Another Need for Speed game from EA.
Offcourse as always in Need for Speed series the game is arcade style. But as always it features some elments of Simulation like - When u hit a wall your cars colours comes of. And offcourse how without cops? Carbon features some cops, but it's very easy to avoid cop chases. One of the new things in Carbon is that your u have the option to "teleport". It's not liek it sounds like. You can jump from one race to other even if it is other side of the town. Thus making it alot esier to avoid police chases. Only place where u could gte in cop chases are races. Evene if u restart race the cops will be in the same place in the race time, so no way to avoid this. Carbon is set in city called "Palmont City". When you are on Canyon u can even see the city where Most Wanted was set and Underground 2 - Rockport and Bayview respectivly.
Game's difficulity level is very and i mean it very low. Actualy if you have the time u can finish Carbon in one day. Carbon's progress is set in procent's. It';s almost like when you finish one race you get 2% progress trough game. The only actual difficult races are the last races where you have to take about five races in a row. Facing the bosses racers is pretty easy but the boss itself Kenji is not so easy to beat.
Carbon features the same old types of races - Sprint, Race, Speedtrap, Checkpoint, Drift and Cop chase races witch are not in carrear mode. There also are two new race modes called "Canyon Race", "Canyon Duel" and "Canyon Drift" . In Canyon Race you have to race three (sometimes one) opponent in a canyon. It's abit harder than the standart race coz you can fall of the edge of cliff and then the race is over for you. Canyon Duel is featured in all boss races. you have to stay behing enemy and not fall too much distance away from him. And Canyon drift is the same old drift on a canyon, offcourse be caution for the cliffs.
The game can keep u enterteined for some hour but when you get the racing basics and the stotyline there isnt realy anything much more to explore. Also there wouldnt be any need to replay the game, well only maybe coz you would like to play in other cars. There also is a feature to change your cars grip. For drift you should set the lowest grip, but for races the highest.
Carbon's graphic are very good for 2006 and well they are not very far from realistic. The cae details are amazing. Only EA could of do more work on the building details and other city things. Game's soundtrack is as always very good it features some tracks in more rock style to hip hop. And it realy makes u feel the game. Also there are some cutscenes (most of them are in first 20% of game).
Basicly if you are a Need for Speed fan than this is defenetly a must buy. Even a non NFS and race fan could try this or rent it. Or if you want more freedome and more details you can just buy Test Drive Unlimited.