Need for Speed SHIFT In Stores Today

[Bojan]

In North America that is. Your preordered copies should be arriving soon, otherwise just visit your favourite store and pick up your copy.
Europe will be getting it on thursday (17th), UK on friday (18th) and for other areas, just check out your nearest game retailer for the exact date.
If you have the game, be sure to let us know on your thoughts in our SHIFT forums.

[SLJ]

damm... singapore is quite slow.. i pre ordered until nw (which is about 5.30pm here) the stock have not reach to the retail outlet... wonder wat is going wrong


edit: wao. half and hour later has passed, and they called me and told me it was ready for collection . o well after installing the game. maybe i will tell u guys hw is it.

[jacoja06]

September 24 for Australia.

Why do we always get left out in the cold? If I leave now, I can fly to Europe in about 12 hours. :/

[elie8]

I've Got the CALL ... I'm going to get my copy !!!! When i install it, i'll tell u guys what's it like ok !!!!

[SLJ]

well just played the game,

installing the game
i am using a pc to install. it took about 15 minutes to install everything. kinda fast.

in game
the intro was kinda nice. but the ea logo they seems to have reused it from prostreet.
the settings for the video are kinda different from the other previous nfs series. i will post a screen shot.

first race is tough, serious tough. the driving physics is very different from undercover. u will feel like u are always like kinda drifting during a normal turns.

after that u get to see the adjust your specs for your driving difficulty etc. and u get into your first race with the m3 that u tested. Not sure is it fairly easy because of my easy difficulty. but it is easy to get first place.

and after u won. u get to choose your first car. and there is the tier thingy again. from tier 1 to tier 5. tier ranging to be low performance car to the highest performance car. tier 5 seems to be unable to see in the career itself. i think u have to complete certain races ahead.

customization is good... but complex to use. the visuals are adjust based on the place example the left door, the right door etc. and u can't move a visual from left to right. u have to switch the position. which is quite irritating. and no mirror function. so u have to add 1 side and another.

the drifting i tried in the quick race. it is also tough. i tried the Silvia. the drift is very different from prostreet. but when u just keep trying. u will get the hang out of it.

damage is really realistic. but the good side is that u dun nid to pay for the damages. it will just auto repair after every race.

there is photo mode and REPLAY!!!!!! but photomode cannot only be used in a race. it can't be used in the garage...

the game huds also shake when u driving really fast... kinda realistic and also u can remove the huds with a button call cycle hud mode. it allows u to disable stuffs like rear view mirror, technometer and the best of all removing everything. the best ideal for taking a video.

the level system
it is very complicated. u have to lvl up just to unlock visual and performance. the best part of this lvl system is that u can go to quick race and it will be counted and the money also will be counted depending on your winnings.

sound
sound are kinda great. nth much to say.....

overall
the game is fun. but really u must MUST REALLY HAVE LOTS OF EXPERIENCE IN ORDER TO PLAY THIS GAME OR ELSE U WILL BR CRASHING TO THE WALL BEFORE THE FIRST TURN!!!!!!



edit: @elie 8: i did a faster review

[Summ]

^You were playing with a keyboard, I take it?

[jacoja06]

Wow, an in-game NFSUnlimited decal! Fantastic

[Hydro_PT]

Since I'm going to buy this game from a UK based store, I must wait till 18th. Not a problem though, it will be weekend then, so I'll have plenty of time.

I can't wait to get my hands on this game, see what's good and what's bad. I hope not to be disappointed.

@SLJ: Is the game properly optimized to run on the PC? Did you try the highest settings, just to see how it ran? And one more question ( ) are you playing with the keyboard or a wheel?

[Overreactman]

There were only four PC copies in my local Best Buy, but now I am sitting back waiting on the install. Each persons experience is different with a product (e.g. I loved Pro Street), but I can't wait to get in there and really experience this one first hand!

[Summ]

Congrats to all of you, who got your copies today =).

[DriftingFan]

i just got mine, for ps3 of course. i need to install it and play a little and then i'll share my thoughts

EDIT: ive been playing for a little now and visually the game is very nice. the sounds are good too. i dont usuallt use cockpit views in games for long but its all ive been using in shift. i like how you can turn the hud off with 1 press of a button too. i have the hud completely off because it is a bit cluttered.

gameplay is good. the controls are different and will take a little getting used to but its not too bad. just dont be too agressive and drive like an idiot. the ai can get annoying at times when they hit you but its not too bad either. i havent tried drifting yet

customizing is slow from what ive experimented with so far. rims and vinyl dont load so u cant see what they look like on your car until u put them one but they are free. there is a small preview of the vinyl similar to undercover. the liveries load on the car before you place them on so i have one of those on now.

[zedex]

got mine through digital download...

it took... less time to download than to transfer, extract and install... *downloading on diff computer, because university's faster and free bandwidth =b*

well... i DID install on this computer but i doubt it can run it...

just the extract + install took longer, so transfering 5.4GB of data over LAN is going to take quite some time...

sooo... i can only test it out how it's like once i get home and install it on the desktop =)

[TRANSFORMER]

I'm waiting...

[TheNoobofFerraris]

More flow of videos.

Need for Speed: Shift - Donington Park Track Guide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYcX9tVnTnc
Need for Speed: Shift - Nurburgring (Nordschleife) Track Guide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SMsxUKt2kc

Also, if you take a look at the official website, there are some more game review scores.

