Despite the bad canyon duels NFC:Carbon is still a great game that offers alot of viraity in customizing you car.
The canyon duels you in the game can sometimes be cool and let you use the bullet time drift thingy well but these races can be very frustrating and you will have to replay them a couple of times to get it right, there are a lot of drift races throughout the game which will also disappoint for people who like the more fast paced races like sprints or circuits.
Another new feature added to Carbon is the ability to use Wingmen in a lot of the races. These wingmen are like Nitrous and have a separate gauge at the top left of the screen, the better the wingmen you have the longer you can use them. There are three types of wingmen that help you in the races in various different ways, and for example a blocker will deliberately crash his car into one of your opponents to eliminate competition. But a lot if the time the wingmen are annoying as they either always win the race (scouts are guilty of that, a lot) or simply won’t do anything.
The pursuits with the Police in carbon are hard to say anything about, probably because they are the exact same as Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Basically there is a bar that appears when you are spotted by the cops, the faster you move you will eventually evade them, it is only when you stop that you get busted. The more pursuits you evade the higher your heat level will become, and that’s when the pursuits really become interesting, the models of the cop cars will look (and be) faster more ferocious, they will try ram you off the road and begin to set up road blocks and spike strips (The spike strips in Most Wanted pretty much automatically get you busted, but with these you can keep going for quite some time after hitting them).
One of the great improvements of Carbon is the more sophisticated customization features such as Auto Sculpt gives you the ability to create rides in almost any way you desire. It works by selecting a separate part such as a front bumper and the Auto Sculpt allows you to fine tune the part to fit your need. The way Vinyl’s are added to your car, unlike Most Wanted you are allowed to add many layers and Flip and resize them to your taste.
The Actual racing in the game is great, packed with lots of variety and some great landscapes to race in. Like all games in the Need for Speed series the graphics and sound is top notch for the PS2 (although no online play). Despite the game’s faults here and there need for Speed: Carbon is a title which definitely lives up to NFS’s name of being one of the best street racers around.