More Need For Speed Shift impressions from Pete

My good friend Pete Anderson had some great impressions after playing Need For Speed shift a little while back and allowed me to post them here. Well, he has spent more time with the game (and his racing wheel controller) and sent me some more thoughts. Here they are:

"I spent some more quality time with NFS Shift yesterday, completing Tier 1 and going to work on Tier 2. However, I first gave the Logitech wheel a try with GT Prologue. The wheel responds great with GT, but the game itself still leaves me kind of cold, and I was fully prepared to devote some serious play time to it going in.

Anyway, it was quickly on to Shift. I must say, having compared the two games back to back, the graphics of NFS are really growing on me. The GT car models rule, and as sharp as that game looks, it"s almost TOO sharp to the point of being sterile. The backgrounds in NFS seem more "alive", which adds to the realism. If the car models were taken up a notch (and don't get me wrong, they do look VERY good), the graphics would be over the top.

More importantly though, NFS really delivers where it counts. Gameplay. The control is about as close to perfection as you could hope for - just forgiving enough to keep things fun without detracting from the illusion that you're actually driving. I tried a Tier 4 invitational event (second highest level, I think) that put me in a 1000HP Bugatti over a 13 mi. point to point course that took over 8 real-time minutes to complete. The sense of power and speed (I was using the bumper view) was beyond belief! Despite the sorry state of my mega $ ride by race end, it was quite possibly the most exhilirating racing experience I've ever enjoyed. I haven't had this much fun with a (car) racing game in a very long time. "

That's high praise indeed coming from Pete; he's a real stickler when it comes to racing games and not easy to please. I would say that if you are into racing games at all and have yet to try Need For Speed Shift, you should feel very safe relying on Pete's impressions.