Need For Speed Carbon

Wii, Need For Speed Carbon (2006) game

High expectations were set for the fourth version of 'Need For Speed' that I played from the GameCube era (fifth released), by the greatness of 'Most Wanted' with its huge city, racing in full day, and intense police pursuits, a marked jump forward from 'Underground 2,' which was again an improvement on the original 'Underground' for first introducing the ability to cruise the streets of a city: the first game was difficult to see with its shiny road surfaces peppered with neon lights, all races taking place at night, with a lot less integration through the interface where you chose each race from a menu. '2' added dawn and sunset races which improved visibility, and gave you your first city to explore. 'Most Wanted' took everything a stage further, with supremely intense battles against the police forces, so what could 'Carbon' add to the mix? In most ways this edition was a backwards step: back to the complete night racing (albeit without the rain-soaked mirror-surfaced streets that so hindered visibility), no reward for having files from previous 'NFS' games on your memory card, and what appeared to be both a smaller city and a smaller game. I so much preferred racing in daylight as night racing really strains the eyes, and the city itself seemed less integrated an experience - though the cop car chases were still part of it, they were much less involved, with less incentive for taking on a steadily increasing opposition. For the most part they were irritations you had to avoid or defeat as quickly as possible.

That's one reason why the game may have been so short: that I wasn't getting as deeply into it as I did with 'Most Wanted.' But after playing that for months last year and really enjoying it, it's harder to accept going back to slower cars, bottom of the rung stuff once again. That's the nature of a game like this, but I couldn't help feeling that it should have followed directly on from 'MW' - I even became a little confused about whether the story was connected because in this it's said you left the city and have just come back, and in the previous game it ends with you leaving a city. They're different cities, but it wasn't immediately apparent that this was a self-contained narrative. It's not all bad things I have to say, because the story added a little something, which the previous narrative was lacking somehow. The visual style of photorealistic action with an almost comic book smoothing of reality gave it some appeal (although it would have been a method used to compress the data on the disc), as did casting real life actors I actually knew (Helo from 'Battlestar Galactica' and Emmanuelle Vaugier from 'Smallville,' as well as noticing Judi Durand's voice in the credits, she of 'DS9' computer voice fame)! Unfortunately, it did end a bit weakly and the story didn't justify the talent on show.

I was pleased to see the 'Drift' courses back, having been abandoned in 'MW,' presumably for AI issues with the police maybe having difficulty with such things, and both variations are there: stadium and downhill. I was also happy to see the back of the 'Drag' races. The big new race type this time is the 'Canyon Duel,' a fairly tough two-part challenge that sees you following as closely as possible behind an opponent on a treacherous mountain course in order to rack up as many point as possible, awarded for the closeness you achieve, as well as how long you stay close for. Then in the second part you replay the same stretch, only this time the opponent follows you and you have to reach the end without your points tally being eaten away to zero by his proximity. It made for some tough races, and my only annoyance was that if you made one mistake in the second half, or crashed through a barrier you couldn't restart from the second race, you had to go right back to the first again. Irritation like this was dotted here and there in the game, not to the detriment of enjoyment, but certainly noticeable in a series that, by now, you'd think would have been utterly smoothed out of all wrinkles. There were some really poor design choices like having 'A' be Accept, as in leave a race when you've failed, and 'X' be to retry it, because you automatically think of 'A' to get back into it, so if you're in a multi-race setup and you win one, then fail and want to retry, you accidentally press 'A' and leave.

This wouldn't be such a hardship if it was just the annoyance of having to redo a race or two, but then your territory might get attacked, prompting you into having to accept the challenge to race it again, or lose it, then in that race perhaps the police come after you, so you end up massively getting away from what you wanted to do, which was simply to retry a race! All this from one mistaken button press. The territory thing is a good example of the flaws in the game: it's good to see your chosen symbol flying over a section on the map, like in 'Dune II,' where after each mission the balance of power shifts and changes, represented by altering the colour of the regions. However, you're too often tasked by rivals for supremacy of areas you've already beaten, the game cynically extended by this replaying. This was another reason the game seemed much shorter than before. There are a number of Challenges to do, as in 'MW,' but again, they seemed a lot fewer than before. There are 'Reward Cards' to collect for achieving various minor or major landmarks, and that's another way of extending the lifespan, though after the exhaustiveness of 'MW' I didn't have the desire to check off every little thing this time.

The biggest addition is having a crew of people you can hire, one of which you choose to be a wingman, which does add a new tactical element to some races, but could also be said to make things too easy sometimes. It's good that they continued to try and innovate with the series instead of banging out another version with a different city layout and nothing else, but maybe more depth was in order in areas such as this where you don't really have to think about paying your crew or the day to day things like that, just pay to hire them once and that's it. If you want depth, then there's a wealth of features to customise your cars, as always, but I never bothered with that, not being interested in the finer details of modding, other than performance where it pays to equip the best and most powerful parts for your ride. In that respect I'm not the ideal target audience as I don't really care what the car is or what it looks like, as long as it's as fast as possible! It always takes time getting used to new additions, especially in a racing genre where everything is largely the same: it's about racing. But once I got the hang of what a wingman could do, it gave me a feeling of not being alone out there, the comments they shout out over the radio, usually encouraging, if sometimes mistaken, as computers often do (for example, you crash and your mate expresses how much he's impressed with your driving!).

I had hoped that as the game progressed I'd be able to play at least sometimes in light, but no, it was always pitch black. I also found issue with the control setup. Although you have plenty of choices to choose from (my favourite was option 4), the one I required had the 'Z' button replace you back on the track after a crash, whereas in the previous game (I think, certainly in 'Burnout 2' which I've played the most), it was for looking behind, so my right index finger was very itchy to press it, the rearview mirror terrible in order to see what's coming up behind. Due to the darkness I found myself reading the map as much as I was looking ahead, which reduces the experience to looking at a corner of the screen and flipping the stick left or right, or braking. When taking everything into account I'd have to mark this down as the worst in the series that I've played, not that it's badly done, but it seemed like a half-lazy update that hadn't had the love and attention of 'MW' lavished upon it. Maybe coming so late in the console's run, that is true, but they'd pushed things so far with 'MW' that you can't help but wonder how they would top it, and they were unable to do so, in spite of a little innovative thinking. The storyline just petering out, the shortness of the overall game, and the insistence on perpetual night racing all registered as backward steps, but in its defence it's still as fun to race within as the other games and it does have the opportunity of playing the main game again in a different car class, so it might be one to revisit again someday. That is if I haven't gone all out on the inevitable continuation of the series on Wii!

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