Need For Speed is one of the best-loved and most successful driving game franchises ever ? but you can forget everything you knew about it, as NFS Shift ? the clue is in the name -- takes a radical new direction. You could argue that it has grown up ? it has moved, by and large, from the streets to legendary race-tracks like Spa, Donington and Laguna Seca (although there are street circuits, too), and gives you the chance to pilot drool-inducing machinery like the Pagani Zonda and Koenigsegg CCX.

The shift in emphasis becomes immediately apparent when you start a Career in the game: theres not a cop-car in sight, but instead, NFS Shift assesses your driving skills by putting you in a BMW 3-series and dropping you into a short race around a gloriously detailed reconstruction of the legendary Brands Hatch. Buy a car and you instantly have a choice of five races. What initially strikes you are the stunning, mega-crisp graphics, best enjoyed through NFS famous cockpit view, which now has a level of attention to detail that beggars belief.

You swiftly come to appreciate the structure of Need For Speed Shifts Career Mode, which sounds complicated but has been cleverly designed to work in your favour. To progress through the game, you must win stars, which are given out for finishing on the podium (three stars for a win and so on), but also for passing thresholds for Profile Points in each race. Profile Points are awarded for two opposite aspects of your driving: aggression and precision, and the balance between them defines your driving style. This system works brilliantly, as you actually get awarded for indulging in driving that would be frowned on in real life, such as punting opponents off the track or four-wheel slides. Those who fancy themselves as budding pros will undoubtedly want to earn more points for precision than aggression, though.

There are four Tiers to negotiate before you even get to the NFS Live World Tour, the two-series culmination of the game, in which you compete in the worlds most exotic cars ? to move up the Tiers you need to collect specified numbers of stars. And your Profile Points let you level up as a driver, to a maximum of Level 50. Each time you level up, you get rewards like sponsorship, new rims and vinyls, plus invites to extra races.

NFS Shift boasts straight Races, Time Attacks ? in which you get a certain amount of time to post the fastest lap ? Eliminators, Drift events, Driver Duels ? in which you pick one of two cars and must defeat the other over three races ? Endurance races, Manufacturer races ? in which youre given an identical car to everyone else on track ? and Hot Laps, where you have three target times to beat in order to grab the stars on offer. You earn plenty of Invitational Events along the way, and you can see who out of you and your Friends owns each event in Career Mode. NFS Shift is sure to be a big draw online: up to eight players can compete in Races, Time Attacks and Drifts.

Factor in realistic handling with bags of feel, AI that makes rival drivers improve steadily through the game and extensive customisation of both mechanicals and bodywork, and you have what must be the most complete, best structured and best-looking racing game ever, whether youre a serious petrol-head with dreams of becoming the next Lewis Hamilton, or an enthusiastic amateur who tends to favour arcade-style racers. With Shift, Need For Speed has stepped up several gears at once.