Sony has announced that certain EA games will be receiving special edition items exclusively on the Playstation 3.

SSX is returning to consoles, and will feature a PS3 exclusive level modeled upon real life NASA satellite footage of Mount Fiji.

Need for Speed: The Run will be getting 7 additional exclusive super cars, including the Henessey Venom GT on the PS3.

Battlefield 3 will ship with Battlefield 1943 on the same disc, thanks to the Playstation 3 using Blu-Ray discs free of cost.

These are some great incentives to have for Playstation 3 users.

The next installment in the Need for Speed franchise, Need for Speed: The Run, will feature free-running sections alongside the frantic driving action that the series is famed for.

The new gameplay direction was showcased in a live demo during EA’s E3 2011 press conference. The free-running took place via a third person camera and was a series of QTEs as the player jumped across rooftops. All the out of car action seems to revolve around QTE sequences, but the actual driving looked to remain similar to previous entries in the franchise.

The game will take place in various cities across the United States.

Two days ago, EA announced the next installment in their legendary racing franchise, titled The Run. While the description and teaser a return to the arcade style racing which made the series so popular, the last thing we would have guessed is that the game would run on the Frostbite 2.0 engine. For those of you who are scratching your heads, the stunning visuals showcased in the Battlefield 3 videos were a result of the Frostbite 2.0 engine, which DICE has built from the ground up. So you can expect the graphics and physics which are unmatched in the genre.  A quantum leap ahead indeed for the series.

“This is the year that Need for Speed goes to the next level,” said Jason DeLong, Executive Producer at EA. “We think that Need for Speed The Run is going to surprise people with its intense, thrilling story and big action feel. But the game would be nothing without hot cars and crazy-fast chases. So that is what we’re delivering — explosive racing that will have players flirting with disaster at 200-miles an hour.”

Need for Speed: The Run is being developed by Black Box and is currently slated for a November 18th release for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo 3DS.

The highly anticipated sequel to EA’s Need for Shift gets a release date of March 29th, 2011. The game’s being made by Slightly Mad Studios for PS3, 360 and PC with the return of acclaimed social tool Autolog, first introduced in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. The release date comes in a new trailer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCG49N354cs

Surprised? Of course not. The latest Call of Duty installment follows the tradition of topping every single sales chart out there.

Back Ops is still at the top spot edging out Assassins Creed : Brotherhood and Hot Pursuit. Here are the standings:-

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch, Activision)
2. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
3. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Criterion Games, EA)
4. FIFA 11 (EA Sports, EA)
5. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Ubisoft)
6. Wii Party (Nintendo, Nintendo)
7. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, Nintendo)
8. Professor Layton and the Lost Future (Level 5, Nintendo)
9. Kinect Sports (Rare, Microsoft Game Studios)
10. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Nintendo)

What did catch our eyes is New Super Mario Bros for the Wii which still manages to make it to the top 10 despite it being a year after it released.

There is no denying the fact that any racing game fan, unless born yesterday, would have played atleast one ‘Need for Speed’ game during his / her gaming career. Die hard fans would have spent more time with NFS than with their girlfriends in the past and while those girlfriends have had a gala time with the debacle of recent NFS titles (guess God never helps those who scorn females!), NFS Shift begs to differ, albeit very politely. While Shift is poised to cause a few heartaches, it’s still quite far from causing absolute heartbreaks like Underground or Most Wanted did. Here’s presenting the dissection of the latest NFS iteration.

The First Impressions….

The opening movie (which is usually the best part of any NFS!) looks like NFS Underground styled vehicles racing across a mix of ProStreet and NFS 2 tracks. The blatant difference, however, is the emphasis on cockpit driving views, with most of the action including high-speed driving and crashes, unfolding from the first person perspective on realistic tracks & recognizable locations.

The movie gives way to a slick title menu followed by the first career mode assignment of evaluating your driving style through a test. As you wait for the green light in the BMW provided for the purpose, your first reaction will be “hmm, splendid in-car design indeed!” There’s no denying the fact that car cockpits are detailed to an ultra superior level & will strike a cool first impression. But wait! Even with assists on, the road moved away from beneath my vehicle at the first turn itself and the car hurtled towards the railing. Despite a few restarts, the Beemer’s handling was not as expected (based on my previous so many car racing game experiences) and my feeling of ‘awesome-ness’ was neutralized by the realization that completing NFS Shift might be a slightly uphill ride.

So what’s the setting this time?

