Need for Speed: Carbon (2006)

RACING - Take on the role of a street racer returning to the fictional city of Palmont to reclaim their reputation and territory after a failed race led them to flee.

PROS:

++ Exhilarating gameplay. Probably the most important area in a racing game, and this entry excels in the gameplay department. I was seriously hooked with this game and I got addicted at the racing on offer. I can't speak much on Muscle or Exotic cars because I went fully into Tuners, but the game is just so exhilarating. It portrays high-speeds well, and I felt my blood pumping, hands shaking, and eyes fixated to the screen as I started to fly across the map. I'm definitely going to continue casually playing just to feel that thrill. As per game modes, there's Sprints and Circuits which are just standard races, Checkpoint which is essentially time trials, and Drift where the game shows off its great drifting mechanic. Other gameplay mechanics were Nitrous which gives your car an injection of speed, SpeedBreaker which slows down time allowing for precise maneuvers, and Crew Members which provide one of the three (Blocking, Drafting, and Scouting). To put it simply, the gameplay is mechanically fun, exhilarating, and satisfying.

++ Rewarding progression. I found the progression to be satisfying. From the get-go, the Tier-1 car was fun enough to use. And when I got to upgrade that Tier-1 car, I clearly noticed the improvement in my car's performance. When I finally got my first Tier-2 car, my mind was blown in the huge jump in performance. And it was once again blown when I bought my first Tier-3 car. My cars just kept getting faster and faster, easier to handle, and more beautiful to look at. Near-perfect progression in my opinion.

++ In-depth customization. I'm not even a car guy but I spent way too much time playing around with the car customization. There are tons of customization options on offer that I actually found it almost overwhelming. You can customize the smallest of details until you're perfectly satisfied with how your car looks and performs.

++ Content. Along with a solid campaign, there are a handful of other challenges and reward cards to complete in order to unlock even more cars and decor.

++ Canyon duels. The canyon races were especially thrilling since one bad turn can end the greatest of performances. It was also really fun trying to knock enemies into the canyon. I also thought that the two-part canyon bosses/duels was a pretty exhilarating game mode.

++ Graphics & presentation. Overall, the game looked great for a PS2 game! The city had an impressive amount of detail even when going fast, and the audio design for the cars was phenomenal!

CONS:

-- Story & characters. It's a sequel to Most Wanted from what I understand, and there are cutscenes that try to tell a story but it's nothing really worth paying attention to. Also, the characters are just so cringeworthy. I guess I can see why some may find them charming, but to me, it was just too corny. It's as if Disney Channel were the ones who created the characters.

-- Soundtrack. Just very forgettable all throughout. There was not a single track that really captured my attention. Ended up listening to my own tunes during races.

-- Final boss. It's to be expected that the final boss of games should be difficult. But I felt this game's final fights were too difficult. It starts off with racing the former three bosses: once in the canyons, and a second time in the streets. Once you beat them, then you can finally race Darius. As with all the other bosses, you'll need to beat him twice. The race in the streets was tough but ultimately, I was able to beat him. But the very final confrontation in the canyon was another level of difficult. I'm not good at racing games so it might also be a me problem, but I found that there was such a small margin for error. I was hyped after I beat him, but I found the overall race to be frustrating and borderline unfair.

-- Police chases. I just found that escaping the police felt like a chore more than anything. There was a limited amount of things you can do to shake them off, and even with your fastest cars they will still be able to match your speed. It wasn't frustrating, but I just found it a waste of time.

-- Defending territory. Another mechanic that I thought was a waste of time was having to defend your territory from rival gangs. If there was a large cash reward for defending your turf, then it would definitely be worth it. But you only get a measly $500-$700 for doing so. It's a waste of time, and it felt very repetitive and tiring near the end.

-- Repetitive maps. All the city and canyon maps just felt very same-y. Wouldn't really be able to tell them apart from each other.

The Best.

THE BEST NFS of the PS2 era.

I don't give a toot.

No, for real. The mechanics of this game! The story! The characters! Man this game is everything. The fact that each style of car felt so unique and precise! THE CARS! This game perfected every single feature of past NFS to the point when I long for that feeling in every racing game ever since. It is my Tenchu Wrath of Heaven of Racing. The progression feels great, is hard but rewarding. Each new upgrade for your cars really make the difference and the tuning options are so diverse and really let you customize your driving experience.

The characters are so fun and cringe and cute: the best kind of NFS characters. This game jumpstarted my love for Emmanuelle Vaugier (that lasts to this day) and Darius and his beautiful and ridiculously overpowered Audi TT... Just iconic.

Best game of the franchise. Fite me bro.

NFS: Carbon has my personal favorite aura out of all media out there. Blacklight, iridescent paint, slithering dub electronica, Tokyo Drift style "humans", the sound of an aftermarket engine inhaling and venting, hot rubber on asphalt, a city, a canyon, and that traditional bamboo flute music as you're hurtling down the edge.

