Need for Speed Carbon
The battle starts on the streets of Palmont but is won in the canyons as Need for Speed: Carbon immerses you in the world’s most dangerous and adrenaline-filled forms of street racing. After battling for control of Palmont streets, the action shifts to Carbon Canyon, where territories and reputations can be lost on every perilous curve. With captivating graphics and stunning visual effects, players will be completely immersed in a gut-check race around the canyons where more than just winning is at stake. The battle starts on the streets of Palmont city, but is won in the canyons as Need for Speed: Carbon take street racing to a whole new dangerous and white-knuckled level. Do you have the need for speed?
Wii takes the cop chases and turf wars to a new level! |
The battle in Palmont city quickly spills over into neighboring Carbon Canyon. View larger. |
Buy and combine over 300 individual parts, with Autosculpt technology. View larger. |
Special “Blocker” teammates can cause distractions and take out enemies. View larger. |
Will the cops turn up the heat before you can claim all the territories as your own? View larger. |
What happens in the canyon, stays in the canyon
What starts in the city is settled in the canyons as Need for Speed: Carbon weaves a story line that players won’t soon forget in locales that are as detailed as they are deadly. You and your crew must race in an all-out war for the city, risking everything to take over your rivals’ neighborhoods one block at a time. Boldly expanding on the key features that have made the Need for Speed franchise a hit for more than a decade, Need for Speed: Carbon turns up the excitement and intensity by introducing all-new canyon racing. 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. With multiplayer racing and the most detailed Wii graphics and car customization tools ever, Need for Speed: Carbon is the ultimate next generation racing game.
Need for Speed: Carbon on the Nintendo Wii introduces the world to a whole new way to play Need for Speed. Offering the classic Need for Speed controls and immersive gameplay experience, with the addition of the Wii’s unique controller scheme takes NFS Carbon gameplay to levels previously not possible. A simple yet intuitive control scheme using the Wii controllers, the player will instantly recognize and feel the physics differences between the extensive list of Muscle, Exotic, and Tuner cars, as they use their crew to win Canyon races, customize their cars using Autosculpt technology, and battle to take control of the streets of Palmont. A streamlined focus on game physics has resulted in a truly authentic racing experience, as each of the game’s three distinct car classes have been designed to maximize differentiation and enhance performance.
Over 50 rides to drive and customize
Carbon offers more than 50 custom rides in three distinct classes: Tuner, Exotic, and Muscle — each with unique attributes. Muscle are best on straightaways, of which there are precious few in Palmont. Need for Speed: Carbon gives you the power to design and tweak your car in every way – including over 300 different parts – using the ground-breaking new Autosculpt technology. As with other racing games you hold either end of the Wii Controller and tilt it to steer your car. If you’d rather not take the motion-control plunge EA thoughtfully provides five different steering configurations, including using the Nunchuk’s analog stick. Our advice is to forget about old school — the Wii Remote is the way to go. How did we ever enjoy racing games before it was invented?
Birds of a fuel-injected feather
New to Need for Speed in this generation are the three kinds of wingmen (and yes, that’s what the game calls them). Scouts search for shortcuts. Blockers create distractions and slow rivals. Drafters give you a second of speed boost for every second you can stay behind them. All three also give you moral support via wireless communications. Scouts are most useful the first few times you run a course. Drafters are of limited use on Palmont’s twisting thoroughfares. Practically indespensible are Blockers, who are always willing to lay their precious paint jobs on the line so you can cross the finish line first. Now that’s true friendship.
In total, Need for Speed: Carbon takes racing on the Wii to the next generation, and never looks back. With extensive customization, multiplayer options, revolutionary control, and an intriguing story, owners of the Wii may not be able to put this title down for a long, long time.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Yet another great game from EA!
When I was looking on Amazon for a great racing game, I went straight to Need for Speed. Originally I was going to purchase Most Wanted because I thought Carbon was just a racing game like Prostreet: No Pursuits, no freeroam, just cars and racing. Then I did some research on Carbon. Carbon has nearly EXACTLY the same features as MW with the exclusion of helicopters (I didn’t really like them anyway), Drag Races are replaced with Drift racing, returning from Underground. Drift Racing drives me insane. Fortinately, they aren’t required to continue the career, but you will have to do one to get Tribal vinyls.
