The 2006 sequel to Most Wanted swapped lone rivals for street crews, added Canyon duels and turned a former police sergeant into a bounty hunter.
Need for Speed: Carbon, the 2006 tenth entry in the series, moves the racing to a fictional city called Palmont. Its crews, wingmen, territory battles and Canyon duels set it apart from the lone rivals of Most Wanted. Released on consoles, PCs and Macintosh, its US sales reached 3.2 million.
Need for Speed: Carbon is the tenth entry in the franchise, a 2006 racing game that picks up after Most Wanted. It moves the action to Palmont, where players build a crew and take territories from rival street racing gangs. Its new Canyon events, inspired by Japanese Touge racing, gave the series a fresh direction.
The game arrived on October 31, 2006 for several consoles and PCs, and PlayStation 3 and Wii launch versions followed in November. An arcade version came out in 2008, and the game was also released for Macintosh.
What is Need for Speed: Carbon about?
Carbon is a street racing game in which the player takes control of Palmont from rival crews. Players race in illegal events, recruit wingmen and face police whose pursuit tactics escalate with heat. The story follows a racer who was set up over a stolen prize and later confronts the crew leader who betrayed him.
The story picks up after the events of Most Wanted. A prologue set several years earlier shows the player in a major race around Palmont, where an ambush by police ends the event and a prize bag turns out to hold paper instead of cash. That betrayal drives the rest of the plot.
Crews replaced lone rivals, and a betrayal over a stolen prize drove the whole story of Palmont.
Where is Palmont and how is it laid out?
Palmont is a fictional city split into four boroughs that are joined by highways. Kempton holds the industrial complexes, Downtown the financial buildings, Fortuna the homes and Silverton the casinos and resorts. Three canyons, East, West and Carbon, lie around the city, but they are not connected to it.
San Juan is a separate invented town modelled on Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it has no road connection to Palmont. In Career mode it works as a tutorial before the player reaches the main city. Silverton stays closed until the player has made progress, and the canyon routes open only during events.
How did crews and wingmen work?
Carbon replaced individual rivals with street racing crews. The player builds a crew of their own and recruits AI wingmen, each with a role of Blocker, Drafter or Scout and a specialty of Fixer, Mechanic or Fabricator. Wingmen help by finding shortcuts or lowering police heat, and each has a gauge that must recharge between uses, apart from Scouts.
Career mode asks the player to pick a class at the start. That choice is permanent for the playthrough, and it decides which of the three starting districts the player begins in and which events open first. The first two wingmen unlocked match the player's class in their cars, while Scouts use their role for an entire race to find shortcuts.
How did territory control and career progress work?
To win Career mode, the player contests territories held by the main crew or minor crews in each district. Once the player wins most races in a territory, it changes hands and new races open elsewhere. Taking every territory opens a duel with the main crew's boss.
Won races can be run again, but the prize money drops each time. Territories can also be lost. Minor crews take them back by beating the player in takeover challenges, or the player can forfeit the right to defend them. The rewards from the boss duel follow the same pattern as the rival rewards in Most Wanted.
What were Canyon events and duels?
Canyon events take place on canyon roads outside Palmont and are styled after Japanese Touge racing. They include sprints, drifting and duels. Drift and duel events use breakable guardrails, and crashing through one can cost the player the event.
Duels run across two stages. In the first, the player chases and scores points by staying close behind the opponent. In the second, the opponent chases, and the player should stay as far back as possible to cut the points lost. At the end, the car that took the lead wins if its score is positive, and the opponent wins if the score has gone negative.
Duels can also end early. In Career mode, staying ahead for ten seconds wins outright, while falling behind for too long loses. In online play, a racer wins if the opponent crashes through a guardrail.
How did the police system change?
Police can appear at any point during a race in Carbon, though Canyon and checkpoint races are exempt. In Free Roam they only act when the player has a warrant for evading an earlier pursuit or has committed an offence in sight. Carbon made police less dominant in arrests at high heat and reduced the chance that a Pursuit Breaker would block or destroy a pursuing car.
Pursuits can be escaped by evading, ramming cars or triggering Pursuit Breakers, which are destructible props. Long chases raise heat and bring spike strips, roadblocks and state or federal authorities. Critics later noted that the game put less weight on police chases than Most Wanted did.
Cars, tiers and customisation
Cars are split into three tiers and three classes: Exotic, Tuner and Muscle. A Nissan 240SX is ranked tier 1 among tuners, and a Corvette Z06 sits at tier 3 for muscle cars. Each class trades strengths. Tuners corner best but are slowest, Muscle cars accelerate hardest but handle poorly, and Exotics reach the highest top speed while handling better than Muscle cars.
Cars take visual damage only, and no physical damage is modelled. Upgrades improve speed or braking through new components and fine-tuning. Autosculpt parts adjust components, and vinyls and decals can be layered, resized and placed anywhere on the car.
Additional cars and parts come from Reward Cards. Each card is a set of challenges spread across the game modes, and it rewards either a new vehicle or new customisation parts.
