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

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.

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

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.. :)

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 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'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

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

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.… Collapse

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.

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