Need for Speed Carbon Review - PS3

7.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 5
Audio: 9
Multiplayer: 6
Innovation: 6

Need for Speed: Carbon provides new ideas, hot new cars, and an amazing sense of speed when you’re cruising through town at speeds of 300KPH.With an extensive career mode where you take control of zones one by one, a challenge mode that will prove a challenge to even the best driver, and an online mode with an easy interface to set up matches, Need for Speed: Carbon is definitely a temptation to street racing enthusiasts to say the least.

Gameplay

NFS: Carbon has several different gameplay modes. Career mode is the main area where you’ll find several hours of gameplay. If you choose to free-roam from one race to the next, the game can take quite a while to complete.Fortunately however, you can teleport to the next race or to the car shop, or back to a “safe house” where you can customise your cars.Numerous safe houses and car shops unlock as you progress through the game, but they are essentially all the same once you enter.

NFS: Carbon’s career mode works similar to Saints Row. Instead of choosing a character at the start though, you choose a type of car. There are three different types of cars, and if you want to unlock everything in the game, you’ll have to complete Career mode in all three categories. Once in the career mode, you soon learn that you have to take control of small neighbourhoods, and eventually wipe out a whole gang. Each zone has two or three different race types, and completing the majority of these races gives you control of the zone. There are four different parts of the city under control by four different “gangs”, with bosses that race you in the canyons once you’ve taken over their whole area.The canyon races work differently to anything we’ve seen before. You do two separate races down the same canyon.

Firstly, you start behind the boss and have to stay as close to them as possible. If you can overtake the boss and stay in-front for 10 seconds, you’ll win instantly, but this proved fairly hard to pull off in most cases. Once you follow the boss all the way to the bottom without falling off the side of the road (which eliminates you and forces you to start again), you race down again with the boss behind you. If you can get enough of a lead, you can win instantly, but if the boss stays close behind you the whole time and earns more points than you managed in your attempt, you’ll have to go right back to the start. This can prove quite annoying, especially if you slide off the edge of a cliff on the last corner where you were sure you were going to win, as you have to go back to attempt a 15 minute race all over again.

The Challenge (continued next page)