Need for Speed: Shift is looking mighty impressive!

[duffmanth]

After driving this franchise into the ground the last 5 or more years, EA finally took NFS away from Black Box and gave it to a developer that is taking the series back to its roots, somewhat: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/100/1005019p1.html

[Superman]

Looks and sounds pretty good from the short clip they showed.

[BHvrd]

Looks great!

Need for Speed really started out as an arcade/simulation type game, but lately it has gotten so arcadey that it almost rivals Ridge Racer in its lack of realism. It's nice to see the more simulation approach coming back.

Hot Pursuit 2 was the last decent NFS imho, though even it was starting to push the true roots of the series. I believe the last REALLY good one was Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit on psx which this one seems to model after a bit and excites me as I LOVED Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit.

Underground and Most Wanted series be damned imo.

[Leo_A]

I'm excited for it, but I'm surprised anyone thinks its going back to its roots or is going to be like Hot Pursuit. They're taking it in a Gran Turismo/Forza direction with fairly realistic physics around real life closed circuit road courses. About as far away from Hot Pursuit as you can get.

The arcade game is going to be the Wii title (Need for Speed Nitro I think its called?).

[alxbly]

I enjoyed most of the recent NFS titles; Most Wanted was excellent, Carbon and Undercover are okay (they're both very similar to Most Wanted) but Pro Street was just dire. Underground wasn't so good either. There were elements in all of these games that really felt cheap though; the cutscenes in which they try to tell the "story" is just unbelievably bad; poorly acted, unneccessary and it tries sooooo hard to be cool (and fails every time). It makes me cringe to watch. Racers don't need a story and they especially don't need a story if it's that bad!

The new directions seems quite nice but I'm hesitant... I remember thinking the same about Pro Street before it was released. >_< This is definitely one I'd try before I bought.

[duffmanth]

When I say it's going back to its roots, I simply mean they're going back to the Hot Pursuit style career mode where you race and earn $$/points and new cars. As well I'm sure there will be some sort of arcade mode. It's just nice to see they're going away from all of that street racing/tuner shit and getting back to a somewhat of a Hot Pursuit style game.

Also thank goodness EA went with a different developer this time around. It's hard to believe that Black Box made such a stellar game like Hot Pursuit 2 and then almost every other NFS by them after that has been complete shit. I mean 7-10 years ago NFS was the pinnacle of arcade racers, and it's been driven into the ground ever since then. I've never seen such a once mighty series crumble like NFS has over the last few years.

Just as a side note, multi-platform series like NFS are a perfect example of why I don't like multi-platform games. Most of the time you end up with one good version of the game, and the rest are shit.

[kupomogli]

There are more than 18 cars and 18 tracks

Well. Even though it looks good and will most likely be a good driver as I like simulation far more than arcade, we're in a generation that this amount of tracks and cars is pretty limited to even think throwing 59.99 on.

I mean Gran Turismo Portable is going to have 800+ cars and 35 tracks. Forza 3 has 400+ cars and 100+ tracks. Gran Turismo 5 is going to have 98 tracks and I'd assume 800+ cars if Portable is getting that many. So yeah, the game would be fine to hold you off until GT5 for the PS3 but 360 and PSP gamers will have Forza 3 and Gran Turismo Portable a month after it's released.

So yeah. It's not really worth getting when you have three other games with more content that have been designed as simulation drivings ever since the first title in the series(which the old GT games, 1 and 2, are terrible driving simulators but did get better with each game.)

[Leo_A]

There's going to be around 80 vehicles. Plenty enough to accomplish everything a racing game using street cars needs for variety. Anything more is purely marketing so they can put an impressive number on the back of the slip cover on the DVD case. No one needs 50 Honda Civic variants.

Forza only had 18 tracks, Forza 2 only had 11 plus the test track and all its different layouts and 2 DLC tracks never used in career mode, and most real life road courses have different layouts available which these games typically include. Certainly don't need a ton of tracks, though the more the better.