CARBON..,

Developer(s)
EA Black Box, EA UK
Publisher(s)
Electronic Arts
Series
Need for Speed
Engine
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Version
1.4 (2007-06-08)[1]
Platform(s)
Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Mobile phone, Zeebo[2]
Release date(s)
October 31, 2006[show]
PSP, DS, GBA, & GCNA October 31, 2006EU November 3, 2006AUS November 9, 2006PC, PS2, & Xbox 360NA October 31, 2006EU November 3, 2006AUS November 16, 2006XboxNA October 31, 2006AUS November 9, 2006EU November 10, 2006PS3NA November 16, 2006AUS March 22, 2007EU March 23, 2007WiiNA November 19, 2006EU December 8, 2006AUS December 14, 2006MacintoshNA August 17, 2007
Genre(s)
Racing
Mode(s)
Single-player, Multiplayer
Rating(s)
BBFC: PGESRB: E10+OFLC: GPEGI: 12+
Media
CD-ROM, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, Wii Optical Disc, GameCube Game Disc
System requirements
Microsoft Windows
Windows XP or better
1.7GHz CPU
512MB RAM
5.3GB hard disk drive space
DirectX 9.0c compatible 64MB video card with one of these chipsets: Radeon 8500; GeForce 4 Ti
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
8x DVD drive (DVD edition) / CD drive (CD edition)
Mac
Mac OS X 10.4.9
1.83 GHz CPU Intel Core Duo
512 MB RAM
6 GB hard disk space
Radeon X1600; GeForce 7300 GT
DVD-ROM drive
Input methods
PC: Keyboard, Mouse, or USB Steering Wheel/Gamepad, or Wii Remote & Nunchuc

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+[citation needed] The game is a sequel to Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
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[3]. In 2009, a version of Own the City was also released on the Zeebo as pre-installed game,[4] though it was marketed as the original Need for Speed: Carbon, creating some confusion as to which version was in fact released.[citation needed]

Plot
The player drives on a route to Palmont City, when a flashback of what seems to be a race against Kenji, Angie, or Wolf comes to the player's mind. A police incident at the end of the race forces the player to make a hasty escape from Palmont. In present day, former Police Sergeant, now turned bounty hunter, Cross (Played by Dean McKenzie) in his Chevrolet Corvette Z06 chases the player down the canyon [5] leading to his BMW M3 GTR being wrecked. Shortly before Cross can arrest the player, Darius and his crew arrive. Darius pays off Cross, and the player meets up with Nikki (Played by Emmanuelle Vaugier), an ex-girlfriend, on bad terms.[6]
Darius tells the player with the help of Nikki to clean up his image by beating the rival racing crews to gain territory and to reclaim his reputation as a respected street racer in Palmont. Winning races one by one, the player acquires territories and ultimately districts from Kenji (Downtown), Angie (Kempton), and Wolf (Fortuna). After beating each racer, the player meets up with a former member of that racer's crew, who want to join the player's crew and reveal their observations regarding the night the player took off from Palmont.[7]
Owning all three districts, Darius asks the player to meet up with him. He reveals he was just using the player all along to get more territory and had setup an ambush with Cross to have him arrested. When Darius leaves, the player, on the brink of being arrested by Cross, is saved by Nikki who tells him that she now realizes everything that happened months ago after piecing together her view of the night and the viewpoints of the other racers.[8] Realizing that Darius was ultimately liable for the player's fall that fateful night, Nikki sides with the player and leaves Darius. Meanwhile, Darius hires the 3 previous bosses (Kenji, Angie, and Wolf) into his new crew, Stacked Deck. The Player then attempts to conquer Silverton, and oust Darius and his Stacked Deck crew, to clean up the player's reputation once and for all.[9]
Winning races against Stacked Deck, the player gets his chance to beat Darius for control of Palmont. At the end of the game, Darius surrenders his Audi Le Mans Quattro to the Player and says "enjoy it while it lasts, there's always someone out there who's a little faster than you are, and sooner or later they're gonna catch up..." before departing out of Palmont

