Date: November 9, 2006 - Author: Rob Williams
One of the most popular racing franchises is back with their thirteenth installment. The game takes the best of "Underground" and "Most Wanted" to deliver an exhilarating experience.
EA has been faithful to their Need for Speed series over the years. There's no doubt that its travelled a long road, and easily has become a stature for the racing genre. Carbon is the thirteenth version from the series, not counting the two special titles for the PSP. Luckily for fans, they have not really delivered a poor version yet. Unless you want to count Motor City which didn't too well.
Carbon is a mix of what we've already seen in Most Wanted and Underground. In Underground 1 and 2, EA made the debut for Drafting and "underground" street racing. For the first time, the entire game took place at night. Clearly, illegal street racers would not race in rush hour traffic. One reason Underground was such a great game though was the fact that there was one level... an expansive city. Most Wanted had similar gameplay, but added a few key features.
Cops! We had only previously seen cops in Hot Pursuit 1 and 2, but MW brought them back with opened arms. They played a huge role, and were undoubtedly one of the more difficult parts of the game.
Take both those games, combine them, and we have Carbon.
Like the past couple games, Carbon takes place in a single city, Palmont. Your backstory is simple. There was an incident. You left town. You returned. You get together with your crew and bust up the streets to come out on top. After conquering all four districts that the game offers, you will face up with Darius, who may very well have the worst looking jacket I've ever seen. That aside though, the story is not a leap from anything we've seen before. This game proves to have more aggressive characters though, who mean business. Or at least try to.
One of the biggest features of the game is that there are three different car classes. Depending on your style, you can choose Tuner, Exotic or Muscle. Sticking with tradition, I first completed the game with mostly Tuner cars, but moved to Exotics when the added speed was needed. As you would expect, each class handles differently, but all are very fast. Each class is better for various types of races. Don't plan on drifting with a Lamborghini Murcielago... it's just way too fast for such a tight track. Muscle cars proved the most difficult to play, in my opinion, due to their control. It's what you'd expect of such cars though.
In terms of manufacturers, most of the ones you'd expect are here. They include Dodge, Ford, Lamborghini, Chevrolet, Lotus and Porsche. Some of the lesser known foreign cars are also included, such as the Alfa Rameo Brera and Koenigsegg CCX.
Progressing through the game is a simple matter of completing race after race... standard fare. Speedtrap and Checkpoint races have made a return, to break of the tedium of standard racing. There are also new races called Race Wars, which are hard. These have 20 cars total, and take about 5 minutes to finish. In order to place first, you will need to learn the specific track very well, because any mistake may cost you.
The biggest mode addition is Canyon. If you are up against a boss, you must do your best to race down this canyon with out trailing too far behind. If you do, you will lose. However, if you manage to pass the boss for over 10 seconds, you will automatically win that portion of the race. Points come into account here and are important. There is a total of five degrees of "closeness", and the closer you are to the boss, the faster these points rise. If you fall far behind, they will halt completely.
These points prove important for the second portion of the race, which is virtually vice versa of the first. The Boss is chasing after you, as you speed down the canyon. However, the points you earned from the first race constantly plummets. The closer the boss is to you, the faster the decrease. So needless to say, if you did very sloppy in the first part of this race, you will not have an easy second part.
Racing aside, another thing Carbon brings to the table is Autosculpt. With it, you can tweak every aspect of your cars body to your hearts content. Each part of the car, whether it be spoiler or rims, will have various slider bars that control the sculpt. Adjusting these will affect the look a lot, while retaining the original idea. There are many, many different body parts available in the game and near all of them can be "sculpted".
Along with autosculpt is the return of the usual styling features, such as decals and various paint. There is a lot of customization available should you want it. Personally, it doesn't really matter to me because I only drive using the inside car view.
Xbox 360 specifics include gamerpoints, of course. If you recall Most Wanted, you will know that all of the goals had to do with simply beating the game, potentially making it very easy to earn all 1,000. This has been changed in Carbon, and the difficulty to acquire all of them amped up. Once I beat the game, I only had unlocked around 100/1000 gamepoints.
The reason being, this game offers a lot more side-quest like gameplay that allows you to earn gamerpoints and reward cards. Yes, reward cards is yet another addition to the game, but it's actually quite fun to take advantage of. Essentially, you will begin the game with 20 or so empty reward cards (alongside 10 online specifics), each being divided into four sections. Each of these sections contains a goal for you to accomplish. Simply put, if you complete all four of the goals on a given card, you will unlock whatever it is that card offers. Some are of course easier than others, and some are insanely difficult and will require a lot of skill.
I have to compare this game to Most Wanted in most respects, because I'm sure it's built on the same engine. Given that though, the graphics are not as crisp as what MW offered. The road, car models and people all looked better in Most Wanted, but various other things have been improved. Character animations have been kicked up a notch, and is far more realistic than any previous game. I almost wonder if EA Blackbox is taking tips from EA Sports titles.
One thing that is rare to see in games, is character voices matching up perfectly with the face and mouth. Carbon improved a -lot- on this, but not with every character. The first crewmember you unlock, truly looks like he is speaking. It's very lifelike. But, other characters you unlock later on don't seem to be as impressive. Overall though, great showing from EA on the animation department.
Being a 360 title, it's no surprise online play is offered here. You can play any of the modes online, with the addition of cops and robbers. This is pretty self explanatory. You are the cop and chase after a racer... and if you remain in his area for 10 seconds, the tables are turned and you are an escaping racer.
I didn't get to try out the online play as much as I had wanted though, because most of the time I would be unable to find a game room, and when I did find one, it was unbelievably laggy. Others around the web have been reporting similar issues, so I am not alone there. Hopefully EA will fix whatever is lagging up the game, or release a patch to remedy it. Online play should easily be one of the biggest parts of this game, especially since the majority of the gamerpoints require you to play this way.
I have one last gripe about Carbon, and that's the fact that rubberbanding is back. Rubberbanding is when the AI unfairly has the ability to catch up to you faster than you know is possible. For instance, in one race I managed to get 10 seconds ahead of the opponent, because I caused a wreck that slowed him down. Continuing down the track smoothly, taking shortcuts as I seen them, he caught up to me before the race ended and proved to be less than a second behind. If this happened only during one race I would assume it's a player (me) issue, but I noticed it throughout every "important" race in the game. Most Wanted suffered from this problem, and clearly EA didn't do much to ween it out.
I am not entirely bashing Carbon though. NFS is my favorite racing series and will likely be for quite some time. As a fan, minor things tend to annoy me, especially if I had hoped EA would rid the problem. All of that aside, Carbon is a racer you should own if you love the series, or are looking for a new racer to play. Though the Canyon races don't add much to the game, the reward cards and challenge races really add to the replayability. Some of these challenges are not easy either, so you can expect to get many hours of gameplay here.
I am awarding NFS: Carbon an 81% and look forward to the next release.
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