Need for Speed Carbon

"Challenging and Addicting"

Introduction

Until now, the Nintendo Wii truly lacked in good racing titles. This is by far the most immersing racing title on the Wii to date. I will also say that the game has great replay value, and the graphics are by far some of the best I've seen on the Wii so far. The object of the game, at the beginning, is to simply win more and more races until the boss of a certain region decides to take you on. At this point, you must beat them in a circuit race, and then canyon duel, which is basically a 1-on-1 tailgating competition; the closer you stay, the better you do, then in the next round, the further you can pull ahead of you're opponent, the better you will do.

Game play 8/10

The game play is one of the game's strong suits. I'll start with the controls. With the control scheme I use (the default control scheme, in which you use the remote as a steering wheel) the controls are very responsive, but can be frustrating to newcomers; the game will only properly respond to light turns of the wiimote, meaning that if you turn it to far, chances are you will go headlong into that concrete wall in front of you. I also like the car system. The game has a total of 40 cars to unlock, each with their own pros and cons. There are 3 classes of cars, with 3 tiers each. Exotic cars are generally well-balanced, and show the highest speeds of all the cars. Tuners are cars that seem hard to crash, because they have such great handling. Muscles are cars which can only be driven good by skilled drivers: they have unbelievable acceleration, and a good top speed, but have a tendency to want to continue moving sideways even after you just spun out to avoid something. You start the game with only 3 cars available to you, and which one you choose will decide which zone you face first and what boss you beat first. As you conquer races and territories, you unlock new cars and customization options for your car, which can either improve the visual appearance or performance of your car. when you finally face a boss, and beat him/her, you are given the choice of 6 cards to choose to win from that boss. they are a get out of jail free card, an extra impound strike (which will help if you tend to get busted by the cops) a lower heat card (which will also help) the pink slip for the boss car you just beat, and unique autosculpt and vinyl add-ons to your car.
Another nice system with the races is that you can take a wingman into a lot of the races, the exceptions being drift, checkpoint, and canyon races and duels. There are 3 types of wingman: Blockers, Drafters, and Scouts. Blockers will take out you're opponents in a race to give you an easier win, Drafters will go in front of you and give you a boost of speed, through drafting, and scouts. If you don't want to just run the races, you can go through free roam, in which you cruise around the city, make trouble with cops, and race rival gangs in free roam challenges, in which you sprint to a chosen finish line. Cop chases will gradually get harder the more you get chased in a certain car. this is called your heat, and the higher your heat is, the harder it is to escape the cops.

Graphics 9/10
I'm not normally one to complain about the graphics in a game, nor do I normally commend them. This game has some of the best graphics so far on the Wii, second only to Twilight Princess. The lighting effects are good, and fitting with the time (everything is always at night in this game) it's both dark and ominous. An interesting graphical feature is the rain, because it will make the road shiny, and the drops will sometimes hit the camera and distort small sections of the screen, but not enough to affect visibility.

Music and Sound 8/10

this is one bit that I hardly noticed until I played deeper. As I mentioned before, there are 3 classes of cars, and the type of car you drive will determine what music you listen to. In an exotic, you will be listening to a load of hip-hop and rap, in a tuner you will hear electric music, and in a muscle, you'll get a selection of hard rock and metal. The only problem is that the music is quiet and can barely be heard over the engine, but that can be easily

Story 4/10

I challenge you to find me a racing game with an amazing an engrossing storyline. basically, you're coming back to town to reclaim you're reputation and get back at Darius, who tricked you into fleeing town
so he could take over.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/07