Setting
The game is set in the fictitious city of Palmont. There are three major canyons: East, West, and Carbon Canyons. A major coastal metropolis area covers the southwestern part of the city. There are also some major rivers and a lake near Carbon Canyon. The city is divided into four distinct boroughs at the beginning of the game, Kempton (South Side), Downtown, Fortuna (West Side/Suburban Palmont), and Silverton (Resort/Casino Area, North Side). One for each of the major crews. However, when you complete the career mode, Palmont is no longer divided, because all of the city is the player's territory. There is a highway system that goes down the middle of the city around all of Palmont. The city is featured in the massively multiplayer online racing game Need for Speed: World, along with Rockport of Most Wanted.

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. In career mode, players have to race tracks and win to conquer territories and face off against bosses to conquer districts.
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 Race, Canyon Checkpoint and Canyon Drift. A special point to note is that Lap Knockout race events are omitted, compared to previous installments.
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.

Controls
Control of the actual game play varies on among the different consoles. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 control steering through the use of their joysticks, while acceleration and braking as well as other controls can be configured and mapped to the different buttons on the controllers. PlayStation 3, the Driving Force GT and G27 racing wheels can be used, as this is the first Need For Speed 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 game play, but fully supports the use of the Wii Remote.

Need for Speed: Carbon features a new car customization option called "Autosculpt", enabling players to utilize aftermarket car parts and shape/mould the parts to their liking. Players can also have multiple customed vinyls as well. Performance tuning has been redone so that players, as upgrades are purchased, can tune the car for a number of different properties, such as higher top speed or higher acceleration. Unlike Most Wanted, all of Carbon's performance tuning/enhancing and car customizing is done inside the safe house.
Boss Race is accessible only through the game's Career Mode. Most of Carbon's focus lies through various canyon races, which the game's theme is based on. Players have to race against other racers, drift through canyons, or even face off against an opponent in a one-on-one competition known as a "Canyon Duel", borrowed from Japanese Touge races. This event has two stages: In the first stage, you chase the rival and accumulate points faster the closer you stick to your opponent. In the second stage, your rival will chase you and your points decline faster the closer they are to your rear-end.
As with Most Wanted, cops are everywhere in Carbon. Police chases can break out at any time, including when in Free Roam mode, when racing, or just after a race is completed. Some races do not have a chance of a police pursuit, such as Canyon races, and Checkpoint races. As with Most Wanted, there are 5 conditions. Players have to be careful to avoid getting pursued by state or federal authorities. The Collector's Edition features three additional heat levels.[citation needed] Although the pursuit system is similar to Most Wanted, this feature has been reprogrammed in Carbon to ensure that police were not too dominant in arrest tactics in high pursuit levels. Some of the police tactics (such as the spike strips) while at the same time to make pursuits much harder to escape once a pursuit initiates.[citation needed]
Players can choose from many licensed cars divided into three classes as follows: Tuners, Muscles , and Exotics . Each car has its own characteristic ranging from easy cornering to well-balanced road performance. Players must choose a class to start career mode on which the set of unlocks will be different. Players can also unlock cars that are reserved for quick races as the players progress throughout the game and earn reward cards.

Soundtrack
By default, hip hop/grime songs are played when the player is driving an exotic car, electronic songs are played when the player is driving a tuner car, and rock music is played when the player is driving a muscle car, though, this setting can be turned off. These songs were released by EA in very limited quantities on a special edition disc.
The songs played within the safe house and other game menus, as well as a small number of races were composed by Ekstrak, and was released widely by EA, and is available from online retailers such as iTunes, as well as hard copies.
Other music, most played in major races, such as Race Wars and Canyon Battles have been widely released akin to the Ekstrak release. This actual soundtrack consists of music composed by Trevor Morris, who has gone on to work with Steve Jablonsky for the 2007 EA RTS game, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.