Need For Speed: Shift, EA Mobile’s follow-up to the wildly popular Need For Speed: Undercover, has been released in the app store. Moving away from the arcade racing style of NFS: Undercover and more toward the driving simulation style of Real Racing, NFS: Shift creates a highly polished and immersive experience that truly makes you feel like you’re behind the wheel of a souped-up speed machine.

Need For Speed: Shift offers comparable options to other racing titles on the iDevice. There are multiple racing modes from which to choose. The Quick Race mode allows you to jump directly into a vehicle for maximum fun with limited waiting. Career mode gives you the opportunity to set up a driver profile to save your progress as you work your way through the circuit to become a top driver. Three difficulty settings (Rookie, Pro, or Veteran) allow you to customize the control settings to allow various combinations of manual/auto transmission and assist on/off. There are 20 licensed vehicles, such as the Lamborghini Gallardo or the Porsche 911 GT2, which can be raced on 18 different tracks from around the world. Each car handles in its own unique way, requiring you to alter your style based upon the car. Just like in Undercover, you have plenty of customization options to trick out your ride’s performance and looks.

By winning races and accomplishing certain tasks, you earn rewards like cash, stars, precision and aggression points, and more. All of these items combine to increase your overall driver score. Earn enough stars and you can unlock new tracks. Earn enough cash and you can purchase a new car or upgrade various components of your own car, such as top speed, acceleration, tires, suspension, and nitrous. Each location has different events to race, such as elimination (driver in last place after each lap is out until one remains), duel (race against one person), time trial (beat the best track time), drift (earn a targeted number of drift points), and more. Points can be earned while racing for all sorts of things, from mastering corners and drifting to slipstreaming and blocking. You also earn points for Best Line, as the game tracks the amount of time you spend racing on the optional efficiency line (extra dotted arrows on the track). There is plenty of content to keep you busy and keep the racing fresh. This is definitely one of the best racers we’ve played. It feels a lot like Real Racing, but we feel like we have much more control over our vehicle in Shift than we did in Real Racing. Newcomers should have a very easy time slipping behind the wheel and screaming down the straightaways.

Graphically, the game is red hot. From the beautiful backdrops with both day and night racing options to the spit polished rides, it’s hard not to drool while living out this fantasy. You even get multiple point-of-view options at the tap of a button, including a view from the car’s cockpit, enhancing your ability to lose yourself in the action. About the only thing that serves to remind you that you’re not actually driving are the odd-looking virtual hands on the steering wheel. For all the polish of the game, you’d think that EA could have dressed them up a bit.

A major diversion from other racing games is the fact that you only have a single control option. Most games hit you with 4 or 5 control schemes so that you can choose what works best for you, but Shift clearly feels confident that there is one mode that stands out above the rest. Fortunately, tilting to turn and touching anywhere to brake work quite effectively, though the option to change would have been nice. There is a rocking soundtrack to get your blood pumping and awesome sound effects, from roaring engines and squealing tires to smashing fenders and the rush of the nitrous boosters. You really get a good sense of speed when you hit the Noz. If you prefer, you can select tracks from your own collection to play while racing.

Need For Speed Shift Pros:

• Highly polished and immersive experience
• Plenty of customization options to trick out your ride’s performance and looks
• Much more control over vehicle in Shift than in Real Racing
• Red hot graphics
• Rocking soundtrack
• Plenty of cars and achievements

Need For Speed Shift Cons:

• Odd-looking virtual hands on the steering wheel
• Only one control option
• Unintuitive menu  and UI systems

The menu system took a couple of minutes to get used to, but we found it to be second nature once we got the hang of it. Some aspects of the game were a little less intuitive than others. It took a while to realize that pausing required a two-finger downward drag. Also, tapping on anything other than nitrous or the camera button applies the brake and can ruin your race, so don’t get suckered into thinking that you can tap on various HUD items to bring up options or info.

We could go on and on, but we’re bordering on gushing as it is. Replay value is huge, with plenty of cars, tracks, achievements, customizations and the like to keep the experience fresh. There is even a multiplayer option via Bluetooth or local wi-fi. We didn’t get a chance to test this, but imagine that it rocks like the rest of the game. Launching at $9.99, Need For Speed: Shift is currently on sale for $6.99 for the holidays, though this could end any day. We highly recommend you grab this 5-Dimple smoking donut while you can.

Need For Speed Shift gets our AppSmile 5-Dimple rating: