I also put a lot more time into NFS: Shift today, and I’m close to unlocking Tier 4 now. I have three cars now, the starting Mazda RX-8, a tier 2 Lotus Elise, and a tier 3 Audi R8, and they’ve been good enough for pretty much all of the races so far. I will have to buy a few more for the brand/region-restricted races, though.

I’ve avoided drift races entirely since I’ve been terrible at them in the past, but I think I’ve done all of the other types now. ‘Races’ are straightforward, well, races; ‘time attack’ lets you set the best lap time you can within a time limit, and your position doesn’t matter; and ‘duels’ pit two cars against each other in a best-2-of-3 point-to-point race, with each car taking turns starting out front.

I’m still unhappy with my own driving since I’m having trouble sticking to the driving line and slide and oversteer quite a bit, and I’m still not sure if it’s just the nature of the game or if I’m just sucking at it. The control does feel better after adjusting the sensitivity settings, at least.