The critically acclaimed Shift franchise returns to the track with Shift 2 Unleashed. The most immersive racing experience to date brings the True Driver’s Experience to life with all the intensity and exhilaration of being behind the wheel and competing in the Driver’s Battle. From the all-new helmet cam to night racing to frighteningly real physics and crashes, Shift 2 Unleashed delivers all the violence and excitement of race day in a groundbreaking authentic racing experience.
Shift 2 Unleashed is a multiplayer Simulation Racer for play on Xbox 360. Follow-up game to 2009′s Need For Speed: Shift, Shift 2 Unleashed leaves the traditional arcade racing associations of the Need For Speed franchise far behind as it immerses the player in an unprecedented level of realistic racing scenarios and functionality. Features include: improved first person perspective via the all-new helmet cam; access to real-world drivers, tracks, and cars; a deep Career Mode; 1-12 online multiplayer support; extensive car customization; and the Autolog social networking functionality.
The New Standard in Sim Racing
The critically acclaimed Shift franchise returns to the track to deliver the most physical racing experience to date with Shift 2 Unleashed. Feel what the Driver’s Battle is actually like in an unparalleled racing experience that captures the physicality and brutality of being behind the wheel going 200mph. Frighteningly authentic physics and degradation of tracks and cars, thrilling night racing, and an eye-watering sense of speed combined with the helmet camera puts you right in the heart in the action. Feel every scrape, bump, and burn out in an all-out fight to the finish line. Shift 2 Unleashed sets the bar for realistic racing and gives all the excitement and exhilaration of race day in a groundbreaking authentic experience.
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Gameplay
Like the original game in the young Shift video game franchise, Shift 2 Unleashed is a Need For Speed game, but one that falls decidedly in the Simulation game genre as opposed to an arcade racer. The game features first-person oriented racing in which players experience true in-cockpit vibrations with every scrape, bump and scratch that their cars encounter. In-game players pursue the FIA GT1 World Championship and GT3 European Championship via a point-based experience system as they take on the roles of real-world drivers and a variety of race types across equally real-world tracks in a wealth of cars.
Change the Game with Autolog
Shift 2 Unleashed also contains powerful social networking functionality, known as Autolog. Autolog is a revolutionary system that connects friends and changes the gameplay experience by allowing you to share virtually every aspect of your racing career both while playing and when not. Compare driver profiles and career status, share and comment on pictures and videos, send challenges, and pull news feeds directly from NFS.com and Speehunters.com. Autolog recommendations amp up the social competition of real-world racing by delivering challenges based on friend activity, creating a dynamic, competitive, fun new way to play both online and offline.
Key Game Features
- Next Level of Immersion – Experience visceral first-person racing like never before. The all-new helmet cam recreates realistic driver head movements that deliver an unparalleled sensation of speed: lean and tilt into the apex of corners, feel the impact of every scrape, bump, and crash, experience true in-cockpit vibrations, and more.
- True Realistic Racing – Shift 2 Unleashed redefines the racing simulator genre by bringing the atmosphere of race day to life. From authentic car and crash physics to terrifying night racing to the battle-scarred look and feel of both cars and tracks, Shift 2 Unleashed leaves no detail behind in delivering the most authentic racing game experience yet. Featuring the FIA GT1 World Championship and GT3 European Championship plus real-world drivers, tracks, and cars, this is truly tomorrow’s sim for today’s adrenaline-fueled racer.
- Amazing Career Depth and Variety – Earn unlocks and participate in multiple racing disciplines on the way to becoming the FIA GT1 World Champion. Featuring everything from new Endurance races to muscle and retro cars, Shift 2 Unleashed gives you the flexibility to choose the path that fits your individual racing style. Fight for position, dominate opponents, and annihilate track times every time out — the battle doesn’t end at the finish line, it extends throughout your entire racing career.
- The Autolog Social Network – Connect with friends, share stats, video and images both while you are playing and via your web browser.
- Customize for Show or Customize to Win – Unleash your creativity to turn some of the world’s most elite high-performance vehicles into fire-breathing weapons. Customize the engine, the body, the suspension, and much, much more, then put your ultimate racing machine to the test in any mode. Whether your goal is to race a 1000-horsepower Econobox or a tricked-out GTR, you have nearly limitless options to reign supreme on the track where every second counts.
- Multiplayer Race Support – Enjoy 12-player race support online.
Additional Screenshots
12 racer support.
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Terrifying night racing.
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Deep customization options.
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Dramatic in-cockpit views.
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- Next Level of Immersion-Experience visceral first-person racing like never before. The all-new helmet cam recreates realistic driver head movements that deliver an unparalleled sensation of speed: lean and tilt into the apex of corners
- True Realistic Racing-From authentic car and crash physics to terrifying night racing to the battle-scarred look and feel of both cars and tracks, Featuring the FIA GT1 World Championship and GT3 European Championship plus real-world drivers
- Amazing Career Depth and Variety-Earn unlocks and participate in multiple racing disciplines on the way to becoming the FIA GT1 World Champion. Featuring everything from new Endurance races to muscle and retro cars
- Change the Game with Autolog-Autolog is a revolutionary system that connects friends and changes the gameplay experience by allowing you to share virtually every aspect of your racing career.
