Just wait for Forza 3
... and the problems don't stop there, the bottom line is: if you're at all serious about racing games, Nfs Shift is a waste of your time.
The game starts off with an annoyingly long cutscene and then plops you right into a race, and if you're using a controller the control scheme is completely unacceptable (using the bumpers to shift? huh?) and there is no way to change it until you're finished with your first race. After this you get to go buy your first car, and you'll notice that the cars are very well modelled, except that there is a bunch of menus blocking your view of the car and theres no way to manually adjust your view. This same thing is true in the customization menus.. good luck seeing what that new bodykit will look like before you buy it, because the bodykit menu is right infront of your car, almost completely obscuring it. I normally wouldn't care about the menus, but what they have done here is just rediculous. The loading times are another thing alltogether.. and it's not like you'll wait for a while and then be blown away by the graphics. Compared to other current racing games, the graphics really fall behind. The cockpits do look good however, I can't take any points away for a lack of detail.. everything is where it should be and works properly.
Once you get into a race you'll immediately notice several things wrong however, first of which is how the car feels, which I will touch on in a moment. But as soon as you hit 80 mph your cockpit will begin to blur and the car will start to shake uncontrollably, and this is where I get the feeling that the devs have never driven before. When I'm doing 80 mph I dont get tunnel vision, and I would really hope that my car wouldn't shake like crazy on a smooth race track.. I think they need to check their alignment. The crashes are also extremely over the top, and it won't be uncommon to rear end someone in a corner and see their car go flying up onto its front end, or for someone ahead of you to hit a barrel and have it fly 100 feet through the air and land infront of you. The momentary disorientation caused by blurring after a crash is a cool effect, although I feel it should be reserved for only the hugest crashes, not just for when you scrape up against a wall. The damage model in this game is completely baffling though. With full damage turned on, I've had crashes that should have completely ended my race but nope, I just get a blurry screen and keep on going. There doesn't seem to be anything to indicate if any damage was caused, and you'll notice a minimal change in handling afterwords. As well, the a.i. cars seem to be unaffected by most crashes that send you spinning off into oblivion.
Now we get to the real bone of the problem, the handling. I mean what is this? There doesn't seem to be any difference between fwd and rwd, every car kicks its tail out around every corner. It isn't quite as noticeable in the cockpit view but switch to outside view and it is obvious.. This handling is just completely wrong. Especially in a game that was selling itself as a sim, because it feels like im playing burnout. This is with all assists turned off as well, even when I try I have trouble spinning out any rwd car, its like even with tcs turned off the game still keeps it on. What a disaster.
However, despite all these flaws, despite this game being completely wrong, I would still recommend anyone who is a racing fan give it a try, because if this game does anything right, it does the thrill of speed right on the money. This is the only racing game I've played recently that has made me flinch avoiding an onscreen obstacle. And despite the handling being terrible, its a fun game to play.
So my verdict? Rent it first, try it out.. because everyone is going to get something different from this game. While I won't be playing it much longer, you might get a real thrill out of it, especially if you enjoy a more arcadish racing experience. But for the truly hardcore among us, just wait for Forza 3.