Reviewed: November 28, 2006
Reviewed by: Blake Kenny

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
EA Black Box

Released: October 31, 2006
Genre: Racing
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Everyone

8
8
8
8
8.8

Supported Features

Heavy with the use of full motion video that featured live actors, the system was the home as such controversial games as Night Trap that featured washed up, druggie actors like Dana Plato, struggling to earn the money to buy their next fix. Unfortunately the 3DO never really took off and quickly disappeared in to the annals of videogame history and folklore, but for me, it was always be the place where Need for Speed first caught my attention and admiration. I eventually purchased a 3DO of my own and thought it was fantastic system despite the hefty price tag. To bad it didn’t last, but regardless, I amassed countless hours of playtime with the Need for Speed and the system easily paid for itself with how often I played and enjoyed the game.

Granted, at the time the Need for Speed was far more of a simulator than the arcade racer we all know and love today, but its roots have never changed, fantastic real-world cars I’ll probably never be able to afford along with innocent motorists and police chases.

Over the years the Need for Speed has probably released more racers than I can remember. Some of them great, some of them terrible, but the series has always endured and the most recent titles in the series have been very enjoyable.

So in less than a year, we stumble across the second Need for Speed title for the Xbox 360, aptly titled Need for Speed: Carbon. Part Need for Speed: Underground and part Most Wanted, this latest entry into the classic franchise follows the old adage, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, and thank the heavens for that. Here are my thoughts.

There are still circuit races, sprints, speed traps and checkpoint races, which is essentially the same as the tollbooth events of the prior game. They still have free roam as well, which allows you to travel the worldmap looking for events to partake in, or just cruise around to engage in random races with other tuners. You can travel to the various events on the world map either by setting your GSP to guide the way, or you can instant travel to the events if you just want to jump straight into the action.

Like Most Wanted, you’ll also have to contend with the cops. When they spot you, they’ll pretty much begin pursuit regardless of your wanted level, but as always, the higher your wanted level the more effort they put into trying to arrest you. Their presence isn’t quite as large as it was in Most Wanted, but it’s still something you’re always having to contend with.

A big difference from Most Wanted is that rather than competing against 15 of the games biggest drivers to become the ultimate bigshot, Carbon has you competing over turf. As you progress through the game you take over sections of the worldmap in a fashion similar to Saint’s Row. Work your way around the map, and with any luck, you’ll eventually eliminate all the competition. Still, not all turf can be taken without a fight, and again, like Saint’s Row, rivals will occasionally strike back and try to re-take some of their lost land.

The world map is basically divided up into 4 larger territories, each containing several separate sections of land or turf, within each slice of land there are usually about 3 events you need to win in order to take absolute control of that section of the world map. Take over the entire territory and you open up a race against a rival gang leader in a new mode known as a Canyon Duel.

In the duel, you take turns against your rival screaming down a mountainside with reckless abandon. First you follow, with the whole point being to stay as close to the gang leader as possible until you reach the finish line. During your trip down the mountain you accumulate points, but once you reach the finish, it’s the other guys turn. From here, you must try and keep your distance, as you move along, points he gains are deducted from the points you had previously earned. Reach the bottom with points remaining and the event and the territory is yours. It’s a simple concept for a new mode, but given the fact that reckless driving can cause you to go careening through the guardrails and over the mountainside adds tension and excitement. It’s a great new mode of play.

Another new addition to the game is the use of crew members or wingmen. Basically you can unlock and hire crew members to supposedly increase your odds of winning events. Crew members will assist you by highlighting the shortcuts on the courses, allowing you to draft off of them for speed boost or blocking rival drivers from getting by you. To be honest, I really detest this new addition to the game since more often than not my own wingman would do little more than get in my way.

My wingman would often come barrelling past me and as soon as he was in front we would seem to slam on his breaks causing me to rear-end him and screw up my efforts to try and win. I often found myself cursing the very existence of my wingman, as they rarely did anything valuable to help me, but often did plenty to hinder me. The only thing that is truly gained from having these new hires is the fact that you pretty much need them to fabricate and autosculpt upgrades to your car.

Probably the greatest change to the series is the new autosculpt feature. Pretty much any part of your car can be visually altered to suit your personal taste; whether that is front and rear ends, spoilers, hoods or what have you. Basically each piece that can be sculpted has various slider bars that can be adjusted to flair out air dams, adjust the angle of your spoilers, lower the profile of your tires, the list goes on and on. Essentially this makes the visual options for your cars almost limitless. I’m sure the next Need for Speed game in the series is likely to continue with the autosculpt features, it’s quite nice.

Aside from autosculpting, each of the three car classes, muscle, tuners and exotics are upgradeable with various levels of performance enhancements. Engine, transmissions, tires, suspension and of course nitrous are all available with numerous levels of upgrades. The addition of these parts can alter your cars performance dramatically and as you might have guessed, they become necessary later in the game if you expect to keep on winning.

As expected, Need for Speed: Carbon has an extensive online mode, choked full of all the races you will be familiar with from playing through the career. This is great because it prolongs the life of the game that, when all is said and done, has a career mode that feels considerably shorter than Most Wanted. In fact, the only thing that’s likely to keep players coming back to their careers are the achievements.

