Need for Speed Carbon

Dec 6, 2006

You've called for back-up plenty of times in your favorite squad-based tactical shooter and your mage or priest has saved your butt more than you'd like to admit in all those RPGs you've dungeon-crawled through. So why shouldn't you be able to get by with a little help from your friends on the open road? EA's Need for Speed Carbon, the latest in its street racing series, lets you do just that. You now have wingmen helping you out when things get nasty. It's an interesting concept and it shows development's dedication to the evolution of the franchise, but it's one that may have been let out of the box a bit too early.

In last year's Need for Speed Most Wanted, your job was to creep up the Black List by taking out your enemies one at a time. This time, it's more of a territorial thing. Defeat the gang that controls a territory and it becomes yours. Of course, once you take over a place, it's ripe for a challenge from another gang. Think of NFSC as being like playing the board game Risk -- only with spoilers and nitrous. The game's setting has shifted, too, and it's a better fit this time around. Racing is done in mainly urban settings, with the occasional scary and winding canyon road thrown in to keep things interesting. (The "Carbon" of the title refers to Carbon Canyon, the setting for the game.) Too much of Most Wanted was spent on rural roadways. There was something incongruous about trying to live the outlaw lifestyle while driving around in what looked like a quaint New England town.

What hasn't changed is the size and scope of the playing field. The story and the racing unfold over a vast interconnected map of roads and highways. You can jump from event to event and to the car dealer and your garage from an onscreen menu, but if you plan on knowing the roads well enough to lose the cops on the many pursuits you'll be involved in, you'll want to spend plenty of time just driving around in the Free Roam mode.

Just as in Most Wanted, the story is pushed along with FMV sequences -- creepy FMV sequences. At first, you'll think you're looking at some incredibly sharp CG cutscenes, until you realize that what you're looking at are real actors tweaked to look somewhat computer-generated. It's a weird effect and it makes the hokey and clichéd script seem even more goofy, knowing that an actual human being is saying the lines.

The major addition in NFSC is your crew of wingmen -- teammates that watch your back and help you out during races. Wingmen come in three flavors -- blockers, drafters and scouts. Blockers are the hockey goons of the road. Single out an enemy target, hit the Y button, and out of nowhere, your blocker will zip out and slam into your rival. If you find yourself behind your drafter, activate him and you'll be able to whip along at lightning speed in his draft. The scouts don't need to be activated, but keeping an eye on them will show you where all the shortcuts are in any given race.

It's a cool concept and one that theoretically should have added more of a strategy element to things, but I usually found myself deciding to go things alone. Too often, my blocker would just be in my way when I was trying to pass someone, or he'd conveniently take out a rival car so directly in front of me that it'd end up taking me out as well. You're not penalized for not using your crew, so you'll probably only use them when you're absolutely desperate and are willing to risk becoming a casualty.

If you do decide to go with your wingman, the controller scheme will be fighting alongside you -- as opposed to against you. On the PS2, accelerating and braking is done with the face buttons or right stick, forcing you to go through some digital gymnastics to fire up your wingman without taking your foot off the gas. Here, the shoulders handle the gas and brakes, letting you call up your ally effortlessly. I'm generally not a giant fan of the 'Cube controller, due to its odd and asymmetrical button layout, but it gets the job done very nicely with NFSC.

Another new addition is the inclusion of drift racing -- and this is serious drift. The drift racing is a completely different animal from the other types of racing you'll be doing. You know that anxiety dream you have where you're trying to run away from the circus clown, but you're sliding all over the place and you can't seem to get any traction? That's what the drifting is like in NFSC. It's a nice break from the circuit and sprint racing, but not something you'd want to spend a whole lot of time doing.

Maybe the coolest new feature is Autosculpt. In addition to just being able to trick out your vehicle with high-performance parts and funky paint jobs and vinyls, the Autosculpting feature lets you tweak the size and shape of just about any aftermarket doodad you buy. Adjust the height and width of your spoiler, the shape of your grill, and the overall niftiness of your roof scoop. It doesn't affect the way your car handles on the street, but you will spend a mess of time fiddling with the sliders that affect how your ride looks.

And generally when a game gets released cross-platform, it's just the GameCube owners that get shafted because of the lack of online play. Not so, this time. I don't care if you have a 'Cube, a PS2, or an Xbox -- you're all out of luck. If you want to go online with NFSC, you'd better be rocking either a 360 or a PS3. Development clearly had its eyes on the next-gen machines when it was working on this one. Multiplayer in NFSC is limited to split-screen racing.

If you haven't been able to land a Wii yet -- or just aren't into the idea of trying to drive using a nunchuk -- Need for Speed Carbon isn't a bad way to get your adrenaline pumping. While not all of the new additions to the series work completely -- the wingman concept is interesting, but could use some tweaking -- there are enough new ideas here to make the game feel fresh and show why NFS remains one of the top racing franchises for the system.