EA Store: NFS: Shift 2 for $18 with FS

[busydude]

http://eastore.ea.com/store/ea/en_U...=Ta4D2QoBAlcAAE1P1uQAAAAK&rests=1303249881548

You have a choice between a physical copy or a digital copy.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Wow, nice. Now the question is whether it's even worth $18...

 

[KaOTiK]

Wow, nice. Now the question is whether it's even worth $18...

Two weeks old and already like 66% off, not a good sign

 

[busydude]

I have not purchased this game, but there is an ongoing thread here.

 

[zerocool84]

84/100 is not a bad score

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/shift-2-unleashed

 

[busydude]

84/100 is not a bad score

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/shift-2-unleashed

User score is more important IMO and its 5.9/10. I always tell to myself not to get sucked into believing the professional reviews of games from big studios.

 

[manimal]

wow nice price. Man I wish we could activate this on steam

 

[shortylickens]

ALWAYS go with user score, and be wary of those cuz its been known to be meddled with.

 

[zerocool84]

ALWAYS go with user score, and be wary of those cuz its been known to be meddled with.

You can't go just by user score either. Look at Portal 2, people are giving the game a 1 because it has an in-store DLC.

 

[shortylickens]

You can't go just by user score either. Look at Portal 2, people are giving the game a 1 because it has an in-store DLC.

Fair enough.
But that still more accurate than the pro reviewers who have been bought off.

 

[KaOTiK]

You can't go just by user score either. Look at Portal 2, people are giving the game a 1 because it has an in-store DLC.

True, but then you got 88 billion fanboys giving it a 100 like it is better then sliced bread.

 

[mwmorph]

User score is not usually accurate. The thing is, users dont really "review" games as much as fanboy-obsess over them so you'll see a lot of useless 0/1 point scores and lots of worthless 10 point scores.

What I think you have to do nowadays is use the metacritic scores and understand that games are really on a 4 point scale. Imagine a sort of public school grading system where a 7.5 is not "above average, it's a solid C.

As for shift 2, I give it a 7.75. It's C+ work. Definitely not bad, but the AI is aggravating and the graphics are merely okay. The car choice is great unless you love and need Ferraris and the different racing disciplines are good. Night racing is awesome and the cars though not feeling the most "realistic", feel vastly different which is good. It's also obviously a labor of love.

With some work on a Xbox360 pad (deadzone and sensitivity adjustments) and tuning (tune all cars for varying levels of understeer), it works pretty well.

The physics model feels like NFS:Shift 1. The same model is used for drifting as racing so I think that;s the root of the problems, cars hit threshold traction too early and slide too late.

In real life cars have this kind of traction pattern
|grip----------------drift--slide|
In shift the seem to do this
|grip---------drift---------slide|
Replace static coefficient of friction with breakaway point and kinetic coefficent of friction resectively if you want to get technical about it.
Which makes oversteering extremely easy even at normal speeds but loss of control comes much later.

Of the cars I've tried AWD cars like the Audi R8 and FM-R cars like the Lexus LFA are tunable to be much more controllable than M-R cars like the Lotus Extige.

Not a bad game, but it requires a little bit of work to be truly enjoyable. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I got the game on release day and I'm not unhappy at the purchase, though I'm not ecstatic about it either. For $18, if you like cars, and don't be mistaken, this game is all bout celebration of the cars, it's definitely not a bad buy.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

User scores are worthless. How many people do you think gave it a 1/10 without even playing it because they hate EA?

 

[duragezic]

User scores are worthless. How many people do you think gave it a 1/10 without even playing it because they hate EA?

Yeah that's the thing. I know a lot of people say the user scores are the ones to look at and pro reviews are trash, but I disagree. I see way too many whiny gamers who never played the game who just throw out 1/10 for any game if that's the popular game to bash on forums.

I agree that it's good to get user reviews instead of just relying on pro reviews (which can be good too) but you just have to wade through the trash and look for the people who actually know what they're talking about.

 

[motsm]

Yeah that's the thing. I know a lot of people say the user scores are the ones to look at and pro reviews are trash, but I disagree. I see way too many whiny gamers who never played the game who just throw out 1/10 for any game if that's the popular game to bash on forums.

I always find it interesting looking at the IMDB break down of user ratings. It's often just fan boys giving the movie a 10, and haters trying to balance it out with 1's, then you find all the rational people in the middle.

 

[minmaster]

after codemaster games i don't know if i can play a racing game w/o flashbacks

 

[Red Storm]

Need 4 Speed was fun way back in the days of Hot Pursuit. The new ones are just dull (or maybe it's just me growing up and not liking their games anymore).

 

[AstroManLuca]

Got a chance to play tonight and it's okay. Doesn't blow me away but it's still alright. Two things were ESSENTIAL for me to enjoy the game though:

- Changing the graphical settings. I do not always hate motion blur like some people, but in this game it looks terrible, like someone smeared vaseline on your monitor. It also kills performance. The game was slow and laggy, probably 30 fps or less, and then I switched off antialiasing, motion blur, vsync, and set shadows to low. Instantly went from stuttery to smooth.
- Changing the advanced controller setup. I greatly appreciate that EA included this feature but what I don't understand is why they must ship it with such terrible settings. It's like they learned nothing at all from Shift 1, which also had terrible default settings and required you to tweak them. It reminds me of developers that lazily release games with bugs and just patch them later.

I used the following settings and it made the game 100x more controllable:

http://captainstarball.com/news/shift-2-unleashed-advanced-control-tweakguide

Hell, part of the "lag" I experienced when I first played the game could have been from the ridiculous default deadzone.

Other than that it's pretty good. Although the cars have that weird GT4 "made of paper" quality to them, at least when you're looking at them in your garage. The actual racing is fun so far but I haven't done much or moved beyond D class yet.