Need for Speed Carbon [Xbox 360]

"The Need for Speed games have never been my favorite race games, I prefer games like Gran Turismo or Forza. The NFS controls are too arcade for me and I didn't care much for the cosmetic tuning of my car. But after seeing some NFS Carbon screenshots, I figured let's give it a go. And I liked what I saw.

The initial impression is that it all looks great: the presentation (menus, car select screens, the map, etc..) are very polished and the cars look detailed. The racing itself is spectacular and really give you a sense of speed, partly because of the motion-blur effects. And I like the fact that in the NFS games you drive real cars from the major car manufactures, not the fake cars you find in games like Ridge Racer. And NFS Carbon even has Porsches, unlike Project Gotham Racing 3.
I was happy to find that the controls have been tightened up too, it's not a racing sim yet but still very playable. If you like going sideways through corners you'l like this. And the game is fun to play too (not an unimportant factor).

But what is Carbon's story? It's all about conquering Palmont City. Initially the city is ruled by several rival car-gangs and it's your task to conquer all of them in race and regain control over the city. Don't ask me why, the story was pretty vague to me. Doesn't matter really, it does provide a good base for the free game structure, because you can use the map to select which races to compete in and in which order.

When starting the career mode, you must choose between three car classes: muscle, tuner and exotic. Of course I selected exoctic. The pocket money I started out with was just enough to buy my first car, an Alfa Brera (yes, that's an exotic car). By winning races you earn money which you can use to upgrade your cars and buy other cars. This principle of upgrading is not new of course, but it's always very addicting. You'll recognize this: if I win one more race, then I'll have enough money to buy that big turbo. And when you finally succeed: mmm, let's try one more race to find out how the new turbo performs. And then, but hey, now I am pretty close to being able to purchase that new car, only a few more races. But that new car has to be tuned too. And then suddenly it's 3 o'clock in the morning.

In the NFS games you can not only upgrade your car's performance, but also its looks. If that's your thing, you can go wild in NFS Carbon. And although I am not into tupperware, I couldn't resist spending my hard-earned credits on big rims, a paint-job and a nice looking body-kit (I skipped on the rear spoiler, I hate those). But of-course only after purchasing each and every performance upgrade.

I have had to do many races using the Brera and also needed to tune it a bit to be able to keep up with the rest. But finally I had gathered enough money for a new ride: a DB9, not bad. But I sold that one soon after, because I unlocked the Cayman S. And being a Porsche fan I couldn't resist. I used a completely tuned Cayman S during most of the game, until finally the really nice cars started appearing in the car lot, among which was the Carrera GT. And that's the one I raced in to the end, including the final boss race.
Speaking of the boss: he drives an R8. Pretty weird to have the R8 as the final boss, it was a bit unreal to race an Audi R8 with my fully tuned Porsche Carrera GT and still have difficulty to win. Oh well...

The boss races in Carbon are so-called canyon races and for me these are the coolest races in the game. A canyon-race begins with a flying start, your car a bit behind your only opponent. The goal is to stay as close as possible, the closer you keep the more points you earn. If you reach the finish line (I say "if" because you'll find yourself driving into the canyon many times) the roles are reversed: you drive in front and your opponent tries to steal points back from your total by keeping up with you. You win the boss race if you can reach the finish line again with some points left. You can win more quickly by overtaking the opponent during the first race to the finish line, but that's not an easy task. Trust me, you'll have some sweaty palms during these races.

So does this means it's all great? No, it doesn't. De police chases are annoying and don't add much to the experience. And those drift races, what where they thinking? Why oh why are the controls completely different in the drift races, it's like driving on ice with slicks. Luckily one can complete the game without doing one drift race, so I skipped em all. Oh, and those useless wingmen, they are supposed to help you but all they do is get in your way. I also had some framerate problems a few times, but only in HD mode.

Overall, this is a great race game, I enjoyed playing it for many many hours. And then I have only talking about the career mode. After that, you can spend a long time doing the special challenges and playing online over Xbox Live. And through Xbox Live you can also purchase extra cars and upgrade kits. I found a download of my favorite car there, the 997 Turbo, for 80 Xbox Live credits. So I think I will invest some more playtime into this."

"I like teh Need for Speed. I've completed Underground and Underground 2, yet I never played Most Wanted. Now that I own a 360 I wanted to try a bit of arcade racing on it so I ordered it right away.

I get the feeling it's not full HD (it looks like the max you can set on the PC version to me), but it looks okay (not comparing to PGR3 hehe). That's all the bla you're gonna here from me on graphs today, let's do gameplay.

I thought this NFS game is a bit harder than NFSU or NFSU2, in those games you could just press the gas button and never let go. In this game, you still don't need to use brake for a corner, but you do have to use your handbreak to drift around corners and use nitro to speed out of them. This is a good thing.

Someone told me the cop thing wasn't new to NFS as it appeared in NFS: Most Wanted, but to me it was new. I thought at first it was fun to get police behind you in a race, which you then have to shake off once the race finishes, before you can start a new race. You have action point which slow down the police (like a mega icecream falling of a store on their cars) which is fun at first. Anyway, the cop thing started to bore me a bit as I don't want to wait (drive away) after a race but want to start the next ASAP. I've seen the icecream fall, now go away!

The bosses in the canyons aren't that easy either.. when you slip out of a corner there's a fat chance you end up falling down the canyon and loose the race.

I don't like tuning my car for the looks that much (I know alot of you guys do) but it's possible, you can just about tweak every bit or piece of your car. It's a nice feature I suppose.

Haven't finished it yet, will finish it some day, I like it. 4 out of 5. But you could buy it for your PC just the same if you want to save some money. My guess anyway."