Then there’s the canyon. (dramatic music here)
Canyon racing can be both awesome and annoying at the same time. The dangerous part is on some turns there are yellow walls that break when touched. If you fall off, you lose, of course. Three types of canyon are in career: Canyon sprint (can’t fall of, both N2O and SB), Canyon Drift (Can fall off, N2O) and Canyon Duels (Can fall off) Canyon Duels are the best way to decide who’s the best racer at like a party or something.
Now to Career mode. Remember the BMW from NFSMW? The wicked blue and white one? You get to drive it for approximetly 30 seconds before you crash it into a truck. There are three catagories to choose from at the beginning after you totaled one of the coolest cars in the world. The catagories are Tuner (High turning, low speed) Muscle (High Accel, low turning) and Exotics (High speed, low accel can be easily fixed.) I went with Exotics, and I will never regret it. Of course, you can buy other types, too. The territory system is a major part of career. You and your crew(explained later) must concur the four main parts of Palmont City: Fortuna, Downtown, Kempton, and Silverton. Each are mostly owned by the four big boy street racers. Fortuna is owned by Wolf, leader of T.F.K., exotic (No idea what that stands for) Downtown is owned by Kenji, leader of Bushido, tuner, Kempton is owned by Angie, leader of 21’st Street, Muscle, and Silverton is owned by ???? (If I said the name, it would spoil the entire game.), leader of Stacked Deck, Mixed. Occasionally, you will be challenged by smaller crews to a race on your territory. If you accept, you race. If you say no, they get your territory. Now to the Crew system. In a race, you can have a crew member help you in a race and believe me, you want to. Trust me. There are three types of crew members: Blockers, drafters, and Scouts. Blockers, when activated, will ram the nearest car to him, sending him 95% of the time to last place. Drafters, I don’t know what they do, but they’re useless. Scouts find the fastest route around the track, and that includes shortcuts. Some crew members have outside race abilities, like unlocking Autosculpt (again, more on that later) parts, getting discounts on parts and cars, and lowering the zone heat level.
And what’s Street racing without the 5-0?
The pursuit system is nearly like the ones in Most wanted, without helicopters. Pursuits can happen in the middle of a race, or in Free Roam when you cause destruction and mayhem. In a pursuit, you are chased by the police, while you have to outrun -and outsmart- them. There is an Evade/Busted meter at the top that tells you how close you are to the two. You can total the cops by hitting there car a bunch of times, hitting them so hard they fly up in the air, or by pursuit breakers. Like most wanted, the higher your heat level, the more aggressive the cops are. Level 1 is Civic cruisers. Level 2 is Undercover Cruisers, and they will deploy Roadblocks, which you can easily get through with Speedbreaker. Level 3 is State Pursuit Vehicles, AKA Pontiac GTOs, and Roadblocks. Level 4 is when things get real tricky.There are Undercover Pursuit Vehicles. In Roadblocks, there will now be spike strips. If you drive over one, you lose your tires, and then your life will suck. Level 5 pursuits will be over in less than 30 seconds if you have a Tier 1 car. The 5-0 will throw everything they have at you: Federal Pursuit Vehicles, AKA Corvette Z06, Roadblocks, and Spikeys. Oh, one more thing: If you get Busted, you will be charged fines depending on the carnage you’ve caused. If you pay your fines, your car will get an impound strike. If you get three Impound strikes, it’s bye-bye to your car. If you lose your last car, or you can’t pay your fines, you are put in jail, and it’s game over, buddy.
Now to my Favorite part: Cars and Custimization! They have nearly ALL the cars from NFSMW and more. Some classics like the Gallardo and Mercedes SLR Mclaren return, along with new cars, like the Audi Le Mans Quattro and the Koenigsegg CCX. Even the BMW M3 E46 GTR returns! I can’t name all the cars, but go to [...] to find a big list of most of the cars. Custimization time! First, you can add a coat of paint to your car. You can get Matte, metalic, candy, iderescent, Chrome, and more in any color in the universe. Some more of the things you can add and autosculpt are vinyls, spoilers, rims, rim paint, roof scoops, window tint, hoods, ride height, and, in some cars like the Corvette, Chop Tops, and more. There are well over a million combinations of cars and colors and parts. Using much of your money you win from racing, you can upgrade the nitrous, engine, suspention, transmission, and more to make it faster and better than any car.
Now to the small flaws in Carbon. The Drift races are hard, but some people are naturally great, so this isn’t much of a flaw, just a lack of talent on my part. 2: There are only four bosses in this game. I was hoping to see more like a blacklist sort of system. 3: The whole game takes place at night, so it’s hard to see the curves in Canyon until it’s too late. 4: This game lacks online play, but it has multiplayer.