- Customize for Show or Customize to Win!-Unleash your creativity to turn some of the world’s most elite high-performance vehicles into fire-breathing weapons. Customize the engine, the body, the suspension, and much, much more.
List Price: $ 59.95
Price: $ 30.49
ZeroG Optimized XBOX 360 Controller Settings,
Great game, but default settings for the XBOX 360 controller are terrbilbe – just like the first one.
Counter-intuitive vs. Shift 1, but try the below and see if it makes a difference. I have tested extensively in both race and drift modes and can absolutely say the game just works for me now!
Feedback appreciated.
ZeroG Optimized XBOX 360 Controller Settings
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Steering Dead Zone: 3 <– Key Change
Accelerator Dead Zone: 5
Brake Dead Zone: 5
Steering Sensitivity: 50 <– MOST CRITICAL CHANGE
Acceleration Sensitivity: 50
Braking Sensitivity: 50
Speed Steering Sensitivity: 100
I play with all assists off and the elite driving model.
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|All a Sequel Should Be,
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It may not be completely fair of me to do so, but, This edit needs to happen. Shift 2 Unleashed: the previous review is no more and with a complete driver level I’m much more prepared to create a much more thorough review.—————————————–**
Need for Speed Shift, the sequel to the ill received game, NFS Prostreet. Prostreet to the franchise to the track and removed the cops, Shift, sought to refine the formula. Both games suffered from their own share of bugs and problematic handling, but overall, as standalone games, succeeded in a way for providing a simish experience. And what I mean by simish is that the game makes you drive more like a real driver would, hitting the Apex of a turn, and using the Brake. Since most NFS games are never synonymous with braking you can see the problem in user base here. I digress, Both of the games suffered hitting that middle ground of a sim/arcade game Prostreet had a bunch of tanks for cars with horrid understeer, and Shift had a bunch of squirrely go karts. Both games required input modification to be played correctly, either by car settings or controller ones. Going into this review with that background, if you’ve never played this type of game before, well, now you know where we’re at, and references I make to previous titles should be clearer. Let’s get on with it. Here’s Shift 2.
Good:
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What’s good about this game is actually more or less equaling out what’s bad, but Shift 2′s strength’s lie in its presentation, selection, its unique autolog feature, and some driving aspects.
Presentation:
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Shift 2 has a very theatrical presentation, the game’s menu takes place around a R-35 who is pretty much going to crash into the guy flipping in front of him. The way the menu actually loads is from a cutscene that stops right there. The menu uses the right and left directional buttons to navigate, its flashy and it’s a bit slow, but its cool, and it does work the way it should. Menu’s are generally intuitive, I didn’t have a hard time navigating them and they’re not hard to see. Autolog returns from hot pursuit and is shown on the bottom, is brought up by the Back button, and can be checked in the menus at any time. The meat here is in the career mode, which is a bunch of flags and sub menus, its not slow to navigate and its pretty simplistic to understand what kind of events you’ll be participating in. Obviously as you play more, more unlock and eventually the whole set is there and it’s a matter of finishing it. Graphically, Shift 2 is great, the car models are very well detailed, and some very little things occasionally struck me as I hadn’t really seen them before, such as flies hitting the windscreen or the heatwaves emanating from the hot exhaust. Shift 2 is very well animated, suffers very little frame rate drop, and when it does its initial load or while its saving to the HDD.
Selection:
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A great set of fully tunable cars awaits, over a hundred make an appearance, and for the first time, a NFS title really shines in selection. Chances are with the selection of cars, you CAN find a car you like and be proud to own or drive, and there is a good chance a favorite of some sort may await you. This game also is not limited to new cars, older models make an appearance such as the 69 charger, or the 427 shelby cobra. All the way up to the likes of the newest supercars like the Gumpert Apollo and the Bugatti Veyron.
Not only is the selection good for the cars, but the tracks as well, featuring a great number of real life tracks and some fictional with Night and Day lighting as an option for each. As far as repetition is concerned, the game has a wide selection of tracks to keep things interesting.
Autolog:
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Autolog deserves its own section, mostly because there isn’t a self contained thing like it. Autolog is NFS facebook, Forza’s Record menu, a suggestion area, a marketing channel, and a news channel all at once, all in one place. You can compare your laps to your friends, see which of you is faster, see what records of yours your fiends have beaten, compare your times to the regional and global leaders and get suggestions about what to do next, by hitting one button. It’s really nice actually, but it doesn’t shine without many friends to enjoy it to its fullest. It’s still a great feature.
Driving Aspects:…
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