Need for Speed Carbon

"EA just might be heading back into the right direction..."

Need for Speed: Carbon is the latest entry in the long running Need for Speed series. Sadly EA has fudged the series up, making it for the people who love the Fast & the Furious films. Does it mean the game is not enjoyable or lacks anything that may make it worth playing? Read on!

You're returning back to town and there are a lot more crews around these parts these days. You must take your crew and over take the others. I think the story is the main reason the game feels like a knock off of the Fast and the Furious movies. Not a terrible plot but it isn't exactly thrilling and the fact that some of the cut scenes aren't skipable annoyed me.

The graphics really haven't gone anywhere. Character models during the cut scenes look almost realistic. Cars look a little too shiny and while the game looks decent, I wasn't overly impressed. This new year of games for the 360 really seem lacking when Gears of War looked so amazing. The game also suffers from some nasty slow down when too much action is going on, like when you smash into something.... No excuse for that, slow down shouldn't be this bad in the game. The frame rate actually stutters at times.

Sound wise the game is decent. The music didn't seem to be filled with terrible up and coming rap artists. I really didn't notice many tracks with lyrics but the music fit nicely. One of the better EA soundtracks of late. Cars sound fine. I found crashes and knocking stuff down to lack any real details. Voice acting is good and the syncing seemed to be on, for the most part.

The game has typical arcade racer control. It's easy to use your team mate, gas, brake and drift. I was slightly confused at first on how to use Nitro and realized my car doesn't even have it and that's why I couldn't use it.

If you've played the recent games in the series then you know how this one plays. You have a huge city and you can drive around and start races. I found it nice I could go to the map and just quick select a race which saved me time. There are a few different types of races. A normal lap race. A check point race where you need to reach the end of a stretch and finish in first. Drifting races are back and I still think they suck and ruin the game, drifting just isn't fun. There are also speed races where check points are in specific spots and it registers your speed and keeps adding them up. Person with the highest total speed wins. I think that's it.

It's all fairly simple and the map tells you what type of race it is before you start. You're not forced to play every race and if you have almost all in an area your crew takes that area over. But be careful, if you don't win them all a rival crew will attempt to take over and area, meaning you'll need to redo that race. I find that just really stupid and a tactic to unfairly extend the game length.

Besides that the game offers a nice selection of cars and you're able to mess around with a ton of different aspects. It's all fairly simple but I'm not into pimping out my ride so I really didn't mess with it much. Car fans will love it though.

Besides all of that the game does offer on-line play. Seemed to have a decent life to it and the same single player problems arise online as well. A little lag here and there but it wasn't too bad. Sadly the main game itself is rather short and I was surprised my percentage was so high after such a small amount of play time.

Would I recommend this game? Sure, fans of the recent entries in the series will love this. It's far from perfect and to be honest after 2 hours I was bored with the game. Online adds a little more to the package but the main game is short. I think my main problem is that compared to this year's best racing game, Test Drive Unlimited, Need for Speed: Carbon just doesn't hold a candle to it.

Story - 5/10
Graphics - 6/10
Sound - 7/10
Control - 8/10
Game Play - 7/10
Replay value - 5/10

Final Score - 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/07