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tonymccarthy's Need For Speed Carbon (PS2)
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| [September 28, 2009 03:15:17 PM]
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Game Play
I recently played Need for Speed:Carbon again, and decided to rewrite my original submission for the game review for two reasons. One mainly because I know a little more about gaming now and am able to more intensely analyze the game design, and two I have put another hour or so of game play into critiquing the design. After realizing how much work and effort has to go into every little detail of designing the game I realize, it is way too easy to get bored with poorly designed games. I will initiate the game play description the same way my last post was started, just for review. Need For Speed, for anyone not familiar with the series (or an expert like I see myself), is the biggest name in racing games for gaming consoles for the last ten or so years. Players drive cars of their dreams through big cities, designed by the NFS makers of course, racing around avoiding cops, racing rivals, and upgrading the car of your choice to your exact wishes throughout the whole game. The main purpose of this game is to race everyone in a certain city until they are all defeated at which point the “boss” or “leader” or whatever you want to refer to him/her as, becomes available for a boss challenge race. If this race is one your crew now controls the city. Periodically you must defend the cities you capture, and you continue defending/capturing until you control the whole map at which point you win.
Now recently I have learned about a lot of new ideas including game exhaustion, the difference between games and play, how rules make each game different, and the different types of games (emergence and progression). I will talk more about all of that in the design portion of my review, but for the current article I want to forget all of that and just be another player of Need for Speed. Just as before, things do reoccur often in the game, especially after putting another couple of hours into the game. The game only has a few limiting tracks, so after about 2 races at each, which will take you a good two to three hours, you start to memorize them. At that point of memorizing the tracks, the races start to get ridiculously difficult, and you because you stress and get angry at the game because you know the tracks so well, but you still have to do everything absolutely 100 percent perfect to win certain races. I do always get annoyed with this aspect of not only NFS, but most racing games in general. Although upgrading and painting and modifying your car in almost anyway imaginable is a blast for a bit, there is still only so much time you can spend doing such, and then the irritating part of attempting perfection is back to your only goal. All in all the game play is terrific for the first hours (usually up to ten or fifteen, depending on how long it takes you beat the game and how many side missions you do afterwards), but then tends to get extremely repetitive, leaving the user completely bored with the game.
Design
Alright, now to the more analytical aspects of the game, the design! As I stated above the game all in all is very exciting for the first few hours you play it, and you keep glued to the game and can think of nothing else the entire time you are playing (which unfortunately led to me to missing class a few times). I have learned a lot more about game design since my last review so I want to rewrite this section of my aforementioned review as well. This game is definitely classified as a game of progression. You can use a walkthrough to tell you exactly what you need to do to complete the game, which races to do with which cars, which bosses you need to beat in which order, and the best strategies for side missions as well. The design of this game is terrific, or at least at the top of the line as far as racing games is concerned. So much effort is put into every small detail, including car information, attention to gravity and friction, and even the opponent’s effect on your outcome of driving. The game was well designed from this aspect because it really makes you feel like it is a real life racing event, as compared to the original driving games where the car only really has four sprites, one for each direction you are driving, so you feel as though you are driving a box on a square circuit.
As mentioned before, the game can be quite challenging to a new player. Racing your opponents, especially the “bosses” requires near perfection, and the slightest slip-up can cost you the race, and the overall goal for your outcome you had desired. This does keep interesting, like I mentioned above, for about ten or fifteen hours, but then you get to see the same stuff over and over again, so you are left with nothing to do except setting the controller down, finally! Unfortunately, with this version of NFS multiplayer is available if you are sitting in the same room, but still not available online. If players were allowed to compete online, the game wouldn’t get boring after you defeat all the bosses and control the cities. This is one of the biggest things I look forward to in the upcoming NFS series games.
The last thing I would like to discuss is the ending of the game, and your overall impression after completion. I beat the game in about twelve hours the very first time I played it. I missed a few classes, and almost called into work sick one day because I was so caught up on beating the game. After everything was complete, I was really let down by the fact that all I got was congratulations, you win!! All the cars were unlocked for me, I had a lot of money, and all upgrades and tracks were available too. The only problem with this was that I had no other races I needed to do anymore, all of them had been completed at least once. Therefore I had all these cars, money and upgrades, and no desire to use them what so ever. I played some of the side missions not dealing with your career, which kept me entertained for another hour or two, and then played some multiplayer, and still do every now and then. All of this said still left me not very entertained after a while, so one thing I do wish NFS would do is allow players to do missions online with other players to keep the game going with all of your cars and upgrades and money you earned from beating everything in the single player game. I am still very impressed with Need for Speed:Carbon and love how they pay attention to all the details, everything down to the cut scenes in between almost each race to keep the story going. Keep rocking, Need for Speed!!
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tonymccarthy's Need For Speed Carbon (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 28 September, 2009
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