After playing this franchise 7th time, i can safely say that this game is the most overhated game of the NFS franchise. Scenery is gorgeous, sound design is top-notch, story is very cheesy and over the top but also, really fun, cars are inifitely better to drive and handle greatly compared to NFS2015 and the graphics are way more variable compared to the boredom that NFS2015 offer in the graphics department. If it weren't for the god forsaken upgrade system, i would have loved this game way more than Heat. Like c'mon, it makes me very sad...

For a game literally called Carbon, isn't it weird that only your hood, roof scoop, and spoiler can be carbon?

If you ask people what the black sheep of the NFS franchise is, you'll likely get a variety of answers these days. Usually it's one of the "different" ones; Prostreet, Shift, Nitro, maybe even Rivals. If you ask me, however, I'd argue that the NFS I know has a bit of an identity crisis, and as such so many of the games are "different" that I don't see any of the "different" ones as anything strange. "Different" is damn near the norm. And as such, my answer would be Carbon. However, this doesn't make Carbon a bad game. No, no, no, you would be very wrong if you think like that. Carbon is like Underground 3, but... not. It's like Most Wanted 2, but... not. It absolutely reeks of being rushed, but what people don't realize about Carbon is how much sheer potential a lot of its ideas had, and it delivers almost all of them. So I'd like to go over both what Carbon is.
...And uh, I don't know where else to say this, so I'll just tack it onto the end here: I played through Carbon on PC, PS2 and Gamecube.
What defines Carbon?
It's important to establish a couple of things that make Carbon unique before I can really discuss what it does right and wrong. First of all, Carbon features 3 car classes (Tuner, Muscle, and Exotic), each with exaggerated differences; even more than your average arcade racer. Tuners have low top speeds, but absolutely dominate the corners. They're the easiest to drive as well. Exotics have high top speeds, but low acceleration; they have a lot of inertia to them and heavily punish mistakes. Muscle cars have ridiculous acceleration, but turn like boats. The game's career is experienced by picking one of those three classes and sticking with it to the end, which generally only takes a few hours. Secondly, the map. Palmont is a very curvy city, split into 4 districts. Each district must be claimed by winning the majority of the events there, after which the player faces off against the district boss in the canyons. The first three districts are dominated by a crew driving a specific car class, and you start your career in the district dominated by a crew driving your car class. Beat the first three to unlock Silverton, the fourth and final. Lastly, the crew system. As you progress through the game you unlock some friends that join your crew, and you can pick three to have active bonuses at once and one of those three to accompany you in races. There are three types of crew members; Blockers, Drafters, and Scouts. Now I know it's a bit weird to start the review with this, but believe me when I say that these three aspects are absolute game changers, and the nuance regarding how they work, what the devs were going for, is absolutely insane. Now that we've established all of this, let's start with the review proper.

The Good
- Presentation
Need for Speed Carbon looks gorgeous. From the lighting to the reflections to the colors, this is exactly the standard I expected the first NFS game made specifically for 7th gen to look like. The game also absolutely oozes style, just like UG1. Every part of the UI and HUD looks extremely distinctly Carbon. It's a great style. If you pay close attention you can notice some draw distance hiccups and a couple of frame drops, but they don't take away from the experience whatsoever. Of course, it doesn't look all that great today; comparing it to later NFS titles gets a bit iffy; but for an early 7th gen game, it's excellent. Not since UG1 have I had no major gripes with an NFS game's presentation.
- Story
Take notes, Ghost. At least, that's what I would say if Ghost still existed. This is how you do a racing game story. It's not intrusive, it's not the focus, but if you pay attention it is entertaining and unique. How often do you see a racing game with a mystery story? ...A predictable mystery, but still! I'm not looking for an epic or a masterpiece of writing in a racing game, but I am looking for something unique and unintrusive, and Carbon delivers that.
- Replay value
Due to the career being very short and the car classes being so different, Carbon is easily the most replayable NFS of them all, and it isn't even close. You could easily just sit down one day, decide you want to play Carbon, and bust through the career on that same day, but then come back the next day and do it again, having a very different experience. It's extremely easy to pick up, and very hard to put down, no matter how many times you've played it.
- Challenge Series
Carbon's challenge series rocks. It isn't all that long, but unlike the garbage from MW2005, Carbon's features every event type and two pursuit milestone types, each with three separate events. These give you a great taste of what different cars feel like, are pretty damn challenging and fun, and even have a few easter eggs thrown in. Want to chase the M3 GTR down the canyons, driving what's basically Cross' Corvette? How about toying with the cops while driving a dump truck? Hell, the gold Pursuit Evasion event has you driving the GT-R R34 that would eventually be adapted into Payback's hero car. They referenced a game that wasn't even out for 11 years! ...Or Payback's devs were just too lazy to design a different car, so they picked one from a random challenge series race in the NFS everyone forgets about and hoped no one would notice... yeah, actually, it's probably the latter.
- Soundtrack
Carbon has an insane, i mean INSANE score. It's probably the best dynamic score i've heard it in any videogame. It really enhances the atmospehere. You should try this yourself, i can't explain how insane it is.
- Drift events
Drifting in Carbon is the very definition of dumb fun. It's so stupid and ridiculous that it just loops back around and becomes the best thing ever. You go so stupidly fast and the physics are so awful that it's just good. Not to mention that you don't have to buy a car specifically for drifting, so have fun drifting your tier 3 exotics! The AI sucks at these too; