Shift 2 Review

Should you spin out in the final stages of a race, you'll curse the game's lack of a rewind feature. This isn't a criticism as such, but after playing the likes of GRID and Forza 3, you start to appreciate how nice it is to correct the occasional mistake at the tap of a button. I found myself restarting a lot, especially during the cramped city races where crashes are most frequent. It could be that such a feature would have interfered with Autolog, which I'll get to in a minute, but many people will find the absence of a rewind difficult to acclimatise to.

Tying the game together is an XP and level system similar to that on offer in the first Shift. By sticking to the racing line, nailing corners, drafting behind rivals, and displaying other acts of good driving, you'll be rewarded with experience points contributing to an overall level. When you 'rank up', you'll be showered with new cars, parts for customisation and increasingly large amounts of cash.

XP can also be earned online, where players will spend increasing amounts of time once the career has been polished off. Slightly Mad Studios has made a point of listening to its community, incorporating a mode called Catch Up in addition to the usual ensemble of multiplayer racing modes. Here one player jumps into one of the less powerful cars and races off thirty seconds or so before the competition. Everybody else takes control of faster cars, tasked with catching the car in front before it reaches the finish line.

Menu screens are backed by an accompaniment of chilled out remixes from the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Anberlin and Biffy Clyro. The race itself is then undertaken in comparative silence, with only the sound of roaring engines and screeching rubber offering much in the way of a soundtrack. The original versions kick in as you cross the finish line, with heavy guitars and hearty bass lines. It's motivational stuff, and if you're a fan of these kinds of bands - as I am - you'll appreciate it all the more.

So, the game looks and sounds great, handles well and offers solid multilayer to boot. So what? Gran Turismo and Forza do these things, too – well, Gran Turismo was somewhat bewildered by the notion of online play, but I digress. In my eyes, Shift 2 is separated from the competition by the extensive social features surrounding the game. Anybody who has played Hot Pursuit will know how much Autolog adds to the experience. While a notification that you've been beaten by a friend can be intensely frustrating, it also incites competition like nothing else. Pressing the back button at any point in the menus will take you to the Autolog screens, where you can check your recommendations, news and leaderboards - or speedwalls, as Autolog calls them - in one handy location. As with Hot Pursuit, all it takes is the tap of a button to accept a friend's challenge and get to work on beating it.

Shift is a much better fit for the technology than its Criterion-born counterpart, too. Spike strips, helicopters, EMP blasts and other extraneous variables often meant that times and scores were outside of your control. In Shift 2, it's all on you. If you can't beat a friend's time, there's nothing to blame but your own incompetence behind the wheel. And your friend will know you're struggling, too, because it tracks each and every attempt you make. This is singularly the best (and worst) feature of Autolog.

There's an argument that racing games are becoming stagnant. With this generation of console, graphics and car handling are reaching a plateau, and innovation needs to come from elsewhere. To my mind, Autolog is doing more for the genre than anything else right now, and other developers are going to have to conjure up something similar to remain on equal footing with EA. Shift 2 is technically very impressive, but like Hot Pursuit, it's the social features surrounding the game that define it as an experience. If you're a serious fan of the genre, know that Shift 2 does several things better than anything else on the market right now, which makes it an essential purchase.