Gametrailers.com - 9.1/10
Gamespy.com - 5/5
Official Playstation Magazine - 9/10

[DriftingFan]

sorry im using my ps3 browser and its limiting to how much i can type so i have to post again.

anyway, the declas can only be made so big. i didnt really mess with the vinyl too much but no mirror mode which is just bad. the upgrades menu is a bit weird at first but i dont like how the bodykit is hard to see on your car before you buy it. your car is behind the menus and everything and you cant look at it freely. that brings me to my next point. the photomode is limited. no garage shots and on the track it acts a bit weird. it might just be a glitch though.

the game is definitley fun though and seems like it is definitley the best nfs in awhile. now im off to play somemore

[zedex]

i saw on the wikipedia page, the lowest score was a 7/10 by eurogamer... and they said something like NFS deviated too much from its origins and trying too hard to be like GT or Forza but isn't there yet...

i personally find that... redundant... anyways, still copying the files over through the network... which seems to have lots of trouble >.> lots of breaks or "loss of connection" etc... sigh...

so good so far

[<Jeroen>]

Hmm, 2 more days here in Holland...
But atleast I can look at all the awesome rides in the showroom

[Summ]

@DriftingFan - sounds like they focussed on the gameplay rather than the customization aspect. I'm not surprised. All the customization you can do in the GTR series (which SMS has been making, when it was still a part of SimBin) was performance-oriented. There was no visual/exterior customization other than choosing between a number of preset skins - from 2 to 5-6 - so the whole aspect of customization is probably new to them. I don't understand why they didn't just take the Pro Street/Undercover formula as it was, though. Why regress? I'm not complaining so much about the bodykits and spoilers thing, because from what I've seen all the bodykits so far are gorgeous, but the vinyl/decal system sounds retarded.. stuck somewhere between underground and carbon?

[Dr Houbenheimer]

Yeah I think everyone got over-hyped by the 1000 layer thing but from the sounds of things it's actually pretty buggy. Can't beleive how basic the body tuning is though, they've just been going downhill since the UG series...

[SLJ]

Since I'm going to buy this game from a UK based store, I must wait till 18th. Not a problem though, it will be weekend then, so I'll have plenty of time.

I can't wait to get my hands on this game, see what's good and what's bad. I hope not to be disappointed.

@SLJ: Is the game properly optimized to run on the PC? Did you try the highest settings, just to see how it ran? And one more question ( ) are you playing with the keyboard or a wheel?

i didn't run optimized because recently i did not noe wat happened to my pc. it went bsod. so i got kinda worried and decide not to run it optimized and yes i am playing on a keyboard as i dun have a steering wheel and i do not have a place to put the wheel (because i am using a computer table which is quite small)

[TheNoobofFerraris]

Here's another review by G4. They've listed a few downsides, but the written review shines a good light on Shift. I think I'm nearly set on buying the game, but I still need a little more convincing (even though I love G4). I think the final game reviewer I want to hear from is Gamespot. I'm hoping they don't give the game anything less than an 8.5, otherwise I might look the other way.

G4's rating - 5/5
I wish it was an X-play review.. is it just me or have they stopped airing new episodes?
http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/69920 ... eview.html

[Summ]

Hmm.. this is what I feared - a pseudo-sim with handling that doesn't quite resemble real life. http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1262660
Pity. Had high hopes for this. Oh well, I hope that it's enjoyable to play anyway.

[TheNoobofFerraris]

"Simulation Purists Might Be Disappointed."

Yep, it looks like they were right, views on the game are quite white and black. It doesn't bother me though, I'm pleased that it is not another Carbon or Undercover (which both had very "arcadey" driving engines), but I'm also glad that it isn't an exact copy of Gran Turismo or the GT games you had mentioned to me.

[Summ]

^A game needs personality, agreed.. but physics that have nothing to do with the real world are meaningless to me =). I need to feel that what I'm driving COULD be a car. Does it make sense?

This post in particular scares me:
"I've been playing this on PC for some 5 hours now, and it's utter crap if you're looking for any realistic features. It certainly isn't easy like arcade car games, but it isn't difficult because it would be a simulator of any sort. It's "difficult" for the wrong reasons, which are odd physics that relate in no way to how a real car reacts.

The force feedback feels like a mix of Gran Turismo 4 and GTR, in other words, nothing to write home about. The FFB is quite useless no matter what degrees you're using, it simply feels unnatural. Not to mention, the car feels nervous but yet unresponsive if you have to start turning after driving straight. You can wiggle your steering wheel a good 45 degrees from side to side, and the car will just keep going straight, even with high steering sensitivity setting. Feels a bit like driving an old american pickup truck with loose steering components. I tried to fiddle with the wheel settings for a long while, without finding any way to make them much better. You can't change the wheel settings while in a race either, you have to exit from the race to the game menu until you can change it, and starting another race takes ages until you can try out the adjusted settings. Awkward.

The physics.. are weird. The tires don't feel like tires at all. They sometimes grip and sometimes loose traction without any logical explanation. The cars react very arcadely in replays when you focus on looking at the physics. Drift mode is a massive joke. It's exactly the same kind of arcade-drift-mode that previous rice-NFS games and Grid have. All the real world techniques work for initating the drift, but only because it feels like that's what the developers wanted, not because it would happen through natural physics. Feels somehow "canned".

It's not a complete disaster though. It has nice graphics and it's definately more towards simulation than arcadeness compared to some of the previous rice-fanatic NFS games which were just ridiculous crap. I didn't expect anything from this title, and I didn't really get anything from it either. I wasn't delighted, but neither was I disappointed. At the end of the day, it's an arcade game like we all knew."

[TheNoobofFerraris]

It makes plenty of sense. But still, this is why we absolutely need a decent demo before the full version of the game is released (and while I'm still talking about it, any game really). You're getting all disappointed over the opinions of others when you haven't even played the game yourself.