It is good to see this movie doing well at the Box Office because it was a lot of good, clean, exciting fun. It was good to see Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and crew back together on film. This movie works, not because of the fun and exciting action scenes, but because it has a reasonable solid story as a foundation, dialog was natural for the characters and above all the movie dealt with the theme of loyalty between friends. Above all this is why, in my opinion, the movie is doing so well at the Box Office. Hollywood, please don't start to think that all it takes is bringing stars back on the set from older successful movies and then you will have a hit on your hands. People, including me, like this film above all because it deals with the loyalty between two friends, ever if they are on opposite sides of the law. Everyone of us that might be a potential audience member understands the importance of loyalty, friendship and the sacrifices you might be willing to make for each other. My advice to everyone is treat yourself and your wife to a nice night at the movies. Go catch this with some good friends or with your brother, brothers, sister, sisters, neighbor, work associate or anyone else you enjoy spending time with. Have fun at the theaters! This is one movie perfect for that good time at the movies!
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Need for Speed is heading into simulation territory with Need for Speed: Shift. Announced in January as part of a three-game announcement that includes Need for Speed: Nitro and Need for Speed World Online, Shift takes a new, more realistic approach to racing and will be going head-to-head against seasoned pros Gran Turismo and Forza for the attention of serious racing fans.
Thankfully it looks like the franchise is in good hands, with London-based Slightly Mad Studios (formerly Blimey Games) heading up development duties. According to Shift's producer, Suzy Wallace, Slightly Mad is SimBin--the team behind the high-scoring GTR FIA Racing, GTR 2, and GT Legends games--in everything but name after most of the original team left to form their new studio, and the team is working closely with EA Black Box executive producer Michael Mann and EA Games Europe senior vice president Patrick Soderlund (cofounder of DICE) to ensure that Shift, currently in a pre-alpha build, meets the franchise's standards.
One of the immediately obvious innovations in Shift is the way it tries to simulate crashes; the development team is trying to re-create the jarring, often fear-filled experience. In addition to motion blur, you'll experience some violent camera shake--not too dissimilar to an onboard camera during crash replays--and you'll also experience temporary vision blur after crashes. This is accompanied by the typical audio effects involved in a high-speed collision, but also additional sound effects from your driver, such as a stress-induced spike in heart rate and even a sharp gasp of breath before impact. Lots of other small effects have gone into making Shift feel as realistic as possible, including tunnel vision at high speeds, subtle reflections coming off the windshield, and heat haze emitted from engines.
Shift is all about your experience as a race driver. The action will take place on existing, licensed racetracks, on new racetracks created for Shift, and on street circuits. There is no open-road racing this time around, and we were promised you won't be pursued by the police or have to take part in old-fashioned street races. Instead, Shift will feature 15 real-world locations in addition to fictitious tracks. We got a chance to see the Brands Hatch Race Circuit in Kent and a new London street circuit. The Brands Hatch course looks to be a faithful re-creation of the ex-Formula One racetrack, with a mix of long straights, sweeping curves, sharp corners, and hairpin turns offering variety throughout. Zipping around it with an Audi RS4 was a great introduction.
The London circuit is even more formidable than the purpose-built track, with the streets throwing in some particularly tight turns, all re-created in impressive detail. The location is instantly recognisable for anyone who has visited London. The circuit runs through the Thames' South Bank and the Victoria Embankment to the north, with dozens of famous landmarks flying past you, including the London Eye, County Hall, Houses of Parliament, and the Blackfriars and Westminster bridges. Shift has a dynamic weather condition, and this course looked brilliant at sunset. However, there's no word on whether you will be able to change the time of day manually or if there will be night races.
Unlike in some simulation racers, in Shift the focus is more on the driving experience than on amassing a sizable car collection, although it's unconfirmed if all of the vehicles in the game will be unlocked from the beginning. What is certain is that Shift will offer some exotic and highly tuned models, including the Porsche 997 GT 2, the Audi RS4, the Lotus Elise 111R, the Shelby Terlingua (a highly modified Ford Mustang made specifically for the Need for Speed series), the Chevrolet Corvette Z06, and the Pagani Zonda F. The game will feature more than 70 different cars in total, including hatches, classics, and exotic imports, and while we didn't get to see all of these, we did manage to get behind the wheel of the RS4 and the Terlingua and found them to look, sound, and feel incredibly authentic and true to life, complete with full race-day liveries. In fact, the car models looked so good that we almost found ourselves wanting to look more at the cars than at the road in front of us. In addition to creating realistic visuals, Slightly Mad is going for realistically performing cars, forgoing the rubber-band catch-up of arcade racers for damage modelling, with penalties to your car's physics, performance, and appearance should you hit too many obstacles in your way. The environments are also promised to be realistic, with animated crowds, race marshals, and LCD screens helping to re-create the race-day atmosphere.
