For the past couple of years EA has teased us with great ideas for street racing, Need for Speed: Underground was a hit title, Underground 2 was sort of a bust and Most Wanted, released late last year was another crest in the ongoing wave of ups and downs for EA. Could EA keep this franchise above water this time around? Or will the disappointing pattern continue with the ongoing controversy in-game ads? NFS: Carbon is actually a sequel to the previous racing release Most Wanted. Your nameless character, who escaped by a hair from the police in the previous game, has left Rockport and fled to a new city Palmont along with a few other friends you had previously encountered. One person who is not happy with you is the beautiful Emmanuelle Vaugier, who believes you stole a bag from her at the end of the first game. Over time you piece together information that leads to the true answer of what really happened the last night you were in Rockport. Your character engages in a short pursuit from Cross, the Sergeant from the previous game who is now a bounty hunter, which results in you crash your beloved M3. This forces your character to start from scratch by buying a stock car to race, earn money to upgrade the performance of your car and regain your street rep back in Palmont. Gameplay: The races have the same basic format as in past games. Back by popular demand are the "drifting races" that made its first appearance in NFS: Underground 2. This gives drivers the opportunity to gain points by skidding around corners, the faster you skid, the more points you receive. It is strange they needed to change the friction of the surface from the normal settings to a surface that feels like you are driving on ice. In fact you cannot even turn without immediately drifting. I find this to be a cop-out for the intended theme of the game. They give you dozens of options to change certain performance features of your car for exactly this kind of change in driving style and conditions. Why not just make you change your customizable tire settings instead of altering the physics? This would have given the game more depth and forced a longer playtime. More common race modes include the standard "circuit race" which is two laps through the streets mapped by transparent walls with giant arrows so you do not accidentally take a wrong turn, and a "sprint" race which is just who gets to a certain point the fastest. There is also a "checkpoint" race which is a solo race giving you a certain amount of time to reach a checkpoint on the map. If you do not get to the checkpoint within the given time period, you lose the race. The final race mode is the "speed trap" mode which puts you up against other drivers and you must travel through several sections of the race that clock your speed. At the end of the race, the winner is the driver who has achieved the highest miles per hour rate. There are also two new additional race modes added to Carbon. The first relates back to the film Fast and the Furious called "Race Wars" mode. You can only challenge "Race Wars" after you have completely taken over a territory and essentially is just an extra long circuit race with double the usual drivers. The second newly added mode involves racing bosses and has turned a single race event into a potential three-part race. The first part is a 1 on 1 race against the boss on a circuit course. If you win, you advance to the Canyon races. During the Canyon races you must follow your opponent as close as possible upon which your opponent will do the same to you in part 3 of the race. The winner will be the driver who has the closest average distance during the duration of the race. If you or your opponent happens to take a wide turn and drives off the edge of the Canyon, the race is over (and so should be your life). You can however win both parts to the race if you happen to pass your opponent for 10 seconds. You will also win the pink slip to your opponent's car. This is an incredibly frustrating but interesting challenge that adds something new to the flavor of underground racing. To go along with the new race modes, there is also a new "crew" addition to your in game racing. You have the option to hire and fire several different racers who want to see you succeed in earning your rep back. Each racer has an advantage that may give you the edge to win a specific race. You can only have one of your crewmembers race with you, but there are three different styles of crewmembers you can hire: a scout, blocker and drifter. The scout will actually drive a head of you, letting you know who is trying to pass you or call out short cuts in alleys, parks, and tunnels ahead of time for you to prepare for them. The blocker will cut another racer off in mid race allowing you to pass and the drifter's job is to drive directly in front of you, blocking the wind resistance and allowing you to reach speeds up to 170mph! The crewmember feature makes racing a hellava lot more fun and interesting. After EA released a statement about in-game ads in their recent and widely popular Battlefield 2142 release, EA also announced there would be in-game ads in Carbon. It is strange that EA would want or need more ads in a game that is chock full of them already; there are dozens of car manufacturers on show, as well as performance upgrades and wheel brands. The Police are still trying to track you down as they get reports of street racing or reckless driving, but it appears they have fewer cops in Palmont. The flipside of less cops means they are much harder to shake when in a pursuit. The Police AI is relentless; even while traveling at speeds over 150mph they are right on your tail. This is where the course obstacles come in handy allowing you to knock over water towers, giant doughnut signs and other large objects causing debris to fall on top of the police, blocking them and allowing you to escape. Some pursuits could last over 15 minutes and escaping only by accident because the AI is not exactly the sharpest in the gaming world. It is obvious the Police rely on line of sight when tracking you down. Hiding in an alley will cause the police to pace back and forth on the same street because the AI knows you are in the area, but since they cannot directly see you, it allows your "cool down" meter to reach normal levels. The ruthless police determination is an annoyance in the game and sometimes gives you the idea that they never wanted you to be able to escape in the first place. Graphics and Sound: Using the same engine as Most Wanted, graphically Carbon will not blow your mind, but it still will be very pleasing to the eye. You will find that Palmont looks almost exactly Rockport. The streets are not quite the same, but most of the building models have been reused to cut down on production costs. Since you are in a different city the bigger structures have been replaced with more original content, for example the stadium and the prison are not available to drive through anymore but other areas such as luxury homes and industrial districts are newly designed and look very good. You will also notice that the entire game takes place at night. No daytime occurs during NFS: Carbon providing a dark and rebellious feel that fits the title. The same blurriness of traveling fast is back in addition to knocking into parking meters, mail boxes, signs, bus stops and other breakable street-side objects. The soundtrack seems half finished, filled with cut down techno music that seems like a 30 second section was simply thrown on repeat for a 4-8 min race. At other times instrumentals of popular songs play. It is a wonder why EA still does not allow you to import your own MP3s. Probably because the music houses are sponsoring the game with the rest of the in-game ads including Progressive Auto Insurance plastered on several in- game vans. What is that beeping? It is your T-Mobile Cell Phone. Is EA trying to break even before the game is even released? Multiplayer: Addressing one of my complaints of Most Wanted, Carbon offers a much more appealing online gameplay with up to 8 players, which is a considerable upgrade from 4 in Most Wanted. You also have the option of playing cop during multiplayer mode, which was an option, unavailable in Most Wanted. Pros: Cool new "Crew Member" feature, challenging new Canyon Races, Smooth and easy adapted gameplay, eye-pleasing graphics, Cons: Several crashes during gameplay, more ads from EA, relatively easy, aggressive police but pursuits are rare and very avoidable, no widescreen option Bottom Line: It is possible to complete Need for Speed: Carbon in less than 10 hours of play, but unlocking every car and every feature in the game could put the total play time above 20. Carbon introduces one or two fresh elements in the Need for Speed series, which makes the game worth playing, but if a little more time were spent on integrating the these features with the new story and more races, the Carbon spark would be a lot brighter.
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