Need for Speed: Carbon Review

EA was relentless in trying to force me to play in multiplayer (this game keeps sending information to the EA master server, even though it never asked for my permission), so I guess jumping online for a couple of matches with your buddies does sound like a fun pastime. (Un)fortunately for EA, the new Fight Night is taking up all my free multiplayer time (in between WoW raids that is).

They do accelerate like space ships a bit.

Aircraft carrier... or not?

In regards to the graphics and sound, Need for Speed: Carbon continues a somewhat questionable tradition of looking too damn dark and monotonous after a while. The nighttime urban settings are cool at first, but get boring really fast. I understand that all the hip kids like to street race at night (once they've done their homework and brushed their teeth), but while the dynamic car reflections look insanely good, the surroundings (although detailed) get very old, very fast.

The sound effects are top-notch, but the soundtrack was a little underwhelming (and surprising in a way). The designers have gone for more subdued and almost cinematic tracks, which are atypical for the series. I'm not sure that's helping my adrenaline levels any. It's less intrusive, but it's also not Need for Speed, if you know what I mean.

Lastly, performance-wise, this game was quite harsh on my hardware at max visual settings. My home Core Duo set up (with a 7900 GTX) had no problems with it, but I suspect mid range rigs won't fare as well (my slightly less powerful office rig would drop to around 20 FPS at times).

EA tries to do a lot with NFS: Carbon, but that still doesn't help me shake the feeling that the accelerated pace of NFS releases is in many ways pointless and counter-productive. It dilutes the overall impression of the franchise, rather than make it more appealing to the fans. Now if I had a penny for every time I said this exact same thing about an EA franchise, I'd probably have a lot of pennies by now.