Fox's Review: Need For Speed Carbon

[Fusion]

The latest installment in the Need For Speed series is somewhat good, but at the same time also a bit lacking.

The story starts off with you returning to Rockport in your rightfully earned BMW M3 GTR.  The funny thing is, Chase finds you in a heartbeat and pursues you for the "money you stole."  Your first race is an escape race, you drive until you reach a cutscene.   The BMW is then totalled, and thus begins your quest.  Immediately, you start off with just a dopey car with poor statistics, but over time you'll gain better vehicles and unlock more bits of the story of what happened the day you had left Rockport.

The gameplay itself remains mostly unchanged from Most Wanted's gameplay, except for the addition of 2 racemodes and an addition in Career mode.  Drift scoring and the "Canyon battle".  Drift scoring is just you get as many points as you can for drifting through a track.  Closer you stay to the walls, better you'll do.  I can't be bothered to do drift races because quite frankly I suck at them.  Horribly.  Can't drift to save my life.

Before I hit canyon battling, I should explain the entire premise of it.  The game's divided into 4 areas, each one controlled by a group.  You start off in one area, with only three races to choose from.  As you progress more races will become available in more areas.  If you conquer a single area, the boss of the area (usually the boss of the crew) will challenge you to a race.

You race the boss alone in a circuit race.  If you win, then you go to the Canyon track, where you then play a unique mode.  The 'second stage' is split into two parts.  The first part involves you staying as close as you can to the boss, without touching them (colliding takes 5,000 points away from your score in this part).  The second part repeats the process, only the boss has to stay close to you to win.  (Colliding with your opposition this time around doesn't clobber 5,000 points off your score, it gives you 5,000 since they're not supposed to do that.).  The challenges in the race aren't that hard after doing the track, because the "final race" is always the same.  It's a lot easier to run away from the boss than it is to stay on his tail without passing.

Sound-wise, the game has many different sounds for many different cars, but I've only heard 10 different songs.  Only 2 of them are official band songs.  The rest sound like something EA coughed up in their studios.

Customization is a prime component of this game, as the game introduces the AutoSculpt feature, which allows you to really get in-depth with customizing your vehicle's looks.  Of course, there's the 'aftermarket' sale type that'll allow you to buy pre-adjusted parts to fit your car.

Overall, I give it a 7/10.  Only reason it didn't get an 8 is because of the fact if you get the pink slip to a boss's car, you'll pretty much have the top class for the next part of a tier class.  I, myself, managed to get Wolf's DB9, and I haven't had to switch from it so far.

If you want any more info, go buy\rent the game yourself!