Unlike Most Wanted, where every achievement was earned simply by completing the game, Carbon diversifies the achievement requirements to such a degree that you’ll have to do very specific things in order to obtain them, many of which simply cannot be earned without hopping online. Much like Project Gotham 2, where earning kudos increased your level; Carbon dished out experience points based on your online performance, making it possible to rank all the way up to level 50. In fact, level 50 isn’t the top, but it is where those achievements end. Many of the game’s achievements are earned by hitting certain levels on your rise up the ladder. I guess it’s safe to say that while Carbon doesn’t have a humongous career mode, achievement freaks will find Carbon requires a huge amount of time and attention in order to get most of them.

Aside from online sprints and circuit races, we have the all-new Pursuit Tag and Pursuit Knockout. In tag, one player drives their streetcar and all the other players drive in police cars attempting to stop you. The player who managed to evade arrest from the greatest length of time is the winner, simple. In knockout, players race around a circuit and the driver in last place in turned into a cop in an attempt to catch the other drivers.

As for the online playability, well personally it was a bit of a mixed bag. In typical EA tradition, online latency issues are dealt with quite well for the most part, but problems aren’t completely absent. While rival cars don’t skitter all over the track, things never seem to be as smooth as they are in other online racers. The game is certainly playable, but it’s not what I had hoped it would be. While it’s fun to play online and show of the unique visuals of your car, the lack of perfect online performance makes be think I’ll never stick with it long enough to see that level 50 achievement.

Aside from the crew/wingman addition to the game, Carbon has everything I know and love about Most Wanted and the Underground series all rolled up into one great ball of fun. There’s very little to complain about and it’s nice to see that EA has adopted the age-old adage that, "if it’s not broken, don’t fix it".

Carbon takes on a more surreal urban appearance. Most of your racing takes place on the city streets, full of various buildings, businesses and mansions. The look of the game is decidedly fluorescent, full of well-lit roads riddled with blue, purple and red neon lights. For a game that takes place specifically at night, the game isn’t really dark at all, and for those who hate nighttime racing, like a few friends of mine, Carbon is surprisingly bright. Truth be told, the only thing dark in the entire game is the night’s sky.

In keeping with the look of former Need for Speed games, Carbon makes extensive use of blurring and tracers to create and even greater sense of speed. These techniques are used very effectively and make the wonderfully modeled cars seem all the more impressive. Also returning are the slow motion cuts that show off your hot ride as it catches air and flies over the crest of a hill. You can also pause the game at any time, enter a photo mode, and snap cool pics of your car in action then trade them online with your friends.

There are several camera views to choose from while racing and cruising around the city including chase, bumper, and a gorgeous hood view where you get to behold some of the best real-time reflections ever created for the 360. Thankfully, the streets no longer have that permanent "wet look" about them, at least until it rains.

Carbon also continues with its heavy use of cinematics to try and give this racing game an actual plot. Real-world actors and actresses attempt to carry the story as they walk in and out of their colourful cartoon surroundings. The look is pretty cool, but truth be told, in a racing game do we really need or care for a story?

In my opinion, the game’s greatest visual treat comes from those new Canyon Duels I mentioned earlier. There’s something unbelievably exciting about racing down a mountainside as the great visuals pull you into the intensity of the event. The cliffside, the trees, the bright city lights far off in the distance do an amazing job of making you feel like you’re racing out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the winding, twisting road ahead of you.

Adding to the tension and the visual splendour are the break away guardrails. If you drive too dangerously you can crash right through them and go careening over the side. When you hit the rails and crash the game goes into slow motion, the rail breaks apart, sparks fly and your car tips over the side. Unfortunately the game doesn’t show your car as it would likely disintegrate on it’s way down, but the visuals are nonetheless effective in conveying the fact that you’re pretty much dead. Awesome stuff, Canyon Duels rock.

Musically the game is very much what you have come to expect from the series, rockin’ songs, gangster rap tunes and the Michael Bay style action music that accompanies those infernal police pursuits. Once again, I can’t help but mention the Canyon Duels, as these segments seem to contain the music I liked best. They features heavy drumming and percussions that did an amazing job of creating great atmosphere and tension as you race those windy roads. A solid job all around.

If you enjoyed Most Wanted or the Underground games, you could to a lot worse than to invest in Carbon. There are plenty of race types online and off and lots of cars and customizable options available to earn. Carbon is everything to have come to expect from a Need for Speed game, and with that said, it’s easy to recommend the purchase to race fans.

For you truly loyal fans out there with an extra $10 in your pocket, you might want to check out the Collector's Edition of Carbon. In addition to some much cooler cover art, it's the only way you can access four custom cars and ten specially tuned rides right out of the box. There are also six new races and three new challenge events plus a bonus DVD with behind-the-scenes info and footage and some really cool audio-visual remixes by the world's best DJ's. The 360 seems to be getting a lot of these "Special Editions" lately, but Carbon is the first one to actually merit the purchase with some useful and exclusive content.

While it’s a shame that the drag races are gone, especially now that we have serious speed and acceleration with muscle cars, the all-new Canyon Duels more than make up for the loss, they’re awesome and I hope we see something similar to these events in the future.

One thing that’s great about EA is that they never skimp on options; this game is loaded with things to see and do. The sad part is, that they never really innovate and do something different to break the mold, but is that really a bad thing? This series has been a continual success for a good reason. The racing and the physics are always right on the money and the simple truth is, people don’t really want to see anything change too dramatically. With Carbon we get everything we know and love about Need for Speed – another solid and enjoyable racer.