Need for Speed Carbon Review (X360, Xbox)

Career Mode

The career mode in Carbon probably has the best progression system of any of the modern NFS games, but it is too darn short. I beat the game in only about 5 days, and that was by playing in between work and playing other games. It isn’t more than about 8-10 hours long, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Underground 2 and Most Wanted were almost too long, and a curse because it is so much fun you don’t want to see it end that quickly.

The progression system works like this. There are several territories in the city split up between four rival gangs. Each territory has two or three races in it, and when you win these you control the territory. Own all of a gang’s territory, and you get a boss battle down a winding canyon road to claim control and move onto the next gang. You are constantly unlocking new parts and new cars, and the difficulty curve moves up very gradually and your car is usually a little bit better than your opponents, so you rarely get frustrated. The only way you really lose is if you wreck or an AI blocker car gets in your way.

One nice thing I really like is that you can’t just use the same car you started with throughout the career. Each tier of car can only go so fast before you need to upgrade. This keeps you constantly upgrading and tuning and it is a lot of fun. I also found that it is a good idea to specifically tune one car for drift events and other cars for racing events since your fastest car might not be your best drifter.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Need for Speed Carbon is a really nice looking game. The cars are incredibly detailed and the huge city you explore looks great. It all takes place on the dark rainy streets of a city, which I don’t like as well as the bright and sunny Most Wanted, but it still looks fantastic. Something worth mentioning is the Race Wars events in the career mode that feature twenty cars onscreen at the same time. Yes, you read that right. Twenty fully-detailed cars all tearing around the beautiful environments with not a framerate drop in sight.

The sound is also pretty good for the most part. Each car makes a different sound and each new performance part tweaks that sound just a little bit. The voice acting in the career mode is okay, but nothing special. My only complaint with the sound is that the soundtrack is pretty horrible, but you can fix that easily enough on the Xbox 360 so it isn’t a big problem.

Xbox Version

The Xbox version is mostly the same as the 360 version but it does not include any online play at all. Also, the race wars events aren’t available at all on the Xbox, presumably due to technical limitations. Everything else is here, though, and it all plays very nicely. As you can probably imagine, the graphics are extremely rough compared to the 360 version, but I have to say I am impressed by how nice the cars look on the Xbox. The city is kind of cruddy looking, but the cars are gorgeous. If you don’t have a 360, the Xbox version will definitely satisfy your need for Need for Speed.

Bottom Line

Overall, Need for Speed Carbon on the Xbox 360 is a very fun, very solid game. It packs everything that made Underground 1 and 2 and Most Wanted great into one polished package and I really enjoyed it. Great racing, great customization, great online play – everything is well done here. If you preferred Most Wanted over the Underground series, you might not find as much to love in Carbon, but I think the customization and online play will still get you hooked on this one. I have to admit, I didn’t really care for the demo that was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace, but the final product puts all of the pieces together into something that is really deep and very enjoyable. Need for Speed Carbon is a great entry in the series and I highly recommend it.