How did Quick Race, Challenge Series and online play work?
Quick Race lets players build custom events with any unlocked circuit and car, in single-player or multiplayer splitscreen or online. Challenge Series contains 12 categories, each with three difficulty levels, and players must progress from Easy to Hard within each. Online Multiplayer offers circuit, sprint, canyon duels and two exclusive modes, Pursuit Knockout and Pursuit Tag.
Pursuit Knockout runs circuit laps, and whoever finishes last is knocked out and returns as a cop to hinder the remaining racers. In Pursuit Tag, one player races while the others act as cops, and an arrest swaps their roles. The winner is whoever spends the most time as the racer.
Who are the main characters in the story?
The main characters are Darius, leader of the Stacked Deck crew, and Nikki, who was once his girlfriend and later becomes the player's ally. Jonathan Cross, a former police sergeant from Most Wanted, has turned bounty hunter and wants revenge on the player. Neville and Sal join the player's side with a safehouse, while Kenji, Angie and Wolf lead rival crews.
A long chase through the canyons totals the player's BMW M3 GTR, and Cross tries to arrest them over a bounty of 150-thousand dollars. Darius pays Cross off and offers to help, and the player spends the middle of the game taking territory across three boroughs.
After securing those boroughs, Darius calls a meeting and reveals that he wanted to use the player to take the city, then betrays the player to Cross. Nikki later explains that Darius had tipped off the police, swapped out the prize money and left the player to take the blame. The player wins by defeating Darius and claims his Audi Le Mans quattro through a pink slip race.
How was Carbon developed and released?
Carbon was first shown at Nintendo's E3 2006 conference and made the cover of Game Informer's July issue. Its development brought back cars from Underground 2 and Most Wanted and added new ones, and it opened at the top of the UK All Format Gaming Chart in its first week.
Carbon also brought facial motion capture to the Windows and seventh-generation versions, so the cast, including Neville, Darius, Wolf, Angie and Kenji, could react during real-time cutscenes. The sixth-generation and Wii versions dropped this because of platform limits.
The Collector's Edition for PlayStation 2, Windows and Xbox 360 offered six new races, three challenge events, ten vinyls, a bonus DVD about making the game, and four exclusive cars along with ten pre-tuned ones. The downloadable version included the Ultimate Performance Kit, a 2006 Pagani Zonda F and a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T.
The arcade version, developed by Global VR, carried the same name and was released by EA Arcades in 2008.
Which platforms and editions were released?
The main release covered consoles, PCs and Macintosh, with separate launches on PlayStation 3 and Wii. Portable versions and a download edition followed, and the table sets out the main variants and what distinguished each one.
| Version | Platforms | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main game | PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Windows, Mac OS X | October 31, 2006 | Mac version needs an Intel Core Duo processor at minimum |
| PlayStation 3 | PlayStation 3 | November 17, 2006 | Launch title |
| Wii | Wii | November 19, 2006 | Launch title; no facial motion capture |
| Collector's Edition | PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox 360 | Not dated here | Four exclusive cars, ten pre-tuned ones, six new races and a bonus DVD |
| Own the City | PlayStation Portable, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Zeebo | Not dated here | Different setting and storyline; final series installment for Game Boy Advance |
| Arcade | Arcade cabinets | 2008 | Developed by Global VR and released by EA Arcades |
The Mac edition carries the same features as the Collector's Edition even though its title does not say so. Own the City also changes the gameplay, with new or modified elements and a different selection of teammates.
What was the soundtrack like?
The soundtrack is licensed EA Trax music that changes with the car class. Tuners get electronica, Muscle cars get rock and Exotics get rap, although these songs play only in Free Roam and checkpoint races. A composed score by Trevor Morris plays during races and canyon duels.
Electronica comes from Gary Numan, Ladytron, The Presets and Melody. Rock includes Eagles of Death Metal, Wolfmother and Kyuss, and rap includes Sway, Pharrell, Ekstrak, Dynamite MC and Spank Rock.
Some of the pursuit chase music by Paul Linford, first heard in Most Wanted, also plays during pursuits in Carbon.
How did critics and sales respond?
Critics gave Carbon generally positive reviews. IGN scored the PC edition 8.2 and the PlayStation 3 edition 7.9, both out of ten. American sales reached 3.2 million units, and the PlayStation 2 version earned a Double Platinum award from ELSPA.
GameSpot praised the added movie clips, customisation and solid gameplay, but it was critical of frustrating boss battles and police chases that were underused. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave an average score of eight, and the Australian show Good Game gave five out of ten.
Macworld gave the Mac edition a score of four out of five, citing the wide car choice and an engaging story, though it noted some performance problems. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences put Carbon forward in the Racing Game of the Year category at its 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.
What came next, and what is the legacy?
Carbon was followed by Need for Speed: ProStreet in 2007. Carbon itself introduced crews, racing wingmen, Canyon events and extra customisation options that the earlier entries had not offered.
The online service closed on September 1, and as of 2021 downloads can no longer be bought from online shops. Buyers who want the game now have to look for a physical copy.