I loved the weight of the vehicles and the willpower in the AI bosses. The gameplay enforces self-control and calculated risk. I used my original car through the majority of the game and it taught my kid-self about grinding to achieve success. I found it to be a real challenge, and when I beat the canyon race that unlocks the Murciélago I dumped my cash into that beast and spent many hours refining its body into an iridescent purple and neon green spectacle with heavy and sharp edits to the frame.

There really is nothing else out there like the song Ekstrak - Induction Kit, which is the garage song. This game invokes a high degree of creativity that I am sure has made its influence on real world aftermarket enthusiasts that had been inspired by this setting growing up. The colors of the PS2 version of this game have a rich holographic depth, and, although the graphics are blocky and outdated, the mystical futuristic aura is still present in the glow. Carbon uses motion blur effectively which helps as well.

There is often an AI partner tagging along with you, they are dependent on you and it would be better if they followed independently. It uses a button as a gas pedal, so you are flooring it all the time, and the variation between the feeling of different vehicle handling is limited. The drift challenges were the most challenging parts of the game and there was a complex handling system to be learned. The game could have been a lot better had they incorporated the ability to do that kind of drifting into the customization of your car, therefore using it in all races.

The police force in the game is great and it was a fun challenge to evade the high tier stage by hiding in a secluded area. I loved the chaos when police would fully interrupt the occasional street race.

I think that the main flaw of Carbon and other NFS games is the simplicity of the maze which the game is built on. We do not want a maze, we want a labyrinth. For instance, over a thousand high quality user-created levels exist for the game Distance.

Rating: ★★★½ (Good)

Carbon is a sequel to the highly acclaimed Most Wanted, part of the so called "golden age" of the Need for Speed series. The game basically takes the identity it developed along the previous titles and mix it once again with some influence from The Fast and The Furious (Tokyo Drift at the time). It's core is centered around territory wars, crew members with special skills, and class-specific (tuner, exotic, muscle) cars.

The result is good, but not great. The first good aspect of this game goes to the soundtrack, both original and licensed. The original tracks are, for the first time in this era, atmospheric, providing some sense of urgency to the career. The licensed tracks are almost unused, unless you use free roaming (which I did) instead of fast traveling. This is unfortunate, because the licensed music is really nice, and it's very easy (as I did as a kid) to miss them. Not only the licensed tracks are limited to small portions of the game, but there's a disjoint subset for each class of car you drive. And, as the lore of this game tells you to use a single class during a career, you are really unlikely to listen to all of it.

The story is okayish but good enough to give you some purposes in this world. The game is a bit short though. This is both a pro and a con. A con because, well, you'll not take long to finish it. A pro because otherwise its issues would become even more apparent.

Another point I'd like to give a plus to this game is its mix of CGI and in-game graphics during FMVs. It's really interesting, I don't recall seeing any game doing it so well. They took the live-action movies they recorded in front of green screens, rendered the world on them, and, the nice touch, is that they went further, and did some post-processing on the live-action actors, making them look like rendered characters. Oh, and the actual rendered characters (in race's non-interactive sequences) are very well done. Guess they allocated their budget in the wrong place though.

The crew system is really unbalanced. There are three types of skills a member can have: Scouting, Blocking and Drafting. Two of these are overpowered, and the other one underpowered. Scouters are responsible for finding shortcuts in races, and well, it's obvious that for this to be effective the scouter needs to be in front of you. So, in practice, the scouter is artificially faster than anyone in the race. If a crew member wins, you win, so having a scouter racing with you is almost a guarantee of victory. Story's almost the same for the Drafter, since they are used to (again, artificially) give you speed on the act of drafting on them. The blocker, on the other hand, is used to take opponents off the road. When it works, it's nice for a while, but rubber banding undoes the advantage you gain. Additionally, it almost doesn't work because the blocker must reach an opponent in order to block, which it may fail to do.

The achievements system (or, as the game calls it, reward cards) are really stupid. Sorry for being this rude, but it is. It looks like someone made them in a hour, without any though about the context of the game. There are some achievements that are only possible to achieve through grinding. Really annoying. For example, one of the cards require you to get 1 million in cash. But, you know, it's impossible to do so unless you plan for it, by starting a new career, using the first car for the entire game, not tuning it, etc. If you don`t, well, you'll have a finished career that's impossible to acquire the necessary cash because replaying races barely give you any cash. Funny thing is, the game doesn't even have proper means of starting a new career, people do this by using a "hack" to game over the career (getting busted many times). There are other stupid cards too such as filling the garage with exotics, tuners, or muscles (in practice people buy the cheapest car of each class over and over, then resell it), defending a territory 20 times (impossible with the short duration of the career, unless, again, you hack by entering and leaving races repeatedly to receive turf defense events), playing 50 quick races, etc.

Other problems are the game has too few cars, specially since you are restricted to a single class, and you also take a while to notice how to unlock them. Police can be annoying towards the end, since you need to evade after almost every race, and well, there's no reason to be in a pursuit, unlike in Most Wanted. There's also too much motion blur in this one which give me headaches after a few minutes of playing.

So, after replaying some of these games in the "golden age", part of my childhood, I think I don`t really like them. They are lacking in game design, and a few things need a bit more of polishing. I haven't played many of the newer entries in the series, but if they are considered worse than this, well, it must be bad.

