Xbox 360 Critic Reviews

Carbon almost always manages to feel as finely tuned as any of its high performance sleds, and with downloadable content on the way, it seems safe to think that it'll be an adrenaline generating favorite for a good long while.

So close to being a legendary entry to the NFS series but crew racing hampers it down. AI should never win a race for a player.

Carbon is another great racing game for the 360 and it’s awesome to think that in just one year our beloved console has already seen two of these games.

It’s a shame that EA decided to drop the intense cop chases from Most Wanted. Carbon is still a very addicting game even though the drift races don’t work quite as well as they should.

By allowing gamers to adjust nearly everything on their car, from the width of the spoiler to the height of the blower on that ’69 Charger, Carbon allows gamers to truly make their ride their own.

The city’s sections felt too similar to each other. I admit, I don’t have all the answers on making a perfect open-world racing title, but Carbon falls short in this area. Don’t worry though, the speed in this game is enough to outrun such criticisms.

The story element whilst interesting did feel very pantomime to me as a lot of hard talking was uttered during the cinematic moments and I often felt that these hard talking people would probably be better off bringing out shotguns and Uzis rather than taking to the streets to settle differences.

Need for Speed Carbon has fast and furious races. Tuning is fun, but it does not have much of an effect on racing. [Dec 2006, p.82]

Far from being revolutionary, and just shy of even being considered an evolution of the series, Carbon exists in that dubious realm of being simply a largely unnecessary annual update.

The drifting is an acquired taste (but it's good), the canyon duals are decent changes (though not great), and the crews...well, they suck. Of the myriad new features, the addition of muscle cars and the online functionality are the best.