Need For Speed: Carbon

So that was easy.  In my last post, I mentioned about the shocking price differences between UK supermarkets on this game (between £17 & £40!). 

Anywho, the game turned up, and I had great pleasure in playing it for all of 3 days before completing the actual story-line.  I was a bit unimpressed with the fact that I could complete the main storyline within 3 days, and only being caught by the cops once and having to purchase 3 cars for the whole game.

But yeah, it was a good game. Pretty similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but not nearly as much fun!  The drifting part of the game was really fun!  But the other parts of the game, like speed trap & circuit were near identical to NFS:MW which made me feel like instead of releasing a whole new game, EA could of just released a new map-pack!

The graphics were good though, and the choice of motors wasn't bad.   Handling was alright, and obviously different with each car.  The only gripe i had with the handling was when you put the brakes on, the car seemed to jolt, and the frame rate seemed to shake.  I'm not sure if this was intentional, or just my xbox screwing up but this really put me off.  It wasn't smooth!  Speaking of handling though, I thought it'd be easier to drift during normal races.  And as hard as i tried, i really couldn't get it down.  I managed to get the Drift King acheivement though so that's all good :)

The other part of the game is the challenges, which im currenlty working through now.  Well, i say working through, i've done them all except one or two, and they were pretty easy too!

There is one gripe I have with this game though, and that's your crew.  As you progress through the game, you get to recruit other racers into your crew to help you progress, but they really are more of a hinderance than anything!  And what's even more annoying is that they tend to get in your way, or cross the finish line for you!  Now i can't remember where i read it (probably metacritic) but to me, the computer shouldn't win the game for you.  A game doesn't seem fun when the computer is winning for you!  You might as well watch a demo!

It also has a photo mode built in, but this is definatly not a patch on PGR3 which has a fantastic photo mode and EA should of looked to PGR3 for proper implementation of photo mode!

It's not a bad game, but it's not a fantastic game either.  I much enjoyed NFS:MW faar more than this!  I'd still be playing that if my disc wasn't cracked :(

Overall though, this gets a 7/10 from me!  It's good. It has it's great bits, but it also has some poor bits.  The game is generally quite easy but you do have the odd difficult race which adds a bit of a challenge to the game!