Speed freaks

by ERIK LEIJON

The always malleable and often undistinguished Need for Speed is now in its 15th year of yeoman’s work, and if nothing else, the series has proven adept at reflecting trends in American driving pop culture. The series began as a realistic sim branding the famed Road & Track licence. It then deviated into punkish illegal racing territory before adopting a Fast & the Furious, souped-up street racer motif. Need for Speed: Shift (Multi/EA, Slightly Mad) is the culmination of a gradual return to sim racing, and while it’s no Gran Turismo, it finally feels like the long-running series has found a comfortable niche as an arcade-sim mix.

Shift is also the first time the series feels like it believes in something, as opposed to aping whatever’s popular. It’s probably because American driving culture is at a crossroads itself and making a driving game about cash-for-clunkers, bailouts, hybrid engines or waiting for the bus wouldn’t have been particularly exhilarating.

You can tell immediately that the game is serious about realism since the game is viewed from a behind-the-wheel perspective. Initially, having the dashboard take up over half of the screen seems distracting and inconsequential to the gameplay, but when driving at top speeds, the dashboard and side mirrors become blurry so it never forces your eyes away from the action. The driving physics are also easy to grasp, so even novice drivers will master powerslides quickly, even without the comfort of a more traditional camera angle.

Although more sim-based than previous versions, there’s still an element of arcade racing within the closed-circuit tracks. The game dishes out awards and points based on driving tendencies, and the adaptive AI can be defeated either through clean passes or by simply bashing them off the road. One could view it as variety, but both methods are probably a little too effective and easy to pull off.

The best part of the heavy contact races is the terrifying visuals when you’re on the receiving end of a love tap. Your car will spin out, dust kicking up around you, and the colour scheme will be reduced to a frightening brownish tinge. I’ve never been in a serious car accident, but for the first time in a racing video game, I felt slightly tense getting into a collision. It looks terrific, and should encourage you to improve your skills as to prevent it from happening again.

The Shift moniker is apt: not a wholesale change to the Need for Speed racing formula, but an upward movement that hopefully leads to a bright future for the best-selling series.

Ballade à Toronto

I had the pleasure of spending a day in Hogtown for the Playstation holiday preview. Here are some one-liners on the games presented:

DJ Hero: Scratchtacular highlight. Catchy mash-ups and the turntable controller is an air scratcher’s dream. Cool integration of crossfader and sound effect functions. Loads of Daft Punk too.

Tekken 6: Plays like a streamlined Tekken, with the series’ most impressive line-up of characters.

Assassin’s Creed 2: Ubisoft Montreal have clearly heeded the criticisms given to the first, although the colour palette is still too dreary.

Uncharted 2: The opening dangling train sequence will amaze.

Alien vs. Predator: The hapless marines don’t stand a chance. First-person gameplay reminiscent of The Darkness. Vastly different look and feel to both the Alien and Predator missions.

God of War III: In the demo I disembowelled a centaur, decapitated a Roman and used the skull like a flashlight, and ripped out a cyclops’ eyeball.