NFS Shift console demo on Thursday

By Robert Purchese Published 29 September, 2009

PS3 and 360 test-drive details within.

EA has just trumpeted that a Need for Speed: Shift demo will be offered this Thursday on PS3 and Xbox 360.

The sampler opens the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and London River for testing, and puts four cars at your disposal: BMW M3 (E46), 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10, 2006 Lotus Elise 111R and 2008 Nissan GT-R. If you can unlock it, the 2006 Pagani Zonda F is also up for grabs.

The PC demo is already available from the Need for Speed: Shift website.

Need for Speed: Shift has already been released, and its core-racing makeover debut was solid and commendable. Whether that's enough to stand up to Forza Motorsport 3 in late October, we'll have to wait and see.

Pop over to our Need for Speed: Shift review to find out more.

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About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • muscleblade #1 2 years ago

    And Brutal Legend.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #2 2 years ago

    COR SLIGHTLY MAD!!
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/09 @ 13:05

  • BadBoyBonner #3 2 years ago

    The lag on steering input completely killed it for me - makes it much more difficult than it should be and using the steering wheel all but redundant.

    Would love Digital Foundry to calculate it - end up constantly over correcting until you develop a predictive style of steering input which is completely alien to almost every other driving game I have ever played.

    Dirt 2 is much more fun and probably slightly better looking. Forza 3 on the other hand has the best steering wheel input in ANY 360 game - the extra information you feel through it (torque steer, loosing traction on turn in etc) is highly impressive for such a poorly produced steering wheel.

    Save your money avoid buying Shift and decide between arcade style thrills of Dirt 2 and the semi-simulation of Forza 3. Also bear in mind Shift & Dirt use motion blur (horrible for accurately judging barrier height apex turns) and Forza runs at 60fps which is also a win for me as it still manages to look almost as good as the other 2 while having to pump out twice the framrate..
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/09 @ 11:02

  • Skurmedel #4 2 years ago

    I couldn't bother waiting, so I bought it last night. And it's pretty good. It's no PGR 4 but still worth the money if you are in to something less realistic.

    I think the DiRT 2 demo was utter shite, it feels far removed from any rallying now with the "gnarly men" shouting in your ear constantly, and didn't like the handling of GRID.
    Edited by 3 at 29/09/09 @ 11:10

  • dirk_aircool #5 2 years ago

    it all falls to pieces when you have to drive the very fast cars . it needs fixing. ( retail NFS SHIFT in case your wondering)
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/09 @ 11:23

  • BadBoyBonner #6 2 years ago

    Dirt 2 demo was shite - completed most of Dirt 2 while avoiding the Baja - which I also think is shite by the way.

    There's plenty of Rally-cross and Rallying (including a special Colin McRrae inspired rally once you get far enough in - and a small reward if you complete it).

    Dirt 2 rally cross and rallying feels very much like the original McRrae on playstation i.e. central pivot point based steering. The Malaysia rally stages look like a 21st century version of exactly how you imagine it should. Link below

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=ScUu68TEi9c

  • BadBoyBonner #7 2 years ago

    Dirk_aircool

    Agreed on SHIFT's high speed cars breaking the game, you need to develop Jedi like levels predicting the future to guess the turn and traction for cornering accurately for precision driving.

    End up bunging it in to the corner then trying to keep off the barrier with constant post slide full lock on/off. It's terrible.

  • Adam128 #8 2 years ago

    I do quite like this game and the sense of speed is impressive. Some strange choices with the tracks they've included and the race types though. Also ive got the PS3 version and there's some really bad frame rate drop at times. I'll be interested to see a Digital Foundry analysis.

  • Miths #9 2 years ago

    I'm absolutely loving Shift after I got my old G25 hooked up to my PS3 a few days ago. The handling was twitchy and most cars prone to sliding around corners when I was using the DS3 the first days I had the game, but with wheel and pedals the experience is simply fantastic (barring some cars that still feel too nervous, like the M3 E92 for instance, which I'm having a very hard time liking in this game even though I really want to) and reminds me of the years from 2003 to 07 where I played a whole lot of GTR1+2, RACE, GTL, rFactor etc.
    And the sense of speed in Shift is second to none, which definitely makes for a thrilling experience.
    I'll refrain from commenting on whether Shift is a "sim" or an arcade racer (though with that G25 hooked up it most certainly feels more like those PC games I just mentioned than even GT5P do), but I definitely consider it an extremely enjoyable racing game.

