The races themselves are your standard fare, consisting of the Sprint, Circuit and Drift matches, the latter of which has undergone a complete overhaul. Win enough matches in a zone (two to be exact), and your team can claim the region win enough regions and the territory is yours for the taking. The map is divided into four sections, each with multiple zones to control. Most Wanted was all about intense police chases and one-on-one racing, but Carbon is all about taking over territory. Here players have the choice to pick one of three car classes: Tuners, for those of you who prefer handling over speed Exotics, cars that excel in both acceleration and top speed, and take the corners reasonably well and Muscle cars, which excel in raw power, but are difficult to control. The bulk of your time with Carbon will be spent in its 10-hour Career mode. Picking up directly after Most Wanted, Carbon pits players in a city divided by four territories and the surrounding carbon canyons (hence the name), with the objective being to take over all of that land and win your ex-girlfriend back, naturally. Unsurprisingly, there’s also no online play, with multiplayer games limited to two-player split-screen, and the modes missing in the current-gen versions are also missing here. It’s a slight niggle, but another example of the controls not being thought out enough in the port over to the Wii. This means that pressing ‘up’ is actually ‘right’, ‘right’ is ‘down’ and so on. Considering the default control scheme uses the Wii-mote on its side, it would have made sense to map the directional controls to the d-pad in the orientation the controller is being held, but this isn’t the case. By using the analogue stick to steer, the ‘Z’ button to break and the Wii-mote ‘pedal’ to accelerate, the game is playable, but there’s no question that it plays significantly better with a standard controller on other systems.Ī general lack of thought in the menu navigation is also worth mentioning. Steering is either handled by tilting the Nunchuck (which feels completely wrong) or by using the analogue stick, and the latter is by far the best option. In these cases the Wii-mote is used as a gas-pedal, tilting forwards to accelerate, while a few set-ups also map break to pulling up on the Wii-mote. It simply doesn’t offer the precision or sense of control that’s required.Īnother four control set-ups are available, and these all make use of the Nunchuck and Wii-mote.
It’s a control scheme that other racing games on the Wii have implemented, but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically the best option for racing. This is then tilted to act as a steering wheel.
The default method is to use the Wii-mote, with the d-pad position on the left. NFS Carbon on the Wii is more or less a ‘carbon’ copy of the game that’s appeared on almost every platform going, but it does feature some quite drastically different controls. With EA being strong supporters of the Wii, it’s no surprise that a version of game also launched alongside the system, but is it more than a quick port? Now, a year later, EA has brought back the street racing franchise with Need for Speed Carbon, a direct sequel to Most Wanted featuring the same over-the-top FMV sequences, intense police chases, and a heavy emphasis on speed and customisation. Naturally, strong sales brought us a sequel, a handful of shoddy replicas (SRS and Juiced come to mind), and eventually the release of last year’s solid Most Wanted, which launched alongside the 360. EA struck a chord with speed hounds in 2003 with the street racing success Need for Speed Underground.