Shift 2 Unleashed
Bring the true driver’s experience to life with all the intensity and exhilaration of being behind the wheel!
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2011
- Developer
- Slightly Mad Studios
- Platforms
- 4 systems
- Critics
- 84
- Steam Deck
- unsupported
- Download
- Not stated
What is Shift 2 Unleashed?
Bring the true driver’s experience to life with all the intensity and exhilaration of being behind the wheel!
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 29 March 2011 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Slightly Mad Studios |
| Publisher | Electronic Arts |
| Platforms | iOS, iPad, PlayStation Portable, PC |
| Genres | Racing, Simulation |
| Languages | 7 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q940134, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Shift 2 Unleashed received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Partial Controller Support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | partial support |
| Cloud saves | No |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Single-player only |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | unsupported |
| Download size | Not stated |
| Add-on content | None listed |
| Age gate | None |
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
Is Shift 2 Unleashed worth it?
68% of 2,580 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mixed. Its price is not listed, and critics score it 84/100.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Shift 2 Unleashed? How long to beat it
Total play time for Shift 2 Unleashed is about 48.5 hours to do everything, and around 19.9 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 19.9h | 36 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 36.6h | 24 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 48.5h | 11 |
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Where Shift 2 Unleashed sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueShift 2 Unleashed plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Mobile
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for Shift 2 Unleashed
These are estimates, not reported figures. Slightly Mad Studios has not published unit sales for Shift 2 Unleashed, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 2,580 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | Not recorded |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Slightly Mad Studios publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
What readers say about Shift 2 Unleashed
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of Shift 2 Unleashed on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes73 of 300 (24%)
And with that, even if you do manage to boot the game up (which is often after four or five crashes) you then try and enter a race and it crashes.
Steam review, 28 April 2019 · 29 hours played · 24 readers marked it helpfulIt's that old, when they're off the screen, they run perfect laps, but if they're on the screen they'll crash out right in front of you, and blow your line.
Steam review, 23 January 2020 · 10 hours played · 21 readers marked it helpful - Will not launch or install13 of 300 (4%)
I can't even install due to key being corrupted.
Steam review, 30 July 2025 · 56 hours played · 15 readers marked it helpfulUhhh, the game wont start and i have all of 3.7 hours of gameplay...
Steam review, 5 March 2023 · 4 hours played · 8 readers marked it helpful - Performance and stutter9 of 300 (3%)
Doesn't work well with modern hardware - 1080Ti (fastest graphics card on the market) gets me 40 fps in 1080p.
Steam review, 26 October 2017 · 5 hours played · 20 readers marked it helpfulThis is an extremely poor PC port and it will seriously struggle to run consistently at 60+ fps despite being almost a decade old.
Steam review, 23 June 2020 · 1 hours played · 11 readers marked it helpful
A further 2 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
Did it run on your PC?
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Where Shift 2 Unleashed appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Shift 2 Unleashed qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like Shift 2 Unleashed
24 games overlap with Shift 2 Unleashed on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Project CARS, Project CARS 2 and DiRT Rally 2.0.
Shift 2 Unleashed head to head
See Shift 2 Unleashed compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
Common questions about Shift 2 Unleashed
What platforms is Shift 2 Unleashed on?
Shift 2 Unleashed is available on iOS, iPad, PlayStation Portable, PC. It first released in 2011.
Do players recommend Shift 2 Unleashed?
68% of 2,580 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mixed. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for Shift 2 Unleashed?
84 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does Shift 2 Unleashed work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Shift 2 Unleashed as unsupported on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
Who made Shift 2 Unleashed?
Shift 2 Unleashed was developed by Slightly Mad Studios and published by Electronic Arts.
Is Shift 2 Unleashed worth it in 2026?
68% of 2,580 Steam reviews are positive (Mixed), and its price is not listed. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
How long does it take to beat Shift 2 Unleashed?
about 19.9 hours for the main story, 36.6 hours with the main extras, 48.5 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.