Posts tagged Speed Shift
Need For Speed: SHIFT – BMW 135i Coupe Profile (Need for Speed SHIFT)
Jul 20th
EA has released a vehicle profile of the BMW 135i Coupe being featured in Need For Speed: SHIFT along with some screens.
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Drifting in Need for Speed: Shift
Jul 17th
While critical reception for the Need for Speed series has certainly fluctuated over the years, EA’s long-running racing franchise has managed to excel in one area time and time again: the ability to keep people guessing about what the next game will offer. Need for Speed: Shift is the latest in the series to keep fans on their toes, foregoing the heavy narration and exaggerated physics of last year’s Undercover in favor of realism, realism, and more realism. But even as the series moves from police barricades to clean takeovers, time trials and circuit races aren’t the only thing you’ll see in Shift. Yesterday, EA dropped by the GameSpot office to show–among other things–the new drifting events.
Drifting appeared in Need for Speed as recently as 2007’s ProStreet, so this particular racing discipline is hardly new to the series. But along with a new development team in Slightly Mad Studios, Shift uses an entirely new physics engine, so the way cars feel and handle as you glide through these prolonged curves is an altogether different experience from drifting in previous games.
The way it all works is fairly simple. Certain location in the game, be it Silverstone Circuit or the streets of London, offer a number drifting-specific layouts that feature a handful of wide curves on a point-to-point course. As you approach these curves, you jam on the handbrake button and watch as your rear-wheel drive car tails to the side, and from there it’s a delicate balance of counter-steering and light breaking or accelerating in order to keep your vehicle skidding sideways while maintaining momentum. Down the line, more technically advanced courses add straight-aways filled with obstacles like hay bales to negotiate with.
You’re ultimately judged by a combination of how quickly you complete the course and how much drifting you actually do. On the track you’ll see the usual green line that lets you know the ideal path to take through a corner, plus a much thicker, drift-specific line that acts as a sort of scoring zone to tell you where you’ll need to stay in order to achieve maximum points. The physics during these events have also been tuned to allow for easier drifting, so if for some reason you decide to drive through the corners as though they were a normal track, you’ll find yourself skidding around without much effort.
That being said, there’s still a distinct learning curve to these events. On my first attempt at drifting–which took place in a Toyota Corolla GTS–I found myself overdoing it with the handbreak, resulting in disastrous 180s and occasional confrontations with the wall. But as I continued to plug away at it, I got a better feel for how much to counter-steer and when to best hit the gas during the turn. I was still pretty awful at it, mind you, but I definitely gained a better appreciation for what it takes to really master these events.
Slightly Mad Studios must be confident in players’ ability to figure out drifting, because these events haven’t been relegated to quick race options; they’re right there in the career mode alongside all the other traditional events. Your success in drifting is just as important as any time trial if you want to get the most out of your racing career in Shift. How does that work, exactly? Funny you should ask. The progression of your career as a racer was the other focus of yesterday’s demo. All that information will be coming to you next Tuesday, so stay tuned.
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Need for Speed: Shift Drifting Video with Vaughn Gittin Jr.
Jul 17th
Vaughn Gittin Jr. talks about his role in the development of the game!
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NFS Shift drift mode revealed (w/ screens and video) (Need for Speed SHIFT)
Jul 13th
From the official NFS website:
"After a few weeks of quiet since E3 we’re pleased to reveal a new game mode for Need for Speed SHIFT: Drifting. In the last few years the sport has rocketed in popularity to point where there are large, successful tournaments around the world. When it came time to add it to SHIFT we wanted to ensure the mode was treated with the same degree of accuracy as the rest of the game so we worked closely with Team Falken driver and World Champion Vaughn Gittin JR. Initially the plan was for Vaughn to play the game a few times and give some feedback but he ended up spending more than 100 hours with the team to make sure the Drift experience was as close to real-life as possible.
The team have worked exceptionally hard to ensure the mode replicated the true driving sensation of Drifting and created the same immersive experience as the rest of the racing in SHIFT – just check out the detail inside Vaughn’s Mustang if you want more detail of this. While you could already expect the physics to be as realistic as possible, particular praise should go to the car team who’ve managed to re-create some classic Drift cars into the game.
Designing and coding a drift mode has always been a very tricky experience particularly when trying to make it accessible for new gamers and hardcore gamers alike so the design team spent a lot of time working to make sure the mode is as hard (or as easy) as you want it to be. For new gamers an Amateur setting teaches the basic of Drifting and then slowly ups the skill level until they can complete against the best."
There is also a video at this link: http://www.needforspeed.com/portal/site/nfs/news/details/?contentId=6927c90107162210VgnVCM1000006017780aRCRD
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Need for Speed: Shift System Requirements (Need for Speed SHIFT)
Jun 26th
Gamikaze.pl has published system requirements for the upcoming Need for Speed: Shift game. To even think about running the game one has to have a 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 1GB RAM and a PCI-Express, pixel shader 3.0 compatible graphic card with 256MB.
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Death Race 2009 (Need for Speed SHIFT)
Jun 19th
By now, you might’ve come upon one of our E3 09 “VS” features, where we pit upcoming high-profile titles of a similar nature against one another based on the demos experienced while stumbling punchdrunk across this year’s show floor …
Halo 3: ODST, God of War III top E3 favorites – Survey
Jun 19th
Nielsen study released yesterday reveals the top 12 games presented at the expo that are most likely to be purchased by gamers.
