Written by: Rik
Date posted: February 22, 2026

Farewell, then, Need for Speed. It seems slightly odd that we conclude our slightly patchy round-up of this long-running racing franchise with the only game in the series to remove the words ‘Need for Speed’ entirely, but there we go. Such was the nature of the gaming world at the time, towards the endpoint of what we PC gamers must reluctantly call ‘the Xbox 360 era’, when EA imagined that demand for Need for Speed could not only sustain a rotating cast of developers, but also a spin-off franchise known simply as SHIFT.

As it turns out, they were wrong on both counts, and SHIFT 2: Unleashed proved to be the last game in the SHIFT series before semi-serious, track-based driving was abandoned altogether and the Need for Speed franchise was rebooted, in its traditional street racing form, for the next console generation.

Despite the change of name and apparent desire to set itself apart from its parent brand, SHIFT 2 actually feels more like a Need for Speed game than its predecessor. There seems to have been a definite attempt to get a big more edgy and hyperactive with the menus and presentation, while real-life racing drivers pop up in video briefings to introduce different sections of the career mode, at the end of which you get an opportunity to race against them and win their cars. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch, but it almost feels rather like moving up Most Wanted‘s blacklist.

If nothing else, it certainly adds a bit of personality to the action: the duels in the first SHIFT were slightly sterile affairs against faceless names (with suspiciously fast cars). One of the racers, Vaughn Gitten Jr. also acts as your mentor throughout, although his advice to you via the in-car radio is restricted to general utterings at the start and end of each race, and most of what he says is usually rendered inaudible by the roar of your engine. Loading screens also include quotes from Vaughn and the gang about how much they love racing and danger. Like I said: edgy.

The structure of the career mode is much the same as before (and a lot of other racing game career modes): start in the slow cars and grind your way to victory to earn money to upgrade and progress to more powerful machines and prizes. Just like in the previous game, there’s a slightly bizarre interlude for drift events early on, which would be quite annoying if they weren’t also quite an easy way to earn money and XP (although the achievement seems quite hollow as you’re rewarded for bodging about aimlessly while displaying anything but a mastery of the skills apparently required).

Ah yes: XP, the parallel system of rewards that exists outside of the race’s actual outcome, in which you can earn points for maintaining the correct racing line, tackling corners correctly, beating lap times, and generally being quite good at driving. In theory, it’s rather like XP in an RPG or any other game: a motivation to do more than just the basics in exchange for a slightly easier passage through the game later on. And perhaps it might just be the difference between you rage-quitting a race as you lose the lead on the last lap and sticking it out until the end.

That said, having diligently stuck to the racing line and completed the sundry other challenges to the best of my ability, I was informed at roughly the halfway point of the career mode that my driver level was maxed out and that any future endeavours in this regard would count for nothing. It seemed a bit soon for me to have reached that stage, and – cash aside – I wasn’t quite sure what I’d earned for my trouble that I wouldn’t have otherwise unlocked by winning races.

Based on my admittedly limited experiences of the RPG world, grinding through the same basic gameplay over and over again should usually reward the player for their dedication to some quite extreme levels. You do get a few extra vehicles and non-performance parts as you progress, but SHIFT 2 is a bit too serious to let the player get too excited about how their car looks. Such things kept me going in the Test Drive Unlimited games, and even in this game’s non-SHIFT counterpart from the same year, The Run, which locked some of its more funky vehicles behind timed challenges.

In fact, unless you’re absolutely determined to explore the range of cars available, and tinker under the hood, SHIFT 2 offers the lazy player a more streamlined experience than its predecessor. Perhaps recognising that the career mode represents a hefty chunk of racing, it doesn’t bog you down too much, and at the intermediate difficulty levels there’s certainly no need to spend much time adjusting suspension or gear ratios.

While the previous game showered you in badges and achievements while attempting to characterise your driving style, everything here has been pared back somewhat. Even the racing is generally just laps against opponents, although there are some timed challenges as well. The on-track action is very similar to SHIFT, with the same slightly stressful cockpit view that greys out if you collide with something, noisy engines, and a slight sense of wrestling with the car while it remains only just under your control (but in a good way).

However, there is more consistency in the level of excitement across the various races this time around. The first game felt like quite a slog for a while in the middle, until things really picked up at the very end. And while I again reached a point where I could no longer be bothered to complete each and every event on the way to that final series, that moment came a lot later on this time. Perhaps in both cases I was a bit too slavishly devoted to completing things in order, but for a game that emphasises its XP system and supposedly leans into the optional, it seemed like the logical thing to do.

The main thing to emphasise, though, is that the racing in SHIFT 2 is frequently rather thrilling, and feels like driving a high-performance car quite fast. The cockpit view really is the only way to play, although if you really like being disoriented there’s also a ‘helmet cam’ which follows your driver’s head rather than remaining focused on the dashboard.

A couple of bugs spoil things slightly – the rear-view mirror occasionally stopped working, and sometimes I noticed the steering wheel moving through my driver’s completely stationary hands – but otherwise I was completely immersed, particularly on the narrower, more street-based tracks, where the margins for error are narrowed, much like when you take your boring family car to one of those narrow multi-storey car-parks and pray you don’t hit anything.

That’s my only real-life reference point, and as such games like SHIFT 2 represent the closest I’m likely to get to realistic high-speed racing, success in which requires a great deal of nerve, the ability to operate manual gears, and to be able navigate the circuit without great big coloured arrows painted on the track telling you when to brake and accelerate. But that’s the trick with games like this: can they make you, Mr. Grey Estate Car who barely drives, feel like he’s actually doing proper racing without being patronised by too much help?

For someone in that position, looking for that experience, SHIFT 2 is probably the best game I’ve played. During one race, on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, I genuinely thought that a) finishing in one piece might be impossible and b) I might be physically sick. Whether it will float everyone’s boat in quite the same way, I’m not so sure: issues such as the lack of qualifying, variable grid position, and apparent scaling of opponents’ cars to match your own will surely niggle more sim-focused gamers.

As for me, the Need for Speed name brought me here, but I’m not going to be playing spiritual successor Project Cars or anything of its ilk any time soon. Certainly the lack of a sequel suggests this wasn’t what enough people were looking for, although if a SHIFT 3 had ever been released, I would gladly – and not just for the sake of completeness – have played it.