Need for Speed: Carbon (2006) - MobyGames (original) (raw)

Tetris Forever

Tetris Forever

aka:NFS:C,Need For Speed: Carbono

Moby ID: 24726

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The 2006 game in the Need for Speed series is an evolution of the gameplay introduced in the previous games. The career mode offers complete freedom in a city with a story mode supported by FMV cutscenes, as featured in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but now also set in the Carbon Canyon, where racers duel for territory in the city below. There still are many police pursuits. At the same time, the focus on tuning and sculpting your car remains, as introduced in Need for Speed Underground. As you win money from races, you can visit garages and car lots to make improvements to your vehicle.

Enhancements are still unlocked gradually, but the cars have now been divided over different tiers. There are about 40 cars to unlock. Many of them have been featured in previous installments, but there is a new selection and this year's edition introduces powerful muscle cars such as the Ford Mustang and Dodge Charger. Other features include the possibility to form your own crew, more detailed sculpting features, drifting races (introduced in NFS:U and replaced by drag races in NFS:MW) and the new car classes. The PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions offer online multiplayer, missing from the PS2, GC and Xbox releases. Up to eight players can race together, in the Pursuit Tag or Pursuit Knockout modes, with a few variations. Pursuit Tag is a race of one civilian car against cop cars. To become the civilian car, you have to tag it and then try to fend off the cops as long as possible until you are tagged again by other players. In Pursuit Knockout everyone starts as a civilian car, but the last one at the end of the first lap becomes a cop and needs to cause as much damage as possible to the other speeders. Another mode allows you to drive cooperatively (up to four players) in a single race.

The city and the surroundings in the career mode have been divided into different territories, controlled by gangs. You are either invited or challenged to race in the sections and claim them as your own. To do so, you have to impress the gang leader by winning races until he challenges you for a duel - first in the city, then over the narrow roads of Carbon Canyon. Scores are based on proximity. You need to follow the boss in the first race, and he is in pursuit in the second one. There are 4 boss duels in total.

The crew feature, with room for up to 6 cars, allows you to assign three roles to racers: drafters, scouts and blockers. These are supporting characters you can hire to help you win races. Drafters leave behind a coloured trail that makes it easier to find the way, scouts discover hidden shortcuts, and blockers try to cause mayhem to slow your opponents down. If you hire a scout, you get access to the new AutoSculpt feature. It enables you to modify the height of every part of your car through sliders, solely for visual effect. You can also buy full body kits.

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635 People (620 developers, 15 thanks) · View all

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Average score: 74% (based on 80 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5(based on 93 ratings with 2 reviews)

Your Playstation 3 now gets the speed that it needs

The Good
Some great fun
New control system is a frankly good addition
Lots of customization options
A surprisingly good story for a racing game

The Bad
Too similar to its predecessors
No intense cop chases from "Most Wanted"

The Bottom Line
The Playstation 3 has finally arrived to stores, with several titles for it already out in stores. This unoriginal but addictive street racer is only one of those titles. This well executed racer still hasn't lost its long-lasting fun and its numerous customization options since the previous two or three Need For Speed games. There are a few welcome additions too, like a compelling story, along with a Playstation 3 exclusive extra: revolutionary, new controls. With this control system in this game, you do feel like you're really behind the wheel. Well, Carbon also has its shortcomings. Although it has done a good job of living up to the success of Most Wanted, it hasn't improved much. The game is basically quite familiar if you've played previous Need For Speed games. Another bad thing about Carbon is that all the intense cop chases from Most Wanted have faded away. That was one of the massive reasons for its high amount of success. There is one word to describe Need For Speed Carbon: continuity. However, most people will have tons of fun with this consistently entertaining game.

PlayStation 3 · by Kaan Cakanisik (5) · 2010

Carbonized crap!!!

The Good
Only two elements came in my favor in CARBON. The first one being the addition of American muscle cars to the playable fleet. Now you have the chance to drive a '69 Dodge Charger R/T, a Plymouth Hemi Cuda, a Chevrolet Camaro SS, a '67 (I think) Ford Mustang and if I count their modernized concepts that come in too, you have the modern Dodge Challenger concept and the fabulous Camaro 2009 concept. Of course the 2005 Ford Mustang is here too.

The second and last thing that CARBON is good at is that they brought back the drift kind of races. Now you are not only able to drift by doing laps in closed circuits but on public roads as well. And when I'm talking about drifting it's the good old drifting you used to do in NFS I and II titles of the series. Thankfully they didn't touch or 'develop' anything on drifting. And I say thankfully because evolution in EA's book means ruining.

The Bad
I could write endless pages about how bad this game is, but in simple terms it really sucks!!!

First of all it seems to me that the whole game is an NFS Underground II redux, only now with the addition of racing crews, cops and American muscle cars plus the exotics. Aside from these, the game looks exactly the same as NFSU II. The same graphics, the same game play, almost the same story (which remains the same in all the titles in the series), in the end CARBON seems like a refined version of NFSU II. But, that title got released back in 2004!

The car handling is a total miss, as many cars handle pretty crappy. Of course you can fix that in the tune-up shop, but in the end the desired result is not there! I remember how the Lamborghini Galliardo handled in Most Wanted and see now how bad it handles in CARBON.

The racing crew members addition is not only a simple gimmick, but the damned bastards always get in your way and instead of helping you really slow you down. Maybe drafters can prove a bit useful, but if they are not being used for their abilities they tend to get in front of you which prove disastrous in corners.

Another annoying fact is when you're moving from a certain map area to another the name of the area you enter displays in the middle of the screen which happens to be the just a tiny bit above the horizon of the road. The title is huge and surely distracting from driving, and to be honest the last thing you care about when you race is what is the name of the area you're in and who's controlling it! I wonder who thought of this idea and if he still has a position in EA.

The same 'indestructible car' principle applies to this game as well. No matter how hard you crash, your car is made out of super alloys! Oh yeah one thing though: keep that kryptonite crystal out of your car...

Finally the rivals AI programming is foul at least: rivals don't do mistakes, their wheels are stuck on the road and police cars are so fast no matter if you're having a meaty 400bhp engine under your hood, the every day police car will be on your tail in seconds even if you're doing 280 klm per hour! Gimme a break...

Finally the playable fleet selection is the same as NFS Most Wanted, with the addition of say 8-10 cars, and in the end of the day experiencing their bad handling on the game it's nothing much really

The Bottom Line
What happens when you're going the right way in terms of developing a successful series of games and just because you're out of fresh ideas you release Carbon just to keep the series alive as a product?

I mean what is the point of CARBON, since they have released the NFS Most Wanted which seemed to be getting things on the right track? Certainly Most Wanted was much better than CARBON in many aspects, for one its graphics were very realistic and the car handling was way smoother. In many ways NFS CARBON is a degradation of the series not an evolution; you have already played it, you have already paid for it and certainly the new elements don't make up for a proper full release. In the end, CARBON seems like you've paid for a bad joke on yourself.

On my opinion buying this game was a total waste of money! I've played so many better racing titles for less. Avoid it at all costs!

Windows · by SifouNaS (1309) · 2007

Discussion

Subject By Date
I always call it "Need for Speed: Cabrón" Daniel Saner (3514) Jul 6, 2010
find car lots Annie Emert Dec 27, 2007

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The game's online servers were shut down on 17 April 2013.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by TigerFury007.

Macintosh added by Picard. Wii, PlayStation 3 added by Willy105. Windows added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Zeppin, OFF, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, piltdown_man, Plok, Victor Vance, gbcat.

Game added November 4, 2006. Last modified September 4, 2024.