According to a June 8 report by research group Nielsen, New Super Mario Bros. Wii garnered the most online “buzz” at this month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. However, a report released this week indicates that such ephemeral attention might not translate into hard sales.
The survey asked gamers which games presented at E3 they were definitely or probably interested in purchasing. Some 53 percent of respondents were likely to purchase Halo 3: ODST, with 49 percent for God of War III. On the other end of the list, The Beatles: Rock Band ranked last at 12th with 30 percent.
One interesting factoid by Nielsen is that there were no massive changes in interest in the 12 titles from pre-E3 to post-E3. As the research group puts it, “In other words, games that already tugged at gamers’ hearts held on.”
The results of Nielsen’s June 7 to 14 survey are listed below, along with a video of GameSpot’s Halo 3: ODST demo.
TITLE – RELEASE DATE – PERCENTAGE INTERESTED
1) Halo 3:ODST – September 22, 2009 – 53%
2) God of War III – March 2010 – 49%
3) Wii Sports Resort – WII – July 26, 2009 – 45%
4) Guitar Hero 5 – September 1, 2009 – 42%
5) Final Fantasy XIII – Q2 2010 – 37%
6) Madden NFL 10 – August 14, 2009 – 35%
7) Guitar Hero: Van Halen – Q3 2009 – 34%
Assassins Creed 2 – November 17, 2009 – 32%
9) Need for Speed: Shift – September 22, 2009 – 32%
10) Need for Speed: Nitro – Q3 2009 – 32%
11) NCAA Football 10 – July 14, 2009 – 32%
12) Beatles Rock Band – September 9, 2009 – 30%
Flash Player 9 is required to watch this video.
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Need for Speed: Shift Driver Profile Trailer
Jun 15th
What kind of driver are you? Do you have what it takes to win?
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Need for Speed in Criterion’s garage
Jun 12th
While talking Project Natal, EA COO reveals Burnout developer is now under the hood of the publisher’s street-racing series; EA CEO says shop crafting “revolutionary” new entry in franchise–which may delay the next Burnout.
During the same investors conference presentation where he revealed Battlefield 3, Electronic Arts chief operating offering John Pleasants dropped another bombshell. Specifically, he blew the lid off one of EA’s historically most successful franchises, Need for Speed, which was
trifurcated into three subseries in January: Need for Speed: Shift (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PSP, and PC), Need for Speed: Nitro (Wii, DS), and the massively multiplayer online game Need for Speed: World Online (PC).
Initially, Pleasants discussed the three-way split, which will see independent shop Slightly Mad Studios develop Shift, EA Montreal work on Nitro, and EA Shanghai and the downsized EA Black Box craft Need for Speed World Online. “We’ve put a huge effort into reengineering the whole franchise,” explained the executive. “Different teams very much reengineered how we’re making this product; lots of good work went into that, and the product quality is totally going to show it.”
Then, Pleasants let slip a major literal shift for the franchise. “We’ve got staggered teams now, so we’re not in the 12-month cycle grind, which is really the biggest thing we had to break. We’ve taken the Burnout team and combined it into the Need for Speed franchise. Now we have that in our favor because Burnout is from probably one of the more online-centric and high-quality developers that we have, Criterion.” (Emphasis added.)
Almost simultaneously to Pleasants’ speech going up via webcast, gaming blog Kotaku posted highlights from an interview it did with EA CEO John Riccitiello during last week’s
Electronic Entertainment Expo. In it, the executive confirmed Criterion Games head Alex Ward is overseeing development of a new, unnamed Need for Speed game–and that the project has apparently taken precedence over the next Burnout title.
“I don’t think you can fold Burnout into Need for Speed because a lot of people like Burnout,” Riccitiello said. “[But] we don’t have a plan right now for a separate major launch on Burnout because the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed.” (Emphasis added.)
Other than to repeatedly say that Need for Speed and Burnout would remain distinct series, Riccitiello didn’t elaborate much. Pleasants, though, expounded on EA’s determination to make the former series a top seller once again. “Look, Need for Speed is one of the great franchises,” he said. “I believe it’s a top-10 seller in game-industry history. It’s a backbone brand for EA, and it’s one that has sold to 10 million units, now selling about 5 million units as the quality has eroded. So what’s new in Need for Speed is a deep commitment to getting that title and that franchise back to its glory days.”
Pleasants also touched on the Project Natal-optimized version of Criterion’s last game, Burnout Paradise, which was shown off both at Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference and on last night’s episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Pleasants said that EA had known about the project “for some time…we didn’t learn about it at E3. We’ve known about it for months. I think you saw that Burnout was one of the products that was tested there, so we’ve had access to that software long enough to take a project like Burnout and make it Natal-ized.”
“If I were in Microsoft’s shoes, I would think of Natal like a new console,” he continued. “If it is deployed correctly and we as third parties can leverage it correctly, then there’s a lot of innovation that will feel innovative like another round of a console [would]. For us, that’s positive because, yes, we have to do new dev for another controller, but we don’t have to do new dev for a new platform. It’s a different level of investment. [But] that doesn’t take any of the onus off the innovation. We still have to figure out the hit-making sauce for Natal versus a non-Natal 360. They’re probably going to be different.”
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Need for Speed: Shift E3 Trailer
Jun 3rd
EA reveals more gameplay from hot racing title, Need For Speed Shift.
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