Having taken a radical new direction upon release a fortnight ago, Need for Speed: Shift received a warm reception from many gaming critics. Now gamers can check out the demo before purchasing the full game, thanks to EA rather kindly providing a demo, which will be released on Thursday.

Featuring the world famous Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps as well as a London City street track for testing your racing skills and 5 super cars for testing your mettle, the demo promises to be quite in-depth. This should go a long way way towards showing gamers some of the many improvements that have been made. It will also show off the new in-cockpit view that delivers a more true to life, realistic racing view, that is truly staggering.

The cars featured are of true racing stock:

• 2006 Lotus Elise 111R
• 2006 Pagani Zonda
• 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10
• 2008 Nissan GT-R
• BMW M3 (E46)

Hopefully there will be enough to convince you to part with your hard earned cash and further sink your teeth into a more traditional racing game.

The demo will be available on both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live from Thursday, October 1st and is currently available on PC.