Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1501 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2006-11-02
• Platform: Xbox 360

Manufacturer's Description
What starts in the city is settled in the canyons as Need for Speed Carbon immerses you in the world's most dangerous and adrenaline-filled form of street racing. You and your crew must race in an all-out war for the city, risking everything to take over your rivals' neighbourhoods one block at a time. As the police turn up the heat, the battle ultimately shifts to Carbon Canyon, where territories and reputations can be lost on every perilous curve. Represent your car class, your crew, and your turf in Need for Speed Carbon, the next revolution in racing games.

Key Features:
All-new Canyon Duel and Drift race modes are the ultimate test of skill and nerve, where one wrong turn could cost you more than the race.

Race for control of the city block-by-block by taking down rival crews on their turf, then defeat their crew leaders in life-or-death races in Carbon Canyon.

The revolutionary new Autosculpt car customisation tool gives you the power to design and tweak your crew's cars in every way imaginable.

Affiliate with the Tuner, American Muscle, or Exotic car classes and prove once and for all who makes the best set of wheels. A new physics model makes each class handle and drive differently.

Strategically choose your crew members and then use their skills on the road and in the garage to help you win races and customise your cars.

Customer Reviews

Just one pork pie short of a picnic.
Having played Need for speed most wanted almost to the point of repetitive strain injury, I couldn't wait for NFS Carbon to be released. First impressions were very good. Graphics are excellent on the 360. Everything looks just that little bit more polished than its predecessor.

Instead of moving up a "blacklist", this time the aim of the game is to take over each area of the city until you own it all. Races can be chosen in random order. Once you have won enough, a boss will challenge you to a canyon race. These are great fun. The aim is race down the winding canyon roads. First of all, you chase the boss and have to keep up with him. If he gets too far away, or you crash over the side, then its game over. Next it is roll reversal and the boss will chase you. If you win, you gain control that part of city and are one step closer to taking over all of it.

Now, have you ever had one of those days at work where you feel as though you have made 1 step forwards, but two steps back. Unfortunately, this is a bit how Carbon feels. The races in the game are exactly the same as in NFSMW. The only change is that the drifting challenges make a welcome return and is huge fun. There is a lot of satisfaction to be had from stringing numerous drifts together and getting higher and higher scores. The biggest problem with Carbon however, is the police pursuits. Rather than being an integral part of the game, like in NFSMW, they just feel tacked on here. This really is the biggest division of opinion because some people hated them and some people loved them. I personally loved them, and feel that they would have improved carbon significantly. I can appreciate though that EA didn't just want to make "NFSMW: Night time".

If you are a fan of NFSMW then you will still find Carbon a lot of fun. However, if you are expecting a big leap forward then you may be disappointed. This game is not worth the full asking price, but if you can get this for around the 20 quid mark then it is well worth purchasing just for a quick thrill.

Its good but a bit too short....
Good Points.
- Autosculpt feature is great, you could spend hours just making your cars look nice,
- The races are challenging,
- The cars handle brilliantly,
- Really fun to play.

Bad Points.
- Towards the end the races may be too challenging for a lot of people,
- The game, for experienced gamers, will be too short. it will take about 5 hours of playing to get through around 50% of the game, although it does get harder as it goes on and it may take a while for you to do the last part.

I give this game 5 stars for fun because it IS REALLY FUN. And 3 Overall because the gameplay is great and it is a vast improvement on NFS:MW.

PS. I recommend that you rent this game, maybe for 2 nights at least, it wont take much longer than that to complete it, but i do recommend you play it

If you do not intend to go online, avoid this game.
Having played hundreds, if not thousands, of games since the early `80's, this is my first game review. I felt compelled to write this because I feel let down and ripped off.

It's difficult to know where to begin; the chronic shortness of single player, the woeful AI that undermines the whole game, the usual NFS frame rate stutter, the sheer pointlessness of large parts of the game, the constant cut-scene interruptions or the cartoon like graphics, the fact the cop chases have been pushed to the sidelines, the list seems endless.

I, like a lot of you out there, am [was] a big fan of the NFS series, particularly Most Wanted. I loved the feel of MW, and if the races did sometimes feel like a bit of a chore, the cop chases more than made up for it. Which is why I feel so disappointed with Carbon [or NFS 2 and a bit as I think of it].

So, lets go into the reasons I think this game is so bad. I won't dwell on the fact that this game is a mish-mash of previous instalments because that is subjective, and what has been included in this game may be right up your street [as it were], so I will concentrate on the objective. The career mode, which is the core of most games, can be finished in six hours easily. Including cut-scene time. £40 for six hours. There are other "mini-games" or challenge mode as it is called, but to me there seemed no real incentive to complete them, and that, in a nutshell, is what this game suffers from most. That "can't wait to unlock the next level/car/upgrade etc" ingredient is completely missing. I felt for large parts of the game I was just going through the motions. An example is when you do get chased by the cops. There is no real reward for evading them, just some statistics. Of course, for you it may be different.

Ok, the frame rate. You really would have thought this could have been fixed by now. It hasn't.

Next, the appalling AI. A lot has been written about NFS's elastic AI but most of it misses the point. The real problem is not that they catch you up from miles behind, but they let you win. I'll give you an example. In one race I just puttered around the course and finished last with a time of 2 mins 18 secs. I restarted the game several times, the AI getting slower each time, until I eventually won with a time of 2 mins 20 secs. All the money spent on cars, upgrades etc. ultimately mean nothing, the game decides when you win. Now I can here some of you out there saying it's good that the AI adapts itself to your level, but fundamentally you are always going to finish up with the game deciding when you win. Personally, I can't see what was wrong with easy/med/hard settings.

So, to sum up. If you do not plan to go online with this game, it simply is not worth the money. I have read several reviews on the web, and every one of them has been very lenient toward this game and very generous in the marking of it. It's hardly worth 4 out of 10.