14 DAY TRIAL // An official post coming straight from Sony Online Entertainment today reveals that the North American version of GripShift is ready to be upgraded, making it significantly easier and faster for players to get around the game. Additional improvements are being made on the leaderboards making the accomplishment of getting high scores more rewarding, as the report informs.
Enhancements include:
Load Times - The upgrade will first of all enable faster load times (between levels); Leaderboards - Now accessible without having to first complete the level for which the player wishes to view the leaderboard. Also, leaderboards are expanded to include the ability to browse all entries, and now include "car type" and number of resets with entries.
GripShift features many enhancements and gameplay adjustments over the PlayStation Portable version. Changes include the addition of track barriers to help players stay on the road. They are also incorporated back into the gameplay as another puzzle element that can both help and hinder your progress. The vehicle handling has been substantially reworked and now features increasing speeds as the player progresses from the beginner levels through to insane levels. The vehicle also handles differently off the road and depending on what surface it is on. For example a vehicle will now slide when on ice.
New environments have been added to compliment the new HD graphical presentation, which includes dynamic shadows and other new lighting and texture effects.
Other Feature Enhancements presented in today's official report include: Ability to change the vehicle without exiting a game session. Ability to change controls from the in-game pause menu. Ability to change current the music track from the in-game pause menu. Access to the full "Level Select" menu from the in-game pause menu. Players can now jump to the top or bottom of a leaderboard even if they aren't ranked on that board.
See this site, or this one for more information on the newly updated title and more information on what SOE has to offer to its PS3 users (and not only). Oh, and if you don't have GripShift, then go straight away and download it via PSN for just ten bucks.