Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The most recent version of Need For Speed, precariously titled one consonant away from profanity, “Shift”, now boasts a PC demo. There aren’t many mirrors up yet, so I’m going to suggest you get it from here. It’s 1.13gb, and features racing cars, and the tracks that love them. I’ll update that link when a more sensible mirror list can be found. UPDATE: UK mirror here.

Vrooom, etc. Need For Speed is like some kind of proper racing game again, with Shift recreating the great and the good of motor-racing tracks from around the world. One of the most famous in the UK, Donnington, is trailered below, and the game footage does look pretty extraordinary. That said, we’ve yet to actually get our hands on a copy of this 13th NFS game, so perhaps anyone who has picked up can make appropriate critical noises in the comments section?
Read the rest of this entry »

Walker lamented a couple of weeks ago that EA were mysteriously promoting Shift, their oh-so-knowingly-named reboot of the horribly tarnished Need For Speed series, by showing almost nothing of the game. In the wake of EA’s press conference at this year’s GamesCom, that’s changed. Now we get to see lots of pretend cars.
Read the rest of this entry »

For a while the Need For Speed games became something… we weren’t paying much attention to. Then Shift was announced, and everyone sat up to take notice. Why? Because it’s being made by Slightly Mad Studios, a team made up of people responsible for the stunning GT Legends and GTR games. Jim writes much about it here. So a crop of new trailers appear, and I think, hooray! Then I watch them and I shake my pretty head.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been interesting to watch EA’s ongoing approach with the Need For Speed series over the past few years, and it now seems to be getting rather more complex. The past couple of generations of the series (it’s up to around a dozen games now) had each game delivered with a new “angle”, beyond simply being the next generation in the franchise, with ideas such as career structures, silly plots, realistic damage modeling, or open-world play. The last NFS game I played, Need For Speed Undercover, didn’t really seem to deliver any of these notions convincingly, so it’ll be interesting to see if the two-pronged reboot of Need For Speed: Shift and free racing MMO, Need For Speed: World Online, create something worth paying attention to, and breath new fumes into the series. Continued below…
Read the rest of this entry »