If you fancy an in-cockpit, first-person view, you'll be pleased to know that the insides of the cars look as meticulous as the outsides, with highly detailed dashboards, driver animations, and even full working instruments. In fact, you can get rid of the heads-up display entirely and rely solely on the car's gauges if you so desire, and you can peer around the cockpit or even out of the window. The team has also tried to make you feel like you're connected with the car in external camera views by having the camera jerk back when you accelerate and shunt forward when you're braking. Additionally, the HUD shakes when in bumper view to give you a feeling of speed and vibration.
Shift's AI drivers will range from aggressive hotheads to cool, calm, and collected drivers, and the game's grudge system will ensure that aggravated drivers with a personal vendetta will seek out their revenge. Despite this, you won't have to worry about the marshals getting in the way with drive-through penalties or yellow flags. You'll also be able to compete against other humans. Though we didn't get to experience Shift's multiplayer, the game will support 16 players in online races. Need for Speed: Shift combines impressive real-world locations and cars, solid simulation gameplay, and some interesting additions to help immerse you in the racing experience. It's currently set for an autumn 2009 release on the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PSP. In the meantime, stay tuned to GameSpot for more on Shift as it approaches.
In many ways, Need for Speed: Undercover is like a "greatest hits" package of ideas and concepts that we've seen the franchise play around with since Need for Speed: Underground turned the series on its head five years ago. Undercover revels in street culture, much like both of the Underground games, while putting a greater emphasis on cops and car chases like Need for Speed: Most Wanted. And like Need for Speed: Carbon, it leans heavily on a narrative that's plays out in occasional cut-scenes while building on some of the impressive graphics and driving-physics technology built for Need for Speed: ProStreet. On paper it seems like a slam-dunk, but it sadly falls just a little flat in practice.
The vehicle list is impressive, boasting a broad menu of 55 cars that includes a large number of relatively attainable desirables like the Audi TT or Mitsubishi Evo X as well as exotics like the Audi R8 and the Bugatti Veyron. The general feel and handling is exactly what we've come to expect from Need for Speed over the past few years; while based on realistic principles that allow the cars to lean and grip like the real thing, the game's tuned for gameplay rather than realism. If you're familiar with the franchise, you'll be pleased to learn that its "point and squirt" approach is fully intact. Point the car where you want it to go and squeeze the throttle, and all you really need to do to make course adjustments is ease off the throttle briefly. When you get the feel for it, you'll hardly ever do anything more than feather the brakes to get around particularly aggressive turns.
Structurally, the game has the most in common with Most Wanted. While the city of Palm Harbor offers you freedom to cruise around hunting for events, you can instantly hop from race to race without having to waste any time cruising around if you don't want to. All of the events are in keeping with The Fast and the Furious vibe that Black Box's clearly trying to cultivate, with circuit and sprint events supplemented with 1-on-1 races that have you weaving through traffic to impress the bad guys, cop-chase missions that borrow Most Wanted's "cost to the city" mechanic, and a Test Drive-like car delivery mode.
New to the franchise is a fully transparent "leveling" system that borrows heavily from role-playing games and even World of WarCraft. Successful completion of "missions" boosts stats, and stats in turn allow you to level up your driving skills. The higher your level, the more cars you can drive, and the more upgrades you can access. Even if you have enough in-game cash to buy that Nissan GT-R, if you're not sufficiently leveled up, you can't buy it yet. Unless, of course, you want to buy it with real money. See? Not only is this a Need for Speed with something that's essentially grinding, but it also has microtransactions for "cheating," too.
While these may sound like what could be Undercover's greatest crimes against fun, the real offenders are yet to come. Anyone that worked their way to the end of the "Blacklist" in Most Wanted will recall that the cop chases got a little aggressive toward the end. In Undercover, the difficulty ramps in even more obnoxious ways. Though things start off very easy, by the time you've become just a level 5 driver, both the opponent and cop A.I. is so obnoxiously aggressive that it borders on absurd. Drivers will ram you off the road, while cops will somehow find ways to squeeze past you and pull right across your front bumper while you're hurtling along at 120 mph.
And then there's the story. While arguably an improvement over previous attempts to bring "real" actors into the franchise, the script and the performances here are laughable at best. The desperately earnest street racers that chide, threaten, and try to intimidate you throughout make Lucas Black's performance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift look almost Oscar-worthy.
As a mashup of Need for Speed: Carbon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Undercover is ultimately fairly successful. For many, though, in a post-Burnout: Paradise world, the question has to be raised: "What does this give me that Paradise doesn't?" The answer to that is "cops and robbers," a mechanic that has worked well in single-player since the days of Hot Pursuit, and works even better online when played in teams of 4-on-4 in Undercover.