt 2. I wish there was some way to get my money back on this one. :(

System specs: Thermaltake armor+ VH6000BWS Case, Corsair AX1200 PSU, i7 920 @ 3.2Ghz, Gigabyte EX58 UD3R-SLI, 8GB (2X4GB) Corsair vengeance 1600,
2 X GTX 480 in SLI (H2O), X-FI sound card, Hitatchi 1TB 7200rpm hard drive, Windows7 64bit,
Asus VG236H 23" 3D monitor… Expand

Being a die-hard NFS fan, it is with great anticipation that I installed and played this game. I remember sitting at my PC, too young and too small to even fully reach the keyboard, and playing Porsche Unleashed and the very first Hot Pursuit, giggling like a loon all the way.

Thusly, to say this game left a.... 'bitter' taste in my mouth is an understatement. Yes, the visuals are amazing and all, but games are like women: Those who live by looks alone are the ones your mother warns you to stay away from - and with good reason. Let's start with something every die-hard motoring enthusiast lives for: The sound. Don't get me wrong; even here in South Africa there are a lot of rich snobs with rich, snobby cars, and the fact that I work on an industrial strip holding a lot of motoring/engineering facilities gives me experience in how cars sound. Enough experience, actually, to tell you that the Shelby Cobra DOESN'T, in fact, sound like a quivering bucket of bolts, nor does the old school GT500 sound like someone's stuck a whistle up its exhaust at the first sign of a little tweaking. Of all the cars in this game, I've worked out that at least 40% of them do NOT sound anything like their real life counterparts. Normally I'd let something like this slide, but hearing my dream vessel, the E92 M3, sound like some posh Merc in the same price range, and hearing the ever iconic Viper sound like an old hag with bronchitis is something I, as a motoring enthusiast and now-and-then racer cannot forgive. Then comes the actual drivability of the cars in-game. Now, most would scold someone like me for not using something like an Xbox controller or a wheel, but then again, you didn't need those fancy gizmos with the previous Shift. You didn't need them with FIA GTR 2 or the older NFS titles. So why do I even need one now? When did the PC become synonymous with "Controller Console", anyhow? But I dawdle. Back to the keyboard - if you're reading this and you plan on playing it with the keyboard, I recommend not buying it at all. You can't feather your throttle, you can't turn in lightly or heavily, and you sure as hell can't quickly reaffirm control of your 4-wheeled beast on a straight line. Well, not on the keyboard, in any case. Then comes one particular hassle; one that actually drove me to reinstalling the game two or three times. A good friend of mine blames it to be a programming error, but be warned: On certain games, at any given interval, your configuration for your driving will be blown to hell and sensitivity will be more concentrated in your car than on an "Oh shame!" episode of Oprah Winfrey's talk show. Drift cars will be all over the place, track cars will start delving into tomfoolery on the tracks, and you, in the long run, will be frustrated and angry, just as the other fourteen people I've seen playing this game.

There are other small tidbits that annoy me as a long-time fan. The presence of Vaughn Gittin Jr. telling you how to drift when his words, due to the keyboard and sensitivity issues, ring untrue is very unsettling to me - it would seem Slightly Mad is using real-life racers to endorse a slipshod product for cash. The engine swaps are completely ludicrous (an R8's V8 engine in an S3, anyone?), the wheelspins are enough to make me gag (especially when your drift-tuned Nissan 200SX wheelspins all the way past 100km/h), the AI is more aggressive than a Corvette ZR1 lacking traction and stability (unnecessarily so), the pre-race camera becomes banal and boring, and leads to frustration when you can't skip it on a race's 13th restart, the menus feel sluggish and aren't very user-friendly, and the tips with the actual tuning (such as downforce, tire pressure and toe-in) are bound to lead you to molesting your car if you don't know what you are doing. The starting race to determine your driving style is an absolute nightmare, the voice acting (Yes, Vaughn's...) is ghastly, most bodykits look dreary, the visuals option is limited, finicky and sometimes doesn't even work correctly...

And on the plus side.... Nice visuals and a large car collection? Please. Closing off, if you have an expensive, shiny controller or an expensive, shiny steering wheel, this game might be for you if you can live without the tommyrot I mentioned above. If this review discouraged you from buying the game, however, A) You're perfectly normal, B) You value the experience you receive from games, and C) I recommend Driver: San Francisco for PC, or Forza if you happen to be playing on Xbox.… Expand

This game may be the best racing game I have ever played. It's realistic, and really fun. The best NFS to date. This game includes a great class of cars, and terrific, exciting races. SIngleplayer was great, but multiplayer was simply fantastic. The game may be hard sometimes, bu It's really challenging. 92 out of 100

Just picked this up, and shocked at the low scores. Gameplay with a wheel is *great* once you set it up correctly. The biggest settings for me were wheel sensitivity, auto-center (on the wheel), "wheel lock" (in the game), and increasing the spring rates (which all cars start at 0, which leads them to be floaty and hard to control). Once you do those, the gameplay is extremely, extremely fun and challenging. The graphics are amazing, and the sense of realism from the **** view is incredible. AI can be a bit of a pain (they sometimes send you off-course if you're in the line they want), and the tracks/walls are *very* unforgiving. You can't use a wall to scrub some speed like in other games, and if you do much more than rub fenders with another car, you're off into the gravel pit.