    Assorted videos have proven that there are some fairly severe bugs in Shift - like cars bouncing excessively (more than simple track surface unevenness should account for) and time seemingly slowing down briefly on occasion, but personally I've yet to experience these problems after around 10-12 hours of play.
    Framerate drops are there in certain places on some tracks though, but they are no worse than I can live with them. Hell, on some of my older PCs I also lived through 15-20 fps at the starting grid and until the cars had spread out when I raced large fields in GTR2 etc., and the drops I'm seeing in Shift aren't that severe and much briefer.
    Let's hope patches are released to fix the issues though - at least a thread from the community manager on the official forum suggests that they are gathering info and working on fixing the problems.

    But going by comments in general on various forums this definitely seems like a whole lot more of a love it or hate it game than the generally high review scores would suggest.
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/09 @ 13:08

  • BadBoyBonner #10 2 years ago

    Can't comment on a PS3 G25 setup but SHIFT lags worse than playing a game over dial-up on the 360.

    And with the 360 having a steadier refresh than the ps3 am surprised you say it plays so well...

    Another thing I forgot to mention that I do not like is the drifting - its crap.

    I can drift like a charm in "normal" racing - in drift it's very hard to keep it going with the wheel - again no doubt due to the massive input lag

  • Miths #11 2 years ago

    @BadBoyBonner

    Input lag? I haven't noticed anything resembling that at all, neither with wheel and pedals nor when I played it with a pad (but as mentioned there were certainly other things that could be considered problems with the latter, like the sometimes extremely twitchy handling and the tendency for most cars to slide around corners, something that's all but gone now that I'm using a wheel).

    As for the drifting - I hate drifting in racing games, so I've only tried a single drifting event in this game (fortunately you can easily bypass those entirely), while I was still using the gamepad.
    As expected I found it awful, but since I both hate it and suck at it, it's a bit hard to me to say whether the game was to blame for that. I suspect it wasn't.

  • Numbat #12 2 years ago

    I'm glad they are releasing the demo - am enjoying Dirt 2 at present and will probably get Forza on release, but maybe this could be for Xmas?

  • davisorle #13 2 years ago

    NFS still gives a weird feeling of arcade feeling ffor some reason, but its great visuals and all are sweet, just not enough. Loved it for a couple of days though. Forza 3 will be ripping this one a new whole im sure... And I was reading this, which is pathetic...

    http://me gagames.com/news/html/console/x...

  • metalangel #14 2 years ago

    What are the control tweaks, please, someone? It sucks that demos and games come out with the controls shit by default (IL2 is another recent example of this)

  • dr_zoidthrob #15 2 years ago

    Anyone seen any sign of the demo yet? I can't see it on XBL

    EDIT: It's there now :)
    Edited by 1 at 01/10/09 @ 12:34

  • metalangel #16 2 years ago

    On the train home now, can't wait to try it!

  • GaidenZero #17 2 years ago

    Still wasn't there 15 minutes ago :(

  • metalangel #18 2 years ago

    Got the demo, and my god the lag ruins this. It's almost like you're sitting next to the driver and telling him what to do, which is the only way I can account for the infuriating pause between steering and the car responding.

    Please, someone, what do I change in Adjust Control to make this go away?

  • Numbat #19 2 years ago

    @ metalangel

    Are you using a wheel? I felt the steering was way too dead using the MS wheel, so went into contoller set up options or something, and changed wheel sensitivity from 50 to 75 and high speed wheel (or something) from 50 to 80, and throttle sensitivity from 50 to 75. This really improved it, but didn't have time to try any other adjustments.

  • metalangel #20 2 years ago

    I'm on the pad, and the settings I found everywhere were:
    * Steering Dead Zone: 15%
    * Accel Dead Zone: 10%
    * Brake Dead Zone: 10%
    * Steering sensitivity: 5%
    * Acell Sensitivity: 5%
    * Brake sensitivity: 5%
    * Speed steering Sensitivity: 100

    This did absolutely nothing, there's still a second and a half or so between moving the stick to steer and the car actually doing anything. The game is borderline unplayable as a result (and that's before I get into the AI which seems incapable of going around corners at more than 5mph) and that's a real shame.