None, so to speak of! It’s pretty simple here. Playing solo means either the career mode or quick races. In career mode, the driving test will conclude whether your driving is ‘precise’ (adhering to racing line, good launch, corner mastering, clean overtakes etc. – basically good boy driving!) or ‘aggressive’ (slamming into opponents, corner slides – basically true street driving!) and will earn you some cash to buy your first ride with. Rest is straightforward – just race and gather stars to unlock tougher events till you reach NFS World Tour – the ultimate challenge in the game. Stars are awarded based on primary criterion of podium finish (1st, 2nd, 3rd) as well as secondary criterion like mastering all corners, or raking up a certain number of points through driving style etc. The stars unlock further races, which are divided into four tiers. It is possible to re-visit any racing event to collect all the stars that event has to offer. The game also rewards you with profile points that add to your driver profile and offer various accolades like cash or car customizations upon driver profile upgrades.

The racing tiers – Tier 1, 2, 3 & 4 (in descending order of car performance) specify the class of vehicle qualified to enter the race. Within a tier, there are various races like time attack, lap, drift, series, manufacturer competitions & ‘vs’ events. Besides tier racing, there are a host of invitational events that allow you to occasionally hop into more powerful machines for high-performance racing like clocking the best lap time or winning ‘knockout’ eliminator races. By putting super-cars directly into your hands without the need to own them, these invitational events ensure you do not feel power hungry and enjoy most of the cars in the game as fast as possible. Win all races in a competition, and you may receive ‘Rival Challenges’ from veteran drivers for a one-on-one race series.

In short, there are no punk racers to beat, no ‘reclaiming the crown’ story and no Mia to the rescue this time! It’s simple NFS 2 style racing on the next-gen consoles. However, unlike titles like Dirt, where lack of plot is supplemented by huge race & vehicle variety, Shift’s races are executed through the same type of vehicles across various tracks for different trophies, thereby making the game appear relatively shallow in comparison to other rival titles.

Next Page – Gameplay

As the credits roll on my X360 for NFS Shift, I cannot help but wonder at how different & short this latest iteration was from the older ones. Hell, even past 3 – 4 iterations have been pretty different and not yielding the best of results. Having stuck faithfully to the series for past 11 years now (picked up my first NFS game: NFS 2 in 1998!), it’s nostalgic to experience the series’ evolution in a ‘hit or miss’ form year on year. I respect the series so much that I still get pretty excited when I hear the announcement of a new NFS title. It’s just that the end product has ceased to be worth its wait in recent times.

NFS 2 was the first game of the series that I picked up, and it’s still installed on my office laptop for those quick ‘break from work’ ease-downs. Back then, I was awed about everything in the game. The slick opening movie pitting Italdesign and Jaguar head-to-head, the car gallery and videos, super – amazing soundtrack, rich track design, fun traffic slaughter and of-course fast driving! Names like ‘McLaren’, ‘Ferrari’ and ‘Jaguar’ were homed into my brain through it. Crashes were so over the top that I’d spend dozens and dozens of hours just crashing traffic, especially in speedy tracks like Outback and watching my stunts in slow-motion replays. If I managed to crash the ‘invincible’ semi or the school bus, my shouts of joy could be heard across 10 houses! The races were thrilling and I spent hours playing and re-playing the tracks to ensure first place. I had to, especially for knockouts, to avoid being thrown out in the last lap against the formidable McLaren’s or Ferrari’s after spending excruciating number of laps in the lead position. Split screen was a cracking addition and I played a lot with my sister (facilitating her wins so that she would not get frustrated from losses and leave!)

The game was a milestone for me and I started following up closely on further developments. When NFS 3: Hot Pursuit released, I actually bought an original copy out of respect (of course my dad had to be coaxed a lot for it). That was the time when Lamborghini ruled the roster and dove straight into my heart as a super-car of choice. While the game was definitely leaps ahead of NFS 2 in terms of graphics and game-play, car bashing was a sore point. Hit a convertible, and you’ll just drag it back; hit a truck and it’ll drag you back! What am I supposed to watch in replays if there are no crashes? Precision driving? Hell, no! Anyways, the pulsating music, jaw-dropping racing locales, rich super-car detailing and weather affected driving ensured that I spent quite a lot of time driving (rather than just playing football with traffic). Add to it the ‘Hot Pursuit’ mode and one could play cop or robber to experience some thrilling chase sequences. God, how much I hated the spike-strip back then! NFS 3 had brought precision driving to front seat and I actually ended up identifying corners and track sections where I could overtake difficult opponents to win. It was a hugely rewarding experience to win a race after umpteen re-trials and let me confess, luck favoured me quite a lot those times!

My prayers were further fine-tuned when an evolved NFS 3 debuted in form of NFS: High Stakes. Besides an improved vehicle list, it featured full damage modelling which elevated the whole police chase and racing experiences from skyscraper to Mt. Everest levels. My favourite part was to crash a bunch of police cars or force rival racers into the train running across Kindiak Park and watch the mayhem unfold in slow mo replay. That doesn’t mean I didn’t dig the racing! I did! And with damage modelling underway and repairs allowed only by spending money between races, I had to evolve my definition of ‘precision driving’ to ensure I did not end up with a garage full of junks in the tournaments.

Next Page – The best NFS games ever made

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