1. philgreg

   10

   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

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.
2. PatBenedict

   8

   Another reviewer mentions `There is nothing here that warrants a purchase if you already own Forza3 or GT5. '. In case you have GT5 (no forza of course on the ps3) and are wondering if there is indeed anything that this game has going for it that GT5 doesn't, the following come to mind:
   
   1)* User interface is far superior to to GT5, not mired in unnecessary `Ok' prompts and loading between screens. Anyone who has played GT5 for a while knows how irritating the process of upgrading a car can be. Not so here- upgrades can be done (and undone) extremely quickly.
   2)* Most (all?) cars can be race modified.
   3)* More customization of the appearance of cars, and no bizarre `you can use this colour of paint only once' nonsense.
   4)* Superior track selection. There're a *lot* of courses here.
   5)* The autolog feature is clearly very different to anything on offer with GT5.
   6)* More consistent graphics. GT5 of course has incredible graphics at times (especially the premium cars), but also many puzzling low points- things like jagged shadows, aliasing problems screen tearing, several tracks that look like ps2 hd and so on. For me the most serious disadvantage of these graphical problems issues is that they can distract the player, and undermine the sense of immersion. I've been pleasantly surprised on many occasions by Shift 2. It may not be the strongest game graphically on the ps3 but the developers seem to have a lot of skill in creating that feeling that you're really there, at these locations.
   For instance you can almost feel the dry air and heat of Dubai, huge skyscrapers hazy against the horizon; palm trees against a beautiful sunset at the Dakota Raceway. Very nice!
   7)* Effective cosmetic/physical damage model - there's really no comparison here to GT5. As far as gripes go, the handling for some of the cars seems to be very twitchy (for those with GT5, think the Lotus in the Top Gear challenge), perhaps in general the driving experience is not as strong as GT5 but I've found it to be perfectly enjoyable with quite a few cars.
   
   In summary then, Shift 2 offers quite a few things for Ps3 users that GT5 does not, and I recommend it as an enjoyable, *immersive* experience!… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 4 users said Yes.
3. Mickael486

   6

   After a few laps you start blaming yourself for not doing as good as you did with the 1st Shift game... and then you start realizing that it's the game.. It's very touchy...and unpredictable. The physics are broken. And the Aggressive A.I.!! OMFG THE AGGRESSIVE A.I. If the community doesn't complain enough to patch this game, it'll be unplayable...worse than the first one was before the patches. What a let down. I really enjoyed the first one after they fixed it. I should explain why the AI is so bad.. You could be minding your own business, NOT being aggressive at all.. going about 20mph around an corner... and bam!!! You're car literally flips over 3 times by an AI controlled car behind you out of nowhere.. during the final lap of the race... You go from 1st place to LAST place and the race is over.. if that's your idea of fun, then play this game.… Expand

   • Helpful? 4 of 4 users said Yes.
4. SOUR_11b

   1

   ive tried forcing myself to like this game, but its just not possible. the in-car helmet cam is the only good thing going for it. just being able to drive the car straight is a force to be reckoned with. imagine sitting in a swivel office chair spinning as you roll down the street, thats what this game is like. i only gave it a higher than zero score because the helmet cam is such a great idea.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.

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