Need For Speed: Carbon

There’s a lot being said about this game on the interweb, primarily because of it’s use of the evil micro-transactions.

In this case though, they wouldn’t appear to be quite as evil, since you can achieve the same thing by playing the game (like normal) so if you’re a few weet-bix short of a breakfast, you might pay to unlock content, but you don’t have to.

Another popular topic of discussion with the console releases just days away is whether the unique controllers of the Wii will make up for the rather poor graphic performance when compared with the 360 or the PS3.

My answer is yes.

I have an Xbox 360 Controller for my PC, which I have primarily for driving games (though NBA Live 2003 was also a blast) so I downloaded the recent demo for NFS: Carbon with a degree of anticipation.

Since I haven’t really played the previous versions (I think I played one of them on my little brother’s PS2) I can’t really speak to the changes or developments of the story line, but let’s just say I enjoyed it. At least when it wasn’t crashing:

However I probably would have enjoyed any remotely similar game, because the controller just made it such a rewarding experience. So that’s where my comment about the Wii comes in. I think a great control scheme will redeem an average game more of the time than a good game will redeem a bad control scheme.

Time for some screenshots. The demo comes with three cars (one from each of the teams). The three teams are (from memory), tuners (Jap imports), muscle cars (American classics) and exotics (European speedsters). The tuner is an Evo and the exotic is a Lamborghini Galardo (sorry, can’t remember what the muscle car is).

You do have some control over car setup, but I didn’t try this as I just couldn’t be bothered.

There are three races in the demo, a street race, drift race and one-on-one chase. These were all pretty enjoyable, and it was nifty to go through them with the different cars and feel their differences.

The one-on-one was the only remotely challenging race in the demo (in my opinion) but even this was pretty easy with most cars.

On this note, I remember an episode of Top Gear where they were road testing their favorite super cars. Jeremy drove his beloved Ford GT, Richard Hammond drove his Pagani Zonda and James drove a more subtle Ferrari.

On the open road the Zonda and GT were unbeatable, but then James took them up into the mountains. This turned the tables.

This difference is joyfully clear in NFS: Carbon when driving the Lamborghini. When asked to chase what looked like a Mazda RX-Something down a mountain in a car that was almost as wide as the road, it can be a hair razing experience. Ultimately my final goal in the game was to win this challenge, with the car in manual.

This is a worthy challenge.

There are various aspects to this adversarial mode which are probably well known to NFS players. You first chase the other guy down, earning points by getting as close as you can. If you pass the guy and stay ahead for ten seconds you win, and if you crash off the road or get too far behind, you loose.

Then you switch around and you are in front, as you’re chased, your points tick away and the same rules apply in reverse, if you’re passed, it’s all over.

So, the stage is set for an exasperating exercise of pushing this huge lump of car down a mountain, manually controlling gearing, cornering slowly enough to not end up over the edge, but not so slow so that the maniac behind you gets past you.

I imagine this would be breathtakingly easy had they just given me an exotic with better handling, a Porsche maybe?

So, in summary, I had fun. But since it was less to do with the game, and more to do with the controller, I’ll probably investigate picking up an older version of NFS if I can.

Have a good one.