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+ The game is a sequel to 2005's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The locations of both Most Wanted and Carbon (Rockport and Palmont, respectively) are featured in the 2010 MMO game, Need for Speed: World.
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. In 2009, a version of Own the City was also released on the Zeebo as a pre-installed game.
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 (although the first two unlockable wingmen (Neville
and Sal) drive cars according to the player's chosen car class at the
start of the game). In career mode, players have to race tracks and win
to conquer territories and face off against bosses to conquer
districts. Also, sometimes the minor crews (Black Hearts and Kings, who
drive exotics, Inferno and Los Colibres, who drive muscles, and Rotor 4
and Scorpios, who drive tuners), might attack the player's owned
races. The player can then either accept the challenge, and keep the
race if they win it, or decline, in which case, the minor crew will
automatically take over the race.
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 Sprint,
Canyon Checkpoint and Canyon Drift. A special point to note is that Lap
Knockout race events are omitted, compared to previous installments.
Tollbooth racing from Most Wanted was renamed to "Checkpoint" racing in Carbon.
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.
