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Platform
Xbox
Genre
Racing
Publisher
Electronic
Arts
Developer
EA
Canada
ESRB
E
+10 (Everyone)
Released
October
31, 2006
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Impressive graphical
performance, including well-rendered vehicles, a dark and
dangerous curvy canyon, twisting streets and especially the
motion-captured characters
- Challenging drift races are the game’s best
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Less police chases results
in much less challenging road trips
- Daytime racing from Need for Speed Most Wanted is put in the
trunk, as the game returns once again to it nocturnal roots
- New crew feature really doesn’t add to the gameplay as much
as was anticipated
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Review:
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (XB)
Review:
Project Gotham Racing 2 (XB)
Review:
Burnout Revenge (XB)
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Need
for Speed Carbon
Score:
8.5 / 10
The
heat is turned down (sort of), but the racing’s still
asphalt-scorching hot in the latest Need for Speed from Electronic
Arts, Need for Speed Carbon. While the new “crew” feature would
have been better left on the side of the road and the challenge level
of the game isn’t as tough as in Need for Speed Most Wanted, Need
for Speed Carbon is yet another fine-tuned-under-the-hood racing game
from the franchise.
In the newest addition to the Need for Speed franchise garage, the
excitement of the previous title, Need for Speed Most Wanted, which
focused on escaping police chases in both daylight and nighttime, is
replaced by the nocturnal racing circuit that most famously was
utilized in the two Need for Speed Underground titles. Instead of the
police evasion racing (which still remains to a slight degree), Need
for Speed Carbon focuses on the skill of driving around city streets
and exhilaration of drift racing down serpentine, narrow canyon roads.
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It is a disappointment that the police chases have been all but
downplayed in Need for Speed Carbon (although during races, the cops
will start chasing you, but not too often. These chases are also still
around as one of the Challenge Series events, Pursuit Evasion) because
not only were they electrifying, they were more challenging than most
of the races you’ll find here.
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Once you buy one of the high-end exotic vehicles such as the
Lamborghini Gallardo and Mercedes McLaren SLR in the game (there are 50 real-world cars in three different classes – muscle, tuner and
exotic – including Mazda’s new Speed3 and the Shelby GT500) and
tune it to its fullest potential (with the money you win racing), the
only challenge you’ll face is keeping the car on the road. And even that’s not too tough with the excellent
driving controls.
You have two options for gameplay in Need for Speed Carbon. First is
the surprisingly good career mode, which puts in play a “Risk”
factor, as you move throughout rivals’ turf and attempt to take over
said rivals’ territory, much like a game of the old-school board
game Risk. If you liberate turf from your rival and stake your own
claim as leader of those streets, you then must face off against that
territory’s boss, moving from the streets to Carbon Canyon, where
you’ll battle in the Canyon Duel to vanquish your rival.
This all plays out with a backstory that has seen you ostracized from
the underground racing scene, as you’ve been accused of ripping off
fellow drivers during a police bust at one of your races. But as you
progress through your career and defeat boss after boss, you’ll find
out that you were set up to be the fall guy, and must fight to regain
your reputation on the streets.
Another mode, the Challenge Series, takes what driving skills you
learned in Career mode and applies them to 11 different types of
events, including four canyon ordeals. By far the best to play and
hardest to master is the Canyon Drift, which employs your skills of
drift racing while caroming down a narrow and dark road at a high rate
of speed. If the next game in the franchise just happens to be
something along the lines of Need for Speed Catch My Drift and
featured nothing but drift racing, I for one, and probably many others
that experience these drift races in Need for Speed Carbon, would be
completely thrilled.
Graphically, Need for Speed Carbon is magnificent, squeezing every bit
of pretty out of the Xbox possible. The cars are gorgeously rendered,
and you can really trick out your cars with the Autosculpt
customization tool to create a one-of-a-kind asphalt-eating beauty.
The environments are just as stellar, particularly the twisting and
turning roads of Carbon Canyon. The cityscapes are colored with too
much pastel-and-neon accents and are guilty of too much carbon-copying
as each racecourse, no matter what the territory its in, seems to be
on the same roads. But it’s still a beautiful world you’ll race
in, although it’s blanketed in a purple haze under cloak of midnight
black, completely doing away with any daylight racing.
By far the most impressive feature of Need for Speed Carbon’s visual
performance is the spectacular new motion-capture technology that
brings a unbelievable stage or realism to the game, as Need for Speed
Carbon’s in-game characters are ridiculously lifelike in their
appearance. These are by far the most realistic reacting and looking
characters I’ve seen in any game.
One aspect of Need for Speed Carbon that blows a gasket is the crew
feature, which allows you to build a “crew” of other drivers that
supposedly will assist you during races to win. There are
“blockers” to distract and slow down opponents, and “scouts”
to ferret out shortcuts. But while they do their job, it’s not like
you really need them to, because even cars that get blocked will still
catch you if you engage in one too many crashes and you can usually
find the shortcuts yourself. It was a somewhat good idea that
just doesn’t prove very necessary during your races.
While many may miss the always-around-the-next corner, full-force
police chase excitement from Need for Speed Most Wanted, Need for
Speed Carbon still provides an adrenaline speed-rush with the
spectacularly exhilarating drift racing down the curvaceous canyon
roadways. Although the challenge factor isn’t really high thanks to
the virtual absence of police chases, Need for
Speed Carbon is yet another fantastic pedal-to-the-metal adventure
that the franchise has built its reputation on.
- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com
(November
21, 2006)
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