hile EA popped out a Need For Speed title at the launch of the Xbox 360, they’re back one year later with the follow-up, Need For Speed Carbon. We’re going to focus heavily in this exclusive hands-on preview on the online aspects of Carbon, but we’ll be touching a bit on the single player career as well.
Carbon is set in a time period post-Rockport (Most Wanted), and everything begins with you being chased through Carbon Canyon by your old pal Cross. Even though you kick Cross’s ass, you end up crashing your ride in a construction area, and Cross pins you down. You’re greeted by Darius and Nikki, and the latter is charged with the job of training you in on these streets. But since your ride got trashed, you need to choose which car you’ll begin with first. Your three options are a Chevy Camaro SS (Muscle), Alfa Romero Alpha Brera (Exotic), or Mazda RX8 (Tuner). Whether you want the best acceleration (muscle), something balanced (Exotic), or something fast and handles well (tuner), it’s up to you. You’ll eventually have access to all three of the different car types, so it’s basically what you want to start your career with.
Your career mode is spread out across different territories that are controlled by different racing crews. Your job is to win back all of the different territories and race against the rival gang’s boss in a deadly canyon duel. By finishing the different races you’ll win money and unlock cars and parts, which you can then purchase and use to customize each of your cars. The customization portion of Carbon is beyond ridiculous. Anything and everything that you want to tweak your ride out with is available. If it’s not, you can autosculpt it once you get a fabricator crew member. Once you’ve tricked out your different vehicles you can take those online.
Even though we’ve enjoyed much of the career mode, we’re mainly playing through it to unlock cars to use in online battles. Yep, it’s true, we’re not just playing though career to watch the artsy FMV sequences (seriously EA, you gotta stop that, we’re in the year 2006 you know). We’ve played quite a bit of the different online modes, and from what we’ve experienced so far, we’re going to have a tough time deciding between finishing the career mode or racing online – because both so far are an absolute blast.
There are eight different online modes that you can compete in online multiplayer, and some can be played cooperatively. Five of the modes technically come over from career including Sprint, Circuit, Speedtrap, Canyon Race (they’re pretty much the same as the Canyon Sprints in career), and Canyon Duels. Pursuit Knockout has replaced Lap Knockout from Most Wanted, and one more new online mode has also been added – Pursuit Tag. The Challenge Series races can be played cooperatively with up to four players. Outside of the challenge series races, canyon races, and canyon duels, the rest of the online modes can be played with up to eight players.
By far the most fun we’ve had online is with Pursuit Knockout, Pursuit Tag, and anything in the canyon. Pursuit Tag is the stand out leader in the fun category, and with playing against the folks at EA Black Box, I haven’t heard this much trash talking and laughter online in quite a while. One driver is in a race car and everyone else is police. The goal is to be the race car for the longest amount of time. To become the race car police cars need to get as close to the race car to fill up your busted meter. The closer you are to the race car the faster your meter fills up, and once full the race car then goes to the leader. Once it switches the race car is invincible for a few moments, and then the chase begins. Doing quick cuts down an alley or flipping a U-turn in the middle of the street to see some cop cars barrel into each other is hilarious. Pursuit Breakers are littered around so stopping cops in their tracks is quite helpful when trying to make a break for it.
Pursuit Knockout differs from Lap Knockout where the driver who’s in last place at the end of a lap becomes a cop. The cops’ job is to screw up the rest of the drivers by crashing into them. Cops have two distinct advantages. The first is that they can go through lighted barriers so short cuts are readily available, and second, cop cars handle better and are faster than normal cars. Cutting off a leader or creating a road block to stop a few cars in a short cut is beyond satisfying.
Since Canyon races are one of the big features, it’s nice to see them appear in online multiplayer. Duels put you against another driver online where collision is turned off, but the breakable barriers are still on. If you go over the edge of the canyon you automatically lose (which is why collision is off), so the objective is to stay as close to the other car, and get down the canyon as fast as possible. Canyon Races pit up to four players against each other where there are no breakable barriers, but collision is on. With such tight quarters and crazy switch back turns these races are going to be insane.
Finally you’ll be able to race against other players’ shadows on each track. If you’re online via Xbox Live you can download the leader’s shadow for that track, and if you beat them you’re time will be uploaded to the NeedforSpeed.com website.
In fact, everything will be tracked whether you’re playing solo or multiplayer on the NeedforSpeed.com website. Tracked elements include top race times, top cops in either Pursuit Tag, Pursuit Knockout, shadows, and more. Much like other racing titles, Carbon has a photo mode where you can take pictures of your car in either the garage or in a race. Up to 10 photos will be tracked on NeedforSpeed.com where you can save the jpegs and manipulate them as you wish. Jump over a cop car and want to e-mail it to your friends? No problem. Unfortunately you can’t send a picture to a friend over Xbox Live, you’ll have to do it via e-mail.
Downloadable content is still being decided upon, but from what we know, the team is planning for a ton of it. Expect cars, parts, paints, vinyls, and more. We inquired about downloadable tracks or some sort of expansion much like what Ubisoft did with GRAW and the team is considering it. Could gamers possibly download a new neighborhood with new rivals, cars, and tracks? The potential is there.
Need For Speed Carbon will be released at the end of October for all platforms, and for Wii and PlayStation 3 when both of those systems are released. The Xbox 360 version will be released in both a regular version and Collector’s Edition. The Collector’s Edition will feature 12 new tracks, six new challenge series missions, and 10 exclusive cars including the 92’ Nissan 240 SX, 07 Jaguar XK, 06 Camero Concept, and the 06’ Koenigsegg CCX. We’ll have our full review in a few weeks, but for now we have to say that Carbon is one of the best street racers we’ve experienced in a long time. Back to the streets we go…