EA Singapore has some unexciting preorder bonuses. NFS: Shift t-shirt and endurance mode instant unlocked. Yawn tbh.

Driver view looks fantastic. I have never before been able to play from a driver's point of view since it's always felt a bit disconnected to me. Shift just might be the game to change that.

Guess that won't be bothering me that much since I plan to play using an xbox joypad. I suppose it would be a big deal if you're using a racing wheel but I'm very excited about all the visual tricks they're using to give the illusion of inertia, g-force etc.

Damn expensive month for games - already got beatles rock band, now shift, dirt 2 and batman all coming out at the same time.

The off road mod still seems floaty to me while the open wheeler showed more convincing wobble though it seemed a bit random to me - but what do i know, i've never done rally driving or open wheel driving in real life The videos you showed had some convincing wobble effects but the fact that the graphics engine is at least 2 generations old means we really should be expecting a lot more from shift.

I think what they are trying to do in shift is slightly more sophisticated than adding wobble effects to the cockpit. It's like comparing Mirror's Edge and other standard FPSs - you can tell from Mirror's edge that they were trying to convey the feeling of free running on rooftops to the game. On a side note, I think there was some input from DICE who developed Mirror's edge into this game.

It did look pretty ugly in the videos you posted. Thought it was some heavily modded ol skool engine (it really did look like the Indy 500 from the 16bit days). Guess you still learn something new everyday. My original post about cars lacking feel is from playing previous racers where i could never really get into the feel of actually driving the car from the in car view. Would be interesting to see what 100% head movement looks like. I've never been one to suffer too much from simulated momentum - even from those high tech sim rides they have at disney.

Thanks for correcting me though. If anything I'm even more hyped up for shift now.

Got mine at about 2.15pm!

The manual inside the case is a bit cheap though. Black and white manuals i can understand but the cover isn't even printed on glossy paper....

I disagree, playing with xbox controller and it controls fine (for a casual racer). Any control issues i have is mostly down to lacking skill and not really understanding racing lines. The grading system from the first list gave me experienced handling with medium AI though.

Seems ok to me tbh. Even though i've only (distracted with batman atm) completed full stars on tier 1, i didn't have much problems with the joypad. My main gripe with using the 360 controller is the in game menus use the keyboard shortcuts even though they are already mapped to the controller.

I was talking about my own personal skill - which sucks tbh. Just a little comment though, i've been using analogue joypads since the Sega Saturn Daytona CE, I've never understood how people could play with the lack of analogue control for acceleration/braking and turning.