Mind on my money and my money on my mind: Dreaming of the decadent lives our country's street racers enjoy.

There's some point in time when I think I'm being too hard on Neville.

I mean, I guess the guy is trying hard and I can tell that he likes me with all the encouragement he's slinging my way. And anyone who's played Need for Speed: Carbon knows what I'm talking about, too. You see, EA has decided to change around a couple of things from their last installment, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and most of these changes are questionable. They've toned down the amount of necessary police involvement, which is good. They allow you to autosculpt your car, which if I were any good at making myDodge Viperlook like anything besides a paperweight with flame decals, would be a good addition as well.

And then there's Neville. Big, fat... obnoxious... fat Neville.

Carbon gives you crew members: Drifters, Scouts, and Blockers. And these people can be quite helpful, too - Drifters give you extra nitrous bursts and Scouts map out all the short cuts that you can take in a given circuit (though Yumi had a terrible habit of knocking my car on its side whenever she sped past me). The chunk monster, though, is a Blocker, and even though he only manages to pull off a successful block half the time, he is always full of sound advice that he is just dying to dish out, like telling you to get ahead of the competition, and then informing you of your racing position once you inched ahead of said competition. Ingenious! Each race goes a little something like this:

"Get around these guys up ahead!"

"You're in first now. You can relax a little."

"Hey, look! The finish line!"

"You're racing in a car!"

Thanks Neville. You know, in other installments of the game I had the upper right hand corner of my screen to consult for stats. Now, I have you shouting out your car window at me. That is, how do you say it...uh, annoying? Yeah, annoying.

Oh, Neville, always the helpful one, aren't you?

I thought about reviewing the game in preparation for Pro Street, but that thought was promptly replaced by another once I realized that enough people have reviewed it on enough platforms to give the general public a good idea about what's in store for them. I'll try to have another review up by the end of this weekend, though, and until then I'll be finishing the challenges that this game has to offer. Oh, and dreaming of killing Neville. Because seriously, people that annoying should not be privy to racing beside badasses like my Need for Speed self.