That being said, there are some aspects of the game otherwise that I really, really, really wish that they'd improve, particularly getting around the game when you're not actually racing.

1) There's no tuning or testing out your car inside of a race. Once you sign up for a race or series your car runs with whatever settings it had on it previously (or set up for that specific track). The only way to tailor your car to that race series is to see which tracks are involved, go to your garage, tune the car on each track, save it to that track, and then go race the series. 2) There's also no testing of the tracks (outside of tuning), so if you're unfamiliar with the track the first race is usually spent trying to figure out where you're going. Then the next race is usually the one where you're going for the win.

Both of those issues could be fixed by just allowing tuning (and testing) at each track right before each race.

For smaller pet-peeves, the early racing isn't as expansive, although if you use a class D car in some of the "open" races you'll race against other class D cars (and then can go back and beat your time with class C, B, A, etc giving you more exp each time). The "points" system allows you to max out cars in their respective category, giving you an edge over cars that are probably just average. There's also quite a few races involving "loaner cars" which are annoying as %*)&$ since so much of the game comes from setting cars up exactly as you like to drive them. Since no tuning is allowed (and the loaner cars come with the same crappy stock settings like "0" for spring rate), for those races I usually drop the handling back down to "easy" and allow the computer to do all of the work for me. Would definitely rather just have more run-what-you-brung series instead.

Also, the DLC content seems a bit... lacking, although there are 2 packs released for the PC (and FREE!). It's definitely not like Forza which comes out with new car packs every month.

Overall a great game, though, and can't really complain. The gameplay is fantastic, and the negatives are minimal. Now just fix those negatives for Shift 3, will you?… Expand

The graphics are sharp and the gameplay is awesome this is one of the best need for speed games ever. The music rocks and i also like the selection of cars.

This game is very hard to rate.

As a simulator, a asume that it should be really good, but as a casual game it's terrible.

Aweful gameplay if compared with other NFS versions, but thats problaby something about the real simulator features.


Well, guess that thats not what I was spectating to see in a race game.

Very disappointed by this one.

The first Shift I liked. This one too until they prevented Steam users from playing with DVD/Origin version when tehy brought DLC update.
Both netcodes are different and there is a huge bug with cars tumbling all over when mixing players from each version.
Adding to that that there is a bug in Autolog and sometimes some friends you have in your list makes the game crash when you display the autolog page.

So basically it's an offline game. Career mode only. If you consider it that way, then it's good.
The number of cars is decent and relevant, they all have their driving specifics. Tuning is interesting.
I recommend to play with a wheel. It's not a perfect sim as the tyres are really too much forgiving but it's fun and graphically really enjoyable.
It's not really well optimised so you need a good CPU/GPU to play, but overall it is good once well tuned.
Beware low-end PCs, you will suffer controller lag. Ensure you can sustain the 60FPS.… Expand

Las únicas diferencias entre este juego y NFS: Shift son el nombre del título y el sistema gráfico (un poco mas pulido en este último). Por lo demás, mantiene todo lo malo del juego original.

Being a racing game fan, I tried this game as soon as it was released. I was absolutely horrified by the bad steering and the lack luster graphics. Stay away if you want to have a good time.

I specifically had to signup for this game, since I could not believe this game got a user review average of 5.8. It should have a 3 for max. Why not lower you say? Well, it does have some good points. The graphics are a nice emprovement to the first part as well as the night races and the expanded tuning options.

The controls and handling however is beyond terrible. I consider myself to be an advanced racegame player, but I can't even begin to fathem how to get average timelaps with these cars. The handling is terrible, the AI is super agressive and even with the slightest tap your car spins out of control and makes barrel rolls -> end of race for you.. Stay far away from this game people and keep playing shift..… Expand

This is best need for speed since high stakes. Awesome simulator, feels really realistic with wheel. If you can drive well, you will finish race without crashing in the wall 1000 times like it was in previous NFS games. Many different and fun cars. Perfect graphics.

Although there are better racing games to get for your money, this game is still good. I bought it for 5 bucks on a Steam sale and I feel like i got a good deal. The biggest problem is its horrendous key board controls. Do not buy this game unless you won a racing wheel. I got lucky on this one as i was already planning on getting one. So if you have a console and want this game, buy it on that.