Carbon is the first Need for Speed game that I ever played, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I remember my schoolmates were like: "Yeah, Carbon is good, but have you tried Most Wanted?", but I always liked Carbon just a bit more. It's far from perfect and has a ton of bugs, but still, it introduced me to a franchise that I really love. This game aged a lot, but I still spent last week like the last 10+ years hasn't even passed and enjoyed the thrill of the unique Canyon races and police chases.

The Good:

• Various race types, including their canyon variants.
• Exctiting and sometimes challanging canyon duels.
• Easily learnable drift.
• An open world where you can mess with the cops or challange NPC racers.
• A wide range of cars, grouped into three categories.
• Choosing from the 3 different car types offers you 3 slightly different campaigns.
• You have crewmates who can help you win races and give you extra perks.
• Freely usable nitro and time slowing ability.
• Bosses at each district, who you really want to punch in the face.
• An OK story, which doesn't had any suprises, but it was enought at the time.
• Challange series offers a chance to try out different cars in challeging scenarios.
• Built in achievement system in the form of Reward cards.
• You can build any car and take it for a spin in quick race.
• Collectors Edition unlocks extra cars and challanges.
• Never had the chance to try out the multiplayer modes, but I enjoyed NFS World when it was still a thing.

The Bad:

• Firing crewmates is just unnecessary and you should have the option to keep everyone at the same time, since other teams have more than four members too.
• Getting attacked by other crews is just boring and annoying mechanincs.
• Earning enought money to buy more cars is an issue throughout the game and you are not motivated to have more than 1 car per tier.
• There should be a final Race War in Silverton where you had to race with the Audi Le Mans Quattro, plus your crew members should be present at race wars since you race agains other bigger crews with 4+ racers.
• Downloading Extra Options software is necessary to fix a lot of issues.
• Crew members' AI leaves a lot to be desired, they sometimes brake ahead of you for no reason or crash even though they were supposed to show you the way.
• Some reward cards want you to not spend any money to earn a million cash, others want to make you fill your garage with different types, which is inconsistent and simply a bad design decision. Rewards should be about racing and cop chases, not about grinding and buying the cheapest car multiple times.
• I miss Drag from this game.

Playthroughs: 6x, Mostly with tuners, but I completed the game with only exotics and muscles only too.

Need for Speed: Carbon is a mix of the night time street theme of Underground 2 and the police chases from Most Wanted, but questionable design choices make it worse than either. The addition of a “crew” was a dreadful idea and the handling on cars felt unnecessarily heavy. The graphics are acceptable despite its age and the sound effects are incredible. A decent game but far from the strongest in the series.

Story

THE EUROBEATS WERE TOO LOUD AND THERE’S NO SUBTITLES. And it crashed during the final cutscene. On a more serious note the game uses FMV cutscenes which are as camp as you might expect, I think it connects to the previous games story.

Gameplay

During Carbon you will be racing as part of a ‘crew’ and securing territory for your team. The overworld is split into different sectors and you have to win a majority of each races in a given sector to control it. Once you control all the sectors in a district you get challenged by the boss of a rival crew to race a downhill in the mountains. During most races you can bring along a crew member with you, that fulfil one of three roles: drafter, scout or blocker. This is the worst gameplay choice in the history of racing games, that’s probably hyperbole but it’s really bad. They constantly talk to you during the race with encouraging phrases like “you can do it! The end it just ahead”, which gets very annoying after the 20th time. But worst of all is that they’re artificially fast in order to keep up with you or be ahead of you. For example the drafter and the scout both like to drive ahead of you, so you spend a lot of time racing in second place, and there’s nothing better than playing a racing game in second place behind a car that is artificially faster than you. Anyway I just picked a shitty blocker and never used it so I noticed less.

Carbon features three different types of car, tuners, exotics and muscle cars. I chose to drive tuners, which are usually just Japanese imports which excel at “handling”. However I’m not really sure what they mean by handling, because all I had was ridiculous understeer. Even after using a setup that favoured “drift” and “oversteer” all I got was understeer. It was really annoying and the complete opposite of what I was looking for in this game because the downhill races would be great with a car that can drift. Like its predecessors Carbon features an overworld, and races take place in sectioned off areas of the overworld with the exception of the downhill races. So I go pretty sick of the overworld quickly but the downhill and drift races were frequent enough so I didn’t get too bored.

Presentation

Carbon is over 10 years old but the graphics are not too bad actually mostly due to the insane amount of motion blur. I was running the game with the widescreen fix and it was pretty decent, textures are acceptable and the lighting on signs and stuff is pretty nice. The details on the car seem a little low, but overall the graphics are ok. The sound effects are incredible though. The game has really satisfying shifting and turbo sounds, and even captures the unique engine sounds of different cars such as the Skyline. I didn’t listen to the in-game music so I can’t really say, but the graphics were decent and sound effects were really good. One caveat though, I did get frequent crashes (every 30 mins or so) though luckily the game autosaves frequently and it's quick to load back up but still annoying.