Need for Speed: Carbon (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, January 26, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The latest Need for Speed game from EA, subtitled Carbon, is a mixed bag of shininess, unnecessary cinematics and puzzling design decisions. The meat of the game, the actual driving simulation, is virtually identical to previous iterations of NFS games like Underground, but with a few tweaks and the Wii control scheme. I'm happy to say the Wii controls are successful, though not the resounding, innovative success I'd hope they would be.
Carbon takes the typical Need for Speed tuner car gameplay and tries to add a layer of strategic, story-driven RPG onto the old formula. Like a cross between an interactive Fast and the Furious and a territory-conquest game like the turn-based parts of the Total War series, Carbon casts the player in the role of tuner car racer, living fast and furious on the mean streets. At the beginning of the game, a series of cinematics tell the story of your avatar's past, in which he fled the racing scene with his boss's money, only to return to the city and a rather unwelcome greeting from the boss.
I must take a moment to go off on a tangent about the cinematics. The boss is played by Tahmoh Penikett, Helo of Battlestar Galactica fame, and other less notable actors fill in with satisfactory performances. However, their style of dress is giggle-inducing, their garb a cross between urban SS and a high school marching band's uniforms. Penikett's menace is completely diffused by the British redcoat ensemble some fashion designer saddled him with. However, filmed in Sin City-style green screen with soft lit, black and white with selective muted colors, the cinematics are lush despite their silliness.
Once the plotline is established, you are given a henchman with his own car, a car of your own, some money and a map of the city. Gangs vie for control of territory by winning races, and some territories are not available to the player until other races have been won. Each car can be tuned for performance and style, as well as each of your henchmen's cars. The henchman (called wingmen by the game) serve a purpose during some races, with each henchman having his own special ability such as blocker or scout. The wingman is a new addition to the gameplay not seen in previous NFS games. Unfortunately, I felt it really didn't add much to the gameplay other than often beating me at races; while it counted as a victory for the racing team, it offered reduced victory rewards.
The wingman was just one of the problems I had with the game, more specifically with the game's controls. The game offered five different control schemes, most with motion sensitivity. I played with the default, which uses the Wiimote turned sideways, tilting the controller up and down like a car's steering wheel. That worked well for the most part. There were times when I would turn the "wheel" so far to one side or the other to navigate a particularly nasty turn and the game would stop registering that the wheel was turning, auto-centering itself awkwardly. I can't say whether this was a problem with the Wiimote controls or just the way the game interpreted the movements, but it was frustrating. It didn't happen often enough to make me think it was a huge flaw, but it was something that would need to be taken into account.
The button controls are where the game's designers made some design decisions I do not agree with. When driving a car with manual shift, the Up and Down arrows on the D-pad are used for shifting, in conjunction with holding down the B-trigger button. This would work fine except that holding B and the Left D-pad was used for changing the camera. Without fail, almost anyone is going to change the camera accidentally while trying to steer. Doing so in the middle of a race is jarring and has caused me a number of wrecks. I'm not sure why the designers felt the need to make camera changes accessible in mid-race as opposed to just an option on a pause screen. It was the most annoying thing about the game's controls, hindering what would otherwise have been a flawed but enjoyable experience.
The decision to tack on a cheesy movie plot, wingmen and RTS-style territorial control to an otherwise decent racing/tuner sim was just as much of a hindrance. While I can see the thought behind such additions, in this case, they just really didn't add anything to the heart of the game, the racing. Perhaps they would have had I played the game past the initial five hours that I put into it, but I don't think so. Combined with the technical control decisions I highlighted above, they just caused me to send the rental disc back long before I would have without the problems. NFS: Carbon isn't a bad game, and one could do a lot worse. It's one of the games ported to the Wii that I feel would likely be a better game on another platform with a different controller, because of the way they used the Wii's controller. At best, the Wii version is worth a rental, but it's not likely to be a repeat rental.
Carbon takes the typical Need for Speed tuner car gameplay and tries to add a layer of strategic, story-driven RPG onto the old formula. Like a cross between an interactive Fast and the Furious and a territory-conquest game like the turn-based parts of the Total War series, Carbon casts the player in the role of tuner car racer, living fast and furious on the mean streets. At the beginning of the game, a series of cinematics tell the story of your avatar's past, in which he fled the racing scene with his boss's money, only to return to the city and a rather unwelcome greeting from the boss.
I must take a moment to go off on a tangent about the cinematics. The boss is played by Tahmoh Penikett, Helo of Battlestar Galactica fame, and other less notable actors fill in with satisfactory performances. However, their style of dress is giggle-inducing, their garb a cross between urban SS and a high school marching band's uniforms. Penikett's menace is completely diffused by the British redcoat ensemble some fashion designer saddled him with. However, filmed in Sin City-style green screen with soft lit, black and white with selective muted colors, the cinematics are lush despite their silliness.
Once the plotline is established, you are given a henchman with his own car, a car of your own, some money and a map of the city. Gangs vie for control of territory by winning races, and some territories are not available to the player until other races have been won. Each car can be tuned for performance and style, as well as each of your henchmen's cars. The henchman (called wingmen by the game) serve a purpose during some races, with each henchman having his own special ability such as blocker or scout. The wingman is a new addition to the gameplay not seen in previous NFS games. Unfortunately, I felt it really didn't add much to the gameplay other than often beating me at races; while it counted as a victory for the racing team, it offered reduced victory rewards.
The wingman was just one of the problems I had with the game, more specifically with the game's controls. The game offered five different control schemes, most with motion sensitivity. I played with the default, which uses the Wiimote turned sideways, tilting the controller up and down like a car's steering wheel. That worked well for the most part. There were times when I would turn the "wheel" so far to one side or the other to navigate a particularly nasty turn and the game would stop registering that the wheel was turning, auto-centering itself awkwardly. I can't say whether this was a problem with the Wiimote controls or just the way the game interpreted the movements, but it was frustrating. It didn't happen often enough to make me think it was a huge flaw, but it was something that would need to be taken into account.
The button controls are where the game's designers made some design decisions I do not agree with. When driving a car with manual shift, the Up and Down arrows on the D-pad are used for shifting, in conjunction with holding down the B-trigger button. This would work fine except that holding B and the Left D-pad was used for changing the camera. Without fail, almost anyone is going to change the camera accidentally while trying to steer. Doing so in the middle of a race is jarring and has caused me a number of wrecks. I'm not sure why the designers felt the need to make camera changes accessible in mid-race as opposed to just an option on a pause screen. It was the most annoying thing about the game's controls, hindering what would otherwise have been a flawed but enjoyable experience.
The decision to tack on a cheesy movie plot, wingmen and RTS-style territorial control to an otherwise decent racing/tuner sim was just as much of a hindrance. While I can see the thought behind such additions, in this case, they just really didn't add anything to the heart of the game, the racing. Perhaps they would have had I played the game past the initial five hours that I put into it, but I don't think so. Combined with the technical control decisions I highlighted above, they just caused me to send the rental disc back long before I would have without the problems. NFS: Carbon isn't a bad game, and one could do a lot worse. It's one of the games ported to the Wii that I feel would likely be a better game on another platform with a different controller, because of the way they used the Wii's controller. At best, the Wii version is worth a rental, but it's not likely to be a repeat rental.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:10 PM
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