The Wiire - Games - Need for Speed: Carbon - Review: Evaluation and Grade

Upon starting Need for Speed: Carbon, I didn't know exactly what to expect. The last Need for Speed title I played was the original back in 1995 on the PC. Suffice it to say the series has evolved considerably since then while surprisingly maintaining much of the original concept.

The latest installment on Wii has taken the simple street racing concept of the initial titles and added an impressive array of tracks, cars and customization to a virtual metropolis players can lose themselves in for hours.

The primary goal of Need for Speed: Carbon is to build and lead an illegal street racing crew to become the number one crew in the city of Palmont. At the game's onset, players are presented with a city map outlining the current division of crew territory.

As racing challenges throughout town are completed, your crew expands its territory until it ultimately controls the whole map. In addition to race types such as sprint, drift and circuit, players will encounter random challenges on the streets by rival crews and face intense police chases as the amount of "heat" accumulated increases.

In fact, while driving through the city's streets players must attempt to drive fairly sane or the police will be called to the area by concerned citizens.

If a cruiser happens to spot you, a chase will ensue. To avoid getting arrested, players must out-run their pursuers and hide out until the chase cools down and the police give up. During the chase, players will be able to hear police officers converse over their radios and describe your vehicle, your location and where they'll attempt to head you off.

These chases are not just limited to the free-roam mode either - players may be intercepted in the middle of a race and will have to escape.

However fun these chases may be, they are entirely optional. Players can jump to any race at any time in any part of the city instantly via the city map, meaning that they will never have to deal with random police encounters or random rival crew challenges if they choose not to.

A convenience on the surface, the ability to travel via the map inadvertently takes half the fun out of the title. Those who travel exclusively through the city map will miss out on some exciting gameplay mechanics. Alternatively, when choosing a challenge on the city map, players can activate the car's GPS to guide you to your target.

It is strongly recommended that players who pick up Need for Speed: Carbon to drive between racing challenges - even if it's only to enjoy the excellent soundtrack.

There is just as much to do in the garage in Carbon as there is on the streets. In fact, newcomers to the series might find the extensive customization options intimidating.

Players can customize nearly every aspect of their vehicles from the performance to the physical look of the exterior. In stage 2, I mentioned that players could choose paint colors and decals. In addition to that, players can actually "sculpt" the portions of the vehicle.

For instance, when adding hood vents to my Mazda RX-8, I was able to choose the depth, configuration and size of the vents. In addition to a wide variety of bumper styles, I was able to decide the exact height and width of the grill, the depth and width of the bumper itself. These customization options are available for nearly every outward component of your vehicle.

Players can easily lose hours in the garage tweaking their rides to perfection.

The best part of these customization options is that they are not just limited to aesthetics.

Players have the ability to purchase new hardware which enhances a vehicle's base attributes. These can be further tweaked to attain the premium performance for specific challenges or driving styles. For instance, players can customize one car for top speed and heavy drift, while tweaking another ride for acceleration and tight turning.

As players progress through Carbon more customization options become available. More components are unlocked as you complete races, and customization options come along with crew members you hire. In addition to the three primary racing types, your crew members can also have a secondary role as a mechanic, fabricator or fixer.

For instance, once you get a fabricator on your crew, the "autosculpt" option becomes available. Certain types also bring different bonuses to the races outside of their primary abilities as drafters, blockers or scouts. Bringing a mechanic into a race will gain you extra money for a win while a fixer will reduce your wanted level.

All this customization leads to a serious amount of strategy in Need for Speed: Carbon. In addition to building a cache of highly customized cars of all varieties for all situations, players must manage a crew and each member's unique abilities. It all adds up to a very compelling take on the racing genre and adds considerable depth without becoming a dry driving sim.

This earns the title an "Innovative Design" award, but that's not to say the title is without flaws.

The level of challenge present in Carbon is highly variable. Players will complete certain challenges with the utmost ease, and then find themselves getting smoked in the next race.

There is no real way to determine how sophisticated the competition will be at any one time, so it's sometimes difficult to decide whether a certain race is simply currently out of your league or whether you simply need to race better. Having a briefing screen outlining your opponents before accepting a race would have been helpful.

Secondly, for a title that supposedly trying to bring players into the underground world of illegal street racing gangs, there is very little in the way of actual people in Palmont City.

When in free-roam mode, players will cross paths with the occasional station wagon, but otherwise the city streets are totally deserted. Though developers may not want the game's action to skew in the direction of random carnage like one might find in Grand Theft Auto, having pedestrians and more vehicles in town would have made the streets more believable. During races, all of the other vehicles are nowhere to be found and it's much like the city shuts down everytime you have a race.

Thirdly, the interface is very clumsy.

As mentioned in prior stages, it's as if the developers couldn't decide how to implement the controls of the Wii Remote outside of gameplay. It becomes an annoyance to simply navigate menus at times. And as mentioned earlier, the free-roam mode is not a necessity.

In this way it almost seems like a tacked-on feature to jump on the "sandbox" bandwagon. In future titles, I hope the free-roam mode becomes more important to the core gameplay.

Outside of the menus, the game's control shines, offering players multiple ways to play which will appeal to different tastes.

Each of the available control schemes adds a unique take on control in a racing title that cannot be experienced with a traditional controller.

Overall, Need for Speed: Carbon is a fun ride for any racing fan. Even if one is not into the whole street-racing scene, there is plenty of well thought-out, compelling gameplay mechanics to suck in just about any player.

A slick presentation featuring nice music and visuals wrap up what is one jam-packed racing adventure. For fans of the series, this is an instant buy. For Wii racing fans looking for a good time, Need for Speed: Carbon is the most complete, fully-featured racer on the console in the launch window.