EA is world renowned for bringing gamers what they want to play. Take the Madden franchise for example, it offers the chance for football fans to simulate very real (or fantasy) games. The Madden games are a “safe” series and what is meant by that is you can expect the same rules and players each year. On the flip side, the Need for Speed franchise is not a “safe” series. The car culture changes yearly and what might be a trend or fad this year could be lame the next. That is one of the challenges that the developers at EA Black Box deal with when they create the next Need for Speed.

To tackle these challenges, EA Black Box does extensive research about the car culture. They go and seek out what is “hip” and “cool” and try and translate that best into Need for Speed. This year, for example, was all about canyon racing. If you have never heard or seen canyon racing check it out on YouTube or Google Video, seriously. It makes rally racing look like playing with matchbox cars. The overriding story makes the game come together, even if there are some purposely cheesy dialogue.


Carbon isn’t just for Science Class Anymore

The gameplay of Carbon feels much like any Need for Speed game. There are tons of licensed cars with a distinctive arcade feel to the handling of the cars. There are 3 classes of cars to choose from; tuner, muscle, and exotic. Each class of car has their own unique feel when you are behind the wheel. The muscles explode off the starting line and handle like they have bars of soap attached to their wheels. Tuners, on the other hand, are glued to the road but have low top-end performance. Exotics can seemingly accelerate forever. Unlike some NFS games of the past, these different classes do feel different and once you tune them, you really get the feeling that each class has their specific place in different parts of the city.

Different parts of the city play a major role in Carbon because each section is owned by a different race crew. When you start out in Palmont city, you have nothing after being chased by someone familiar from NFS: Most Wanted. When you meet up with Darius he gives you a ride and lets you build your own racing crew. As you go out and win races, you take more turf and you can hire on more crew members. Each member has different abilities that help you out in the race or out of the race. Think of it as an RPG “lite” mode where you have to choose for yourself what will bring you the most benefit.


Do A Barrel Roll!

Crews are a big push in this year’s Carbon but the crews are where one of the first problems crop up. When they race with you in some modes, they talk constantly and say some obvious things (yes, check the rearview mirror, thank you very much...). That isn’t the worst situation because that is fixed with a mute button. The crews seem like cheating because they can win races for you and in many cases, they do. When your crew member wins a race for you it doesn’t make sense and it feels like you lost to the computer opponent. The blockers feel especially cheap because you might as well have Red Shells from Mario Kart to take out the driver in font of your racer.

Good thing that there are a plethora of other modes where your crew doesn’t get involved. There are the usual circuits, sprints, and check point races as well as many interesting modes. Speedtrap is where you try and accumulate the highest “speed score” in the race. There are a few check points that take snap-shots of your speed and then adds the point at the finish line. The highest score wins that race. Drifting makes a comeback in Carbon after a year in the garage while you were the Most Wanted. EA Black Box took that time to fine tune the drifting mechanics and that time was well spent. Drifting is more stylish than the back and forth fishtailing in the Underground games. This time around, drifting takes quite a bit of skill to pick up massive bonus multipliers and rack up insane scores.

The biggest mode to be introduced this year is the canyon racing. The entire game is based off it and if it didn’t come across well, it could have broken the complete gameplay experience. Fortunately, just the opposite happened. Canyon racing is the best feature NFS: Carbon has to offer. The developers truly captured the “edge-of-your-seat” feeling that videos of real canyon racing offer. The threat of falling off the edge on a sharp corner is always in the front of your mind as you try and follow the boss down the narrow, winding, and steep road. For gamers brave enough, there are canyon drift courses that require a great deal of skill to pull off. Otherwise, you fall of the edge and have to do it all over again. It is brutal but no other racing game has captured the intensity of driving like Carbon has done with canyon racing. There should have been more canyon duels in the game because for as fun as it is, there are far too few of them.