Need for Speed games have always had a broad audience. Except for Porsche Unleashed which catered to a more serious and demanding crowd, all NFS games put speed and easily accessible racing before all else. The latest installments strayed from the original formula somewhat though – the influence of the movie Fast and Furious is apparent in all of them. The latest, Carbon, is no different. Illegal street racing in the middle of the night is the name of the game and it is up to you to take down various gangs by winning race after race!

Underground 2.5

With a new Need for Speed game hitting the market every 12 months or so, it’s very important to note what a version brings to the table to justify its purchase. Most Wanted signified the return of cop chases and Carbon retains some elements of that – namely losing the cops by racing around the town like a madman, hoping to slip out of view just long enough to be able to drive in an unexpected direction. Drift races also return – driving down one of the canyon roads (which premier in Carbon) trying to string together longer and longer drifts without flying off the edge of the road is just as fun as it was before. Unfortunately it is just as basic as it was as well – keeping the pedal to the metal, shortly pressing the break button before entering a turn and voila, you’ll be drifting through the turn with little to no effort. Mind you, it’s not Ridge Racer with its rail driven drifts, so you’ll still have to be careful not to hit the wall (which breaks your drift, making you lose all the points collected from it thus far).

Obviously regular races aren’t missing either. They come in two varieties – lap races where you have to complete several laps on the same track before winning (losing is next to impossible – more on this in a bit) or races where you have to get from point A to point B down a preordained path. So no, there are no Midnight Club style free-roam races to be found here. Personally I would love to see something along those lines in a future Need for Speed title, but it was not meant to be this time around.

The focus in Carbon is on the so called Canyon races. They tie in with the overall theme of taking over the various city sectors by being the equivalent of boss fights in arcade games. When you take over enough zones belonging to a certain gang, the gang leader challenges you to a one-on-one face off down one of the city’s surrounding canyon tracks. Just like with drift races, you have to be careful not to push your car too far, as a single mistake is all it takes to finish the race prematurely as a heap of bent out of shape metal. Having a pissed off opponent who would rather push you off the road than have a fair race makes things even more interesting. I personally find the idea of canyon races to be a great one, possibly the best new race mode from the past few years. Unfortunately these races aren’t all that common, which is a shame considering their overall quality.

Being part of a gang

As mentioned before, races have a purpose in Carbon – area takeovers. The player is put into the shoes of a street racer who was forced to flee his city because of the heat. At the beginning of the game the protagonist returns home, only to be greeted with a lot of hostility and forced to work his way back to the top. Almost immediately the player is forced to make a choice between three different car types – muscle cars, tuners and exotics. Within a specific class the differences between the various cars aren’t all that great and a fully upgraded car will behave almost identically to any other fully tuned car. Luckily the three different car classes manage to stay unique all the way to the end, with muscle cars being my personal favorite due to their slippery handling nature.

Speaking about the cars, one simply must mention the amazing Autosculpt feature. Previous NFS titles (starting with Underground) allowed players to customize their car with a wide variety of special parts. Carbon takes it one step further – each of the purchasable parts can be further customized by moving some of the features (such as intakes, tire spikes, etc.) around and changing their size/ratio. With enough time the end results can be truly breathtaking – both visually and artistically. The cars will mostly still resemble their stock brethren, but just barely.
Taking over the city by winning races would be pretty hard if you were forced to do it all on your own. “Luckily” you aren’t – you have up to three crew members to help you out. You can only take one of them with you on a race though. Crew members come in three flavors – scouts, brawlers and drafters. As the name implies the brawlers wreak havoc down the track, doing their best to crash into your opposition when called upon. Scouts are only really useable at the beginning of the game, when you are still unfamiliar with the tracks – they drive in front of you, guiding you down the most time efficient path. Drafters aren’t perfect either – they can help you achieve higher speeds by letting you drive behind them (thus avoiding a lot of the air resistance), but their driving sometimes makes it next to impossible to stay on their tail. In my experience most players will end up using the brawlers almost exclusively, as they are very effective at what they do.

The career mode has one giant flaw though – it’s too easy! Sure, you might lose a race here or there, but because you can retry any race at your whim it’s actually near impossible to lose a territory. It makes the game more accessible, that’s for sure. It also gets rid of most of the challenge in the process, unfortunately. The AI isn’t all that great either and you’ll only be losing races because of the rubber band AI.

Polish your rides

Some of the screenshots might not display this, but the vehicles in Carbon are polished beyond reason. And I’m not talking about modeling and developing polish either, but about the looks of the cars. At times they can be as reflective as mirrors, which is a definitive deterrent in my eyes. That is not the only shortcoming the game has. It sorely lacks any form of AA, which is especially noticeable on the cars themselves, whose edges sometime resemble saws. Some of the effects are also sub-par, especially the drafters trail which looks way better on the Xbox360. Besides that the game looks good though. The cars are very detailed and the tracks sport a surprising amount of life in the form of neon signs, stoplights and other light-producing entities (if you find another word to encompass shops, signs, bars, traffic, stars, the moon, etc. feel free to drop me a mail). The sense of speed is well present thanks to the blur, though some of the otherwise finely detailed textures look ugly because of it.

The sound aspect of the game is typically of the highest quality. The soundtrack is just as good as it ever was in a Need for Speed game and the engine sounds aren’t far from what you would actually hear standing next to one of the in-game four wheel beasts. The acting in the cinematics isn’t all bad either and thanks to a very distinct style it reminded me of the movie 300 and SinCity. Racing against opponents made out of flesh and blood is a very enjoyable experience as well – EA’s servers do a great job of providing a lag-free environment for speed addicts.

Conclusion

Seeing how this is the first Need for Speed game to grace Sony’s new platform it is hard not to recommend it. It could have been better, there is no denying that – a greater emphasis on canyon racing would have been nice and nobody would have complained if the game was a tad more challenging (without making the AI cheat even more). And why the heck does the game look better on the 360!? Still, despite all its flaws the game manages to deliver a solid racing experience that few games can match. In the end, that is all that really counts, isn’t it?

Gameplay	16/20	A good racing game, no doubt. But so were NFS: Underground, NFS: Underground 2 and NFS: Most Wanted – see a pattern emerging here?
Graphics	16/20	It looks good most of the time, but you can’t ignore the fact that it looks better on the 360. Sloppy coding is the likely culprit!
Sound	17/20	In typical EA fashion the game sounds great. You’ll hear some of the tracks more often than others (or was it just me?), but when the music is good, who are we to complain?
Value	15/20	Unless you skipped over the last 3 NFS games you won’t find much fresh stuff in this game. The singleplayer experience isn’t all that long either.
Preference	15/20	All NFS games play the same. If you want more of the same go ahead and get the game (for the 360 if possible). Just don’t be surprised when you realize you are playing the same game as ever, just with different make-up.
Overall	78/100	If there is one thing EA know how to do, it’s making solid annual titles. If you skip this game you’ll probably get the chance to play an updated version within 12 months. If you don’t want to take your chances though, enjoy this upgraded version of NFS: Underground – it’s just as good as the original was!