14 DAY TRIAL // It hasn't even come out of the box completely and Need for Speed: Shift already gets an update. Released today, the first patch will add two new features to the game. The first, which is a major one, brings an improvement to the multiplayer, with the addition of the Local Area Network support. The second, more a of a lesser add but found useful by many fans, is the Mouse Support, which provides menu navigation with the help of the mouse, for the PC version.
Why exactly was the LAN support not included in the original release is a bit of a mystery. This added feature printed on the side of the box would have been a welcome addition for the fans. Even if chances are slim that anyone who intended to purchased the game would have been discouraged by the lack of LAN multiplayer, to see it missing raised quite a few upset voices.
The game is now officially available on all the supported platforms, the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP. The game is starting to have a bit of a history with scattered events that easily raised a few questions in wonder. Before a patch that fixed a fundamental gameplay gap, the full game managed to be launched before its demo. Explanations, which are usually numerous and mostly take birth inside the gaming community, seem to lack on this decision. The only viable answer would be that EA was unsatisfied with the sales and wanted to give gamers a first-hand look at what they're missing out on. Still, that's what a demo is supposed to do and is also the very reason it's launched before the full game release.
Need for Speed: Shift enriches the series with more of a driving-simulator experience, compared to the previous versions that had a much more arcade feel to them. A mixture between the two genres, Shift aims to please the loyal NFS fans but also to appeal to the more hardcore community of the tarmac speed devils.