Bad physics, cheap authenticity and an arcade approach make this middle of the road driving "sim" fall flat.
By marketing this game as authentic to the racing experience, you begin to put it into the field of Forza and Gran Turismo. Maybe even F1 2010, although that is not nearly as much of a simulation as the other two.
However, Shift 2 retains a huge amount of arcade features that cheapen the feel of the game, and the controls are absolutely terrible. The car handling physics are some of the worst I have seen in a long time. Even for Need for Speed arcade standards, trying to play this game with a Fanatec wheel is nearly impossible and requires HUGE tweaking just to get it reasonably drivable. Cars understeer like crazy and do not snap around on you at all. You can plow through turns, hit other cars, and hardly lose speed or your bearing.
The effects for crashing ARE pretty cool in that they do kind of jar you, which is a nice attempt to disorient you like you were in a real crash. Overall though, the car physics totally kill the game for anyone who wants any sort of realism.
A few things it got right.
1. Helmet cam is a nice idea. It's too hard to use though, it doesn't work that well. You can't really replicate something you do with your EYES in real life. It'd be better if it varied the sharpness to simulate where you were looking, but then it would be too unrealistic.
2. The crashing is an interesting concept.
3. The tracks seem really detailed and nice.
4. The AI is some of the best in the racing genre across ALL platforms. Simply amazing, they yield their line when they are in the wrong but they still fight you pretty clean. A HUGE improvement over games like GT5 which have the absolutely worst AI there is.