Mind the cliff!
All of the racing modes lead to the main goal of winning a territory from another crew and once a territory has been conquered you’ll take part in the main boss battle. The boss is far harder to race than any of his crew members and requires the utmost concentration to beat. Firstly you’ll take part in a normal circuit race and once you’ve beaten him he’ll challenge you to a canyon duel which takes part on the winding rounds where a sheer cliff face looms to your side. The duel involves two stages, firstly you’ll need to chase the boss and stick as close as possible to his rear end or overtake him to gain points. Then it’s his turn as you speed off and he chases you around the steep track. The person with the most points wins, but the race can be over extremely quickly because if he manages to speed off into the distance because you’ve crashed or just can’t keep up with him, his points will build and once he’s overtaken your score; it’s game over.
Click for larger imageThe AI of the boss does seem slightly unbalanced at the moment. In the circuit race he’s pretty easy to beat, but as soon as you hit the canyon duel, it appears as though he’s supped up his car and it’s much harder to keep up with him. Overall the canyon duels are tense, exciting affairs which have the added anxiety of an unforgiving cliff face that quite often ends up being your nemesis. The only really frustrating aspect to the canyon duels is that if you win the first canyon duel race and then lose the second one you’ll have to start right back at the beginning. I suppose it makes sense, because you lost overall, but I had strong feeling of injustice every time I lost only a couple of seconds from the end of the track.
In Need for Speed Carbon, the police chases are back and as you travel around the streets in free-mode or if you race in one area too many times they’ll be right on your tail. They’ll alert other patrol cars to your position and you’ll soon spot them on the map coming from all directions in order to stop you in your tracks. The police cruisers can be ruthless and will set up roadblocks in order to slow you down, but they can be disposed off rather too easily. Currently you only need bash into them four or five times to take them off the road and despite having around a dozen cars chasing me it was pretty simple to outmanoeuvre them or just smash them out of the way.
Click for larger imageThe story of Need for Speed Carbon is told through a mixture of CGI effects and live action. Unfortunately I was in a room with quite a few other people who were making so much noise that I have no idea whether the story is good or bad, but they did seem to be superbly orchestrated and give the game a cinematic gritty edge. The sparkling streets are well designed and driving down some of the winding roads with a view over the city at night is pretty outstanding,
Need for Speed Carbon is shaping up nicely. The overall look of the game, together with the CGI effects and furious race action should be enough to keep the new wave of Need for Speed fans happy. At the moment the AI needs a bit of tweaking here and there as the game feels far too easy. The difficulty of the canyon duels and street wars races is just about right and personally I’m happy that the cars handle so easily. Customising your vehicle is a lot of fun and easy to get into even if you know nothing about cars and the live action sequences help to give this street racing the gritty edge it needs.
Need for Speed Carbon hits our shelves on November 3rd.
