Video Game Vintage Title: Need For Speed: Carbon

Need For Speed: Carbon

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+ The game is a sequel to 2005's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The locations of both Most Wanted and Carbon 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. In 2009, a version of Own the City was also released on the Zeebo as a pre-installed game.

Need For Speed: Carbon 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 (Played by Chris Gauthier)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. Also, sometimes the minor crews (Black Hearts and Kings, who drive exotics, Inferno and Los Colibres, who drive muscles, and Rotor 4 and Scorpios, who drive tuners), might attack the player's owned races. The player can then either accept the challenge, and keep the race if they win it, or decline, in which case, the minor crew will automatically take over the race.

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.

SettingThe game is set in the fictitious city of Palmont. There are three major canyons in Palmont: East, West, and Carbon Canyon. The southwestern border of the city features a sea coast. The city also includes several rivers and a lake near Carbon Canyon. It resembles very much to its predecessor Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Palmont is divided into four boroughs at the beginning of the game: Kempton (southeast industrial area), Downtown (east metropolitan area), Fortuna (west residential area) and Silverton (north casino & resort area) ; one for each of the major crews. A highway system extending through the middle of the city is the main connection between the boroughs. All boroughs except Silverton are initially accessible to the player; access to Silverton is unlocked only after beating the crews in the other three boroughs. There is an additional area named San Juan, but similar to the canyons, it's not connected to the boroughs of Palmont. The game is set inside the fictional city of Palmont which exists alongside of Rockport, which was used in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Bayview, which was used in Need for Speed: Underground 2, and Olympic City, which was used in Need for Speed Underground. Palmont is also featured in the massively multiplayer online racing game Need for Speed: World, along with Rockport of Need for Speed: Most Wanted.