Drifting is a decently large feature in the new Need for Speed SHIFT which we couldn’t wait to get our hands on. Above is our Chris Cook tribute drifting machine I put together after I received a Dodge Viper as a loaner from Dodge to slide around in. Sadly no Formula Drift tracks are available to slide around at but they do have a decent selection including the D1GP Japan Autopolis course.
You will unlock the Falken Tires Ford Mustang after achieving Driver Level 10 which should only take you an hour or two. The in car modeling and detail on this machine rock. Sadly, I didn’t have the patience to try and drift in car yet so I have been sliding from out of car. It was a huge struggle at first but I learned some tricks I will share with you for sliding success.
One trick is hitting your brakes before you want to slide as almost an initiation. It seems to not upset the car as much when your trying to drive sideways. The rest of your formula to success is throttle modulation. It requires a ton of it and I have a heavy throttle finger so this was an issue for quite a long time.
In this photo I am running a high speed wide line at Hazyview. A trick to getting way more points is to null the speed as much and stick closer to the clipping points which are the three cones to the right of my BMW M3.
The way I got my photos onto the website was also a super cool and easy feature that Need for Speed has. You take a snapshot and upload it to your MyNFS account. Setting one up and syncing it to your Xbox handle is very simple. Then on your MyNFS page you click the My Photos Tab and you can thumb through the last 10 photos you took. With only a 10 photo bank make sure you click download and save the ones you really like to your own computer. It also tracks your performance on other NFS games like Undercover which is pretty neat.
At some point your going to crash in drifting sending things like the tire barriers flying through the air. Here was an accident on my demo runs at the Hazyview track. I got a little overzealous on the throttle and it was all over for the E46 M3.
All and all I like the drifting version of this game although it’s quite difficult to pick up and play in. I think they should of offered an “Assistance” mode where they could walk you through steps on how you can drift in the game. The biggest disappointment for me was the lack of cars you can drift in. For some reason they limited the already limited car selection to certain cars with a Drifting badge. Several cars I would of loved to slide around in that are RWD you cannot play with! Don’t worry though, cars like the 240sx, AE86, and Mustangs are all available to drift in. The cars locked out are mostly some of the higher end vehicles.
Here is an in-car snapshot of me drifting around in my AE86. Watching your revs on the tachometer and your guy smashing the gears really adds to the excitement of drifting in the game. It’s a pretty good drifting mode for Need for Speed and I can only imagine it will get better with time and that is what really excites me and has me waiting. Until then however, this will hold my entertainment over and my drifting video game bug.
Posted in Lifestyle, Merchandise, Vaughn Gittin Jr., Video Games, Xbox | 8 Comments »
