Drifting and the wheelman
The wheelman is a great idea in theory. A wheelman is essentially a member of your crew who’ll assist you in the race and can also help with the ‘pimping’ of your car if they have the required skills. Each wheelman has a different skill; the ones that I used helped block other cars or tried to stay in front of my car so I could use their slipstream for more speed. The wheelman was a great help when it came to blocking cars and by pressing the ‘y’ button he would drive towards the selected car and bash it out of the way to clear a path, but when using the wheelman’s slipstream more often than not he just got in my way and I’d end up crashing into the back of him when I would have had a clear run. The wheelman’s function can be turned on or off during a race so if you don’t need the help you don’t have to use it. I’d hope that EA tweak around with the wheelman’s AI settings, because although it’s a nice idea, it doesn’t work as well as it could.
Click for larger imageSo, it’s not a brilliant start. Despite plenty of promise early on in the preview when I said Need for Speed Carbon is ‘the pluckiest racer of the series so far’ there doesn’t seem too much to get excited about. The fact is that I’ve concentrated on two or three negative aspects of the game that I feel need improving, but the positives in the game do make up for these flaws.
Click for larger imageOne of my favourite race modes was street wars, a furious street race at blistering high-speeds between all of the local crews. You start at the back of the pack and have to make your way through the opposition constantly jostling for position in order to reach pole position. The difficulty level goes up a notch and because of the slow start you’ll have to put all of your driving skills into practice in order to win the race. It’s an exciting, challenging race mode with tons of vehicles to get past and gives you a real feel for what it must be like to be a real street racer (don’t try this at home kids!).
Drift racing is also a great deal of fun, and although you’ll be playing on a track that is totally free of vehicles, there’s a fine line between smoothly caressing a corner at high speeds and heading straight into the barriers. Points are gained by the length of your drift coupled with the speed of your car, but there are also multipliers and bonuses to be grabbed if you have the skill. You’ll need to keep the thumb stick totally steady as you move around each corner and it took me a number of attempts in order to beat the high score and unlock the goodies. Drift racing is challenging, especially when it comes to some of the trickier tracks, and a fun way to unlock items and earn cash.