[PS3] Need for Speed: Carbon ROM Download

Need for Speed: Carbon ROM Description

Story

The game takes place immediately after Need for Speed Most Wanted with your escape from Rockport and going back to the city you left before you made a name for yourself on the blacklist, Palmont City. Cross from the last game catches up with you and totals your car. Man you know I would really like to spend more time with the M3 GTR before taking it away from me all the time.

The game continues its cut scenes with the live action green screen. They even add looks of the racers in their cars from time to time in other scenes. They look a bit weird but you know I’ll take it.

The game takes place at night this time in exchange for the daytime city that was Rockport in Most Wanted. I really do like the change in tone of Most Wanted with the daytime feel for it, but I do feel right at home with racing at night.

The city landscape is very colorful with a lot of neon sticking out and giving it character. The road map actually feels very similar to Olympic City from the first Underground, which is always great because I love those tracks from Underground.

Race Types

Speaking of tracks they added downhill racing which is referred to as the canyons. They are very windy and curvy so there’s a few different kinds of races they add with those canyons. First is bringing back drifting which was absent in Most Wanted but it was to exchange out drag racing for in Carbon, which thank god because I always hated drag racing in Need for Speed up until we get to ProStreet and drifting is just so much more fun.

And in Carbon, it is very arcadey and the drift can make you feel like you’re being put into a drift but I don’t care it is very fun and that’s what I’m here to do is just have fun. Canyons also have regular sprint races and a new thing called dueling which makes you race your opponent downhill.

However, there is a twist – the opponent will start first in front of you and you must stay as close to him as possible to rack up as many points during the race. The next round will have them following you and the points that you earned from the previous round will deplete depending on how close they are to you. If your points end up being completely depleted before you cross the finish line, then you will lose the challenge.

I really like this mode because it’s just new and different. They took out lap knockouts again which I just find funny at this point because they just keep removing it for some reason every other entry. Can’t have a racing game without the normal sprint and circuit races. They have checkpoint races which is just time trials that are the same thing as toll booths for Most Wanted.

The variety of races in this game is pretty good. The biggest thing I took away from playing this game is that I beat it so fast it is without a doubt the shortest Need for Speed I’ve ever played, which isn’t a bad thing essentially because the story was there the entire time which I kept wanting from Need for Speed every time they wanted to tell a compelling story.

You had constant cutscenes every other few batches of races and they were good, it kept me engaged to keep playing which is what I want so the essence of the story is that you must take back the territory that has been overrun by other crews.

Crewmates

As soon as you start taking up all their territory they will then challenge you to a race, one in the city and then the canyon where they will duel you. Once you beat them you claim their territory and their crewmate, which leads to the newest feature of Carbon – you can have crewmates with you in your races. There are three types of crewmates: drafters, scouts and blockers.

Drafters will allow you to drive behind them so you can gain a lot of speed and rocket pass them to gain the lead in the race. Scouts will be looking for shortcuts in the race to help you cut some corners so you can win. Scouts are pretty damn useless in my mind because I can find these shortcuts on my own honestly.

Blockers once activated can race dirty and hit other opponents to throw them off the track. I don’t like racing dirty but seeing how it’s in the game, I find them to be the most useful. The most interesting thing that I found is that if your crewmates end up finishing the race before you, you can still win the race technically. I find that pretty cool, and it saves you from having to restart the race all the time.

Customization and Progression

The biggest thing I dislike about this game however is when you’re winning a race, you can earn rewards like new performance parts, paints, or vinyls for your ride. Now, this is cool, but you can only earn them once. So whenever you get a new ride you have to try and find a way to earn those parts again. I wish that you could just unlock the parts for your ride once and have them available to you whenever you get a new ride. I hate that it makes you earn them again.

The car selection is more or less the same as Most Wanted except for the inclusion of muscle cars which adds a new dynamic to the racing, which is awesome. The customization is a lot more intuitive and adds more to what was missing in Most Wanted. You can do a lot more to your car that makes sense compared to what was going on in Underground 2 which I found a lot to be useless in that game.

You can also do all this in your warehouse by the way. The only thing that you can actually have to drive to in the game to a different location is the car lot which makes sense. You can actually fast travel to every event without having to drive everywhere now just like Most Wanted, except in Most Wanted they made you drive to the car lot and performance shop. And Carbon you can jump around anywhere and I don’t mind that to be honest.

Police Chases

Another feature that comes back from Most Wanted is the cop chases. Now the cop chases are still very fun however they take a huge back seat in this game. Despite the cops that you come across in the middle of races, if you are careful enough you don’t actually have to come across them or make contact with them at any point of the game besides you know, in the middle of a race.

The cops were the biggest appeal to Most Wanted, and they just took a huge back seat in Carbon. They also don’t make it mandatory to complete the story mode. I wish they could have done a little bit more with the cops, but honestly, it’s not that big of a deal for me. I still love having the cop chases and they are there if you want to get into that.