The maintainance is completed and so I can get back to normal posting again and I hope that all of the images are back and working again. So if any of you people come by any pictures that don’t work or that are obviously wrong, please inform me by leaving a comment right here.

So, in the meantime I purchased Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City for my Nintendo DS Lite and by now I have almost finished it’s single player career mode and I must say that this game by far exceeds my expectations.


Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City on the DS is nearly everything that any racegame (except Mario Kart DS, but that’s a completely different story) should have been. Just look at games like Burnout Legends or Asphalt: Urban GT. Allthough both look pretty decent and the trackdesign is quite good, these games aren’t even worth the required cash to add them to your games collection. The controls are bad, the collision detection is terrible, which is especially bad for Burnout and the games feel numb and don’t deserve the title racegame in any way.

But then there is NFS Carbon: Own the City. The controls feel like real racing controls, the graphics are good, especially for NDS standards and there is a very decent sensation of speed. The game really feels like it’s moving at high speed. The sounds are pretty satisfying as well. Allthough the enginesounds aren’t really sounding like big and heavy engines, they are good enough. Only the high screeching skid noises can get annoying at times, but when you’re in a difficult race just ahead of your opponent that will be the last of your worries.
All of the cars look nice and shiny and you can add nicely designed visual upgrades to them. There aren’t as many visual upgrades available on the NDS version as on the PC version of NFS Carbon, but still enough to keep you busy choosing which one to use. And the coolest of all is that you can completely design your own vinyls to apply to either your hood or doors. This way you can really give your car your own unique look. Unlike the PC version of NFS Carbon, on the NDS version you still have underglow neons, this isn’t very usefull, but it still looks funky. And besides the exterior of your car, you can also slightly customize the interior. You can choose between 3 different dashboard styles which will be displayed on the lower screen during a race. Here are the racestats as well as speed, nitro, speedbreaker and rewind levels being displayed. You can also choose a car stereo and a dashboard toy to be put in there and 5 unique speed gauges including the casual analog gauges, dot matrix and graph gauges. The toys include some weird cudly toy alien figures and a little cool looking skeleton figure and dice.

But let’s get to the most important part of the game, the races. There are a few different racetypes which all have pretty much their own playstyle and feel. There is your average circuit race where you drive a few laps. And also the sprint races are present in this iteration of the NFS series. Allthough the sprint races are quite different from the sprint races on the PC version of Carbon, or any other NFS game for that matter. A sprint race is short, really short. Most of the sprint races last no longer than 30 seconds and actually that is exactly what a sprint race should be. In real life a sprint race is always short. Take 100m sprint during the oplympics or something, those races last for no more than 12 seconds as well as other sprint races like dragster races or tracktor pull. Allthough such a short race in a game like this feels pretty weird at the beginning, it starts to feel really cool after a little while as you find out that these races require a completely different tactic than the longer races like the circuit races. And then there is the elimination race. In this race type you also drive laps on a given track, but the racer in the last position is knocked out of the race at the end of every lap untill only one racer is left and then the race ends. The gameplay is pretty much the same as with the circuit race on this one. And lastly there is the hunter mode and this one doesn’t feel like NFS in any way. In Hunter there is a set number of laps that must be completed, but it’s completely irrelevant on what position you finish. The point of hunter is to bump into your oponents to score points. For every hit you gain 20 points, but when hit by an opponent you lose 30 points. Also, the one driving in front will slowly gain points without hitting anything, so driving in front still has it’s benefits. At the end of the race, it’s the one with the most points who wins the race.
Like in the PC version there are also the boss races, but unlike the PC version, there are no canyon races present in the DS version. Instead, there are 2 bosses in every area which have to be beaten in a single race each. These races are always your casual circuit races, but with only 1 opponent, but these are by far the strongest opponents in the game.
The racing itself feels satisfyingly fast when you get a little further in the game. In the beginning you car is pretty slow and the races aren’t all that exiting, but the farther you get, the more exiting it becomes and the faster the action gets. There are also the well known shortcuts which can come in very handy to be able to keep ahead of your opponents or to overtake them when they miss out on a shortcut.
Another cool gameplay feature is the wingman. Allthough this doesn’t work as well on the DS as on the PC, it’s still a fun addition to the game. A wingman is basicly a friendly racer with a special ability to aid you during the race. There are 2 types of wingmen on the DS version compared to 3 on the PC version. The attacker is the substitute for the blocker of the PC version and this is an aggresive driver that will ram into an opponent at your command. The second wingman type is the drafter. The drafter will come and drive in front of you at your command to provide you with a slipstream to significantly increase your speed and refill your nitrous, speedbreaker and rewind levels. This wingman is considerably more usefull than the attacker on the DS version as for some reason, the attacker is hardly ever available for use during a race and the drafter is available at any time when your nitrous are even slightly used. Also the drafter recharges really quickly after use so he can be used again really quickly.

The licenced soundtrack is also very nice. Allthough it features only a few songs from the PC version, it’s still nice to hear some real music during the races instead of the synthetic “rock” tunes from Burnout Legends for example.

And ofcourse there is also a multi player mode. The multi player mode supports up to 4 players, even when only one of you actually has the game. The others can download the required data and join in, but this way there is only one track available and only one car, but it’s still fun to play for a little while. With multi card mode all of the tracks are available as well as all of the racemodes and all of the cars.

There is only one thing that is kind of bugging me in this game. Whenever you unlock the dot matrix speed gauges the game will crash when your in the speed gauge menu and move the selection to the right either towards the dot matrix gauges or away from them when they’re the current selection. A workaround for this is to always scroll to the left when you’re in this menu. But this is really something that should have been fixed while betatesting, bad EA *slaps EA*.

The bottom line is that I really like this game, it’s a solid and fast racer which plays really well and looks good too. Except for the crashing in the menu, this game runs really smoothly with one a minor framerate drop every now and then, but this happens only on a very rare occasion and is not likely to happen more than once every play session. And even when the framerate drops for a second the game still responds smoothly and the games’ overall speed doesn’t drop at all, so it’s not disturbing at all.

I’ll give this game 8 out of 10 points. For anyone who is looking for a decent racegame that is no Mario Kart, this is a good choice and well worth a try.