Need for Speed: Carbon, also known as NFS Carbon or NFSC, is an Electronic Arts video game belonging to the Need for Speed series. Released in 2006, it is the tenth installment, preceded by Need for Speed: Most Wanted, succeeded by Need for Speed: ProStreet in release order and succeeded by Need for Speed: Undercover in chronological order. This was the first game to gain the PEGI Rating of 12+[citation needed] The game is a sequel to 2005's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The locations of both Most Wanted and Carbon (Rockport and Palmont, respectively) are featured in the 2010 MMO game, Need for Speed: World.
The PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance versions of the game are called Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City, set in a fictional city named Coast City with a significantly different storyline and also featuring different AI teammate abilities.[3] In 2009, a version of Own the City was also released on the Zeebo as a pre-installed game.[4]
Gameplay
The gameplay is based upon rival street racing crews. Players run a crew and can hire specific street racers to be in their crew and the active friendly racer is known as a wingman. Each hirable street racer has two skills, one which is a racing skill (scout, blocker, and drafter) and a non-race skill (fixer, mechanic, and fabricator). Each skill has different properties from finding hidden alleys/back streets (shortcuts) to reducing police attention. Cars driven by the wingmen are also different; blockers drive muscles, drafters drive exotics and scouts drive tuners (although the first two unlockable wingmen (Neville and Sal) drive cars according to the player's chosen car class at the start of the game). In career mode, players have to race tracks and win to conquer territories and face off against bosses to conquer districts.racing has become a lot developed.
Unlike Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Underground, Carbon had no drag racing. However, Carbon features the return of drift racing, a mode that had been included in two previous installments Need For Speed: Underground and Underground 2, but omitted from Carbon's predecessor, Most Wanted; and new style of event, Canyon Event, based on Japanese Touge races. There are four types of Canyon Events: Canyon Duel, Canyon Sprint, Canyon Checkpoint and Canyon Drift. A special point to note is that Lap Knockout race events are omitted, compared to previous installments. Tollbooth racing from Most Wanted was renamed to "Checkpoint" racing in Carbon.
Players can upload in-game screenshots to the Need for Speed website, complete with stats and modifications. NFS Carbon was the first NFS game to feature online exclusive game modes. The Pursuit Knockout and Pursuit Tag game modes are modes that allow the player to play as either a racer or a cop. Pursuit Knockout is essentially a lap knockout with a twist. The racers that are knocked out of the race come back as cops and it’s their job to try to stop the other racers from finishing the race through any means necessary. The player that finishes the race wins. Pursuit Tag begins with one player as a racer and the rest of the players as cops. It is the cops' job to arrest the racer. The cop that makes the arrest then turns into a racer and has to try to avoid the cops. The player who spends the most time as a racer wins.
Gameplay control methods vary from console to console. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 control steering through the control pad, while acceleration, braking and other controls can be configured and mapped to the different buttons on the controllers. The Driving Force GT and G27 racing wheels can be used, and this is the first Need For Speed title to implement force-feedback and the 900 degree turning radius. On Windows, joysticks and wheel controllers are supported, as well as those that support force feedback. The Wii lacks online play, but fully supports the use of the Wii Remote.
Features
Need for Speed: Carbon features a new car customization option called "Autosculpt", enabling players to utilize aftermarket car parts and shape/mould the parts to their liking. Players can also have multiple customized vinyls as well. Performance tuning has been redone so that players, as upgrades are purchased, can tune the car for a number of different properties, such as higher top speed or higher acceleration. Unlike Most Wanted, all of Carbon's performance tuning/enhancing and car customizing is done inside the safe house.
Boss Race is accessible only through the game's Career Mode. Most of Carbon's focus lies through various canyon races, which the game's theme is based on. Players have to race against other racers, drift through canyons, or even face off against an opponent in a one-on-one competition known as a "Canyon Duel", borrowed from Japanese Touge races. This event has two stages: In the first stage, the player chases the rival and accumulates points faster the closer they stick to the opponent. In the second stage, the roles are reversed and the player's points decline faster the closer the opponent is.
As with Most Wanted, cops are everywhere in Carbon. Police chases can break out at any time, including when in Free Roam mode, when racing, or just after a race is completed. Some races do not have a chance of a police pursuit, such as Canyon races, and Checkpoint races. As with Most Wanted, there are 5 conditions. Players have to be careful to avoid getting pursued by state or federal authorities. The Collector's Edition features three additional heat levels.[citation needed] Although the pursuit system is similar to Most Wanted, this feature has been reprogrammed in Carbon to ensure that police were not too dominant in arrest tactics in high pursuit levels. Some of the police tactics (such as the spike strips) while at the same time to make pursuits much harder to escape once a pursuit initiates.[citation needed]
Players can choose from many licensed cars divided into three classes as follows: Tuners, Muscles, and Exotics. Each car has its own characteristic ranging from easy cornering to well-balanced road performance. Players must choose a class to start career mode on which the set of unlocks will be different,before choosing their car the player can initiate a test drive option. Players can also unlock cars that are reserved for quick races as the players progress throughout the game and earn reward cards.
The Own the City version differs with little regard to car class, and has many areas from the original game altered. There are new game modes, like Escape where the player must escape from a rival crew's territory, Delivery where the players and their crew have to deliver a package to a designated area in first place to win and Crew Takedown, where players have to eliminate a set number of rival racers to win. Crew management allows hiring of up to 5 wingmen per crew, with 2 active for racing. Players can use the crews for all races except for Lap Knockout, Escape and Crew Takedown modes. The city is also divided into many areas, some together into a district owned by one crew, with a total of 6 districts and 13 areas. Every area conquered gives new unlocks and new wingmen. Wingmen also have three different classes; a brawler that takes down racers, a drafter that drafts racers to give speed boosts, and assassins that deliver spike strips the player needs to avoid that can blow a car's tires, aimed for enemy cars. The game also allows free roaming with crates scattered throughout the whole city that when broken, give special unlocks ranging from cash to game art. Police chases are only available in free roam, and are not available in races.
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_Speed:_Carbon
Minimum System Requirements
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (or equivalent) CPU running at 1.7GHz or higher
RAM: 512MB
Video Memory: 64 MB (NVIDIA Geforce4 Ti/ATI Radeon 8500 or higher)
Only supplied on DVD?: Yes
Hard Drive Space: 5.3 GB
Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 2 (32Bit Edition only), Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4.
DirectX Version: 9.0c