Overall, this game is nearly perfect, able to satisfy speedaholics everywhere. If you just want to race, or be on the edge and live like an outlaw, Need For Speed: Carbon is for you.
3 Stars Don’t get it for the Wii wheel
One of the reasons I picked up this game is that I was looking for something else to make use of the Nerf Wii Wheel peripheral that so far I’ve only been using with Speed Racer. Now, I’ve only played it for two days, but in that time I have learned two things. One is that the game is generally pretty fun and the other is that the default “steering wheel” style control scheme is an unmitigated disaster. It is possible to control the car only in the loosest sense of the word, in the same way that if you shake a box with a cat inside you could be said to be “controlling” the cat. Yes, your actions affect its movement, but not in any kind of predictable or repeatable way. It’s not a matter of the tilt being too sensitive or not sensitive enough; somehow it is both. Your car won’t turn enough, until after the turn is over, at which point it will curve straight into a wall even though you have straightened the wheel. I’ve seen it said that there is a learning curve here, and maybe if I could figure out exactly when in the turn I ought to stop turning my car even though the turn is not done yet, there would some way to do it. But I suspect that by the time I mastered such a thing, the experience would bear little resemblance to operating a steering wheel anyway. Furthermore, I believe a simple thing like maneuvering a virtual car around a corner while not even at top speed should not require a learning curve tantamount to landing the space shuttle. Call me crazy, but that is just how I was raised.
At first I feared the game, though graphically gorgeous (for the Wii anyway) would be completely unplayable. There is no excuse for control this disastrous (especially when the Wii’s other racers prove it’s possible), and I can only conclude that the guys at EA simply failed to crack the problem. Maybe there is some specific issue with their physics model, which was designed to be controlled by an analog stick, that cannot be ported over to a tilting controller without destroying the fabric of the game. I don’t know.
Happily, there are 5 control schemes here to choose from. One of them involves tilting the nunchuck, which works marginally better than the Wiimote (imagine an angry cat on a leash instead of in a box), but twisting a nunchuck is nothing like using a steering wheel anyway, so why bother? The last two options involve steering with the analog stick, which is an absolute delight, especially after an hour of slamming your unruly car into walls with your Wii wheel. The analog stick steering is, in fact, especially good, and furthermore, the Wiimote throttle control, in which you tilt the controller like a gas pedal, works like a charm. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive and completely stupid, but in fact it triggered an epiphany — the key to racing, especially in these games, is actually not steering at all. After all, any idiot can steer (once he is using a sensible control scheme and not one that is fundamentally broken); one usually blows a race by trying to take a turn too fast. This is because mastering finesse with the gas, brake and handbrake are the key to success. Once I tried control scheme 5 (4 is nice too, as it tethers the Wiimote to brake/reverse as well as gas, but unfortunately the handbrake is operated by jerking back on the nunchuck, which doesn’t seem to do anything), I found myself commanding the throttle and handbrake with an assurance and precision I had never experienced playing NFS with a conventional controller. In fact, it works so well, I wondered if EA’s programmers had consciously not bothered to perfect steering wheel controls, so certain were they that the weird nunchuck-analog/Wiimote gas pedal scheme was superior.
So yes, the game is playable and so far, a lot of fun on the Wii — not just in spite of, but even due to, the Wii’s unique controls. But not the ones you expect. And if you’re interested in getting more use out of your Wii Wheel here, forget it.
3 Stars Why so dark and gloomy??
I’ll admit for the first month I was hooked. But that was because of the races, nothing else. I hated the fact that it was never daylight.It was also always raining. Also, if you met one cop, then more were on you in a flash. Plus, in real you can’t knock down ater towers w/ your car, especially without getting scratched. I just hope nfs nitro’s graphics are better.
1 Star Misleading Information
I searched the Amazon site for a racing game that came with a steering wheel for Wii and thought that this game sounded like something my husband would like. Well, the game came. and lo and behold no steering wheel. I called amazon (good luck finding the number) and was informed by someone that could barely understand or speak English that I would not be getting the steering wheel with the game. So I now have to make an additional purchase because I already have the game. I have not yet gotten the game console and I hope to goodness that I do not have as much problem getting that order straight. There are other issues, but I will wait until all is said and done to comment… Do not depend on their search criteria! Need for Speed Carbon
1 Star Crap
Game sucks.
Need to be able to use the classic controller with it like you can with Underground and it would be better. Hubby begged for it and played it for a whole five minutes. Waste of money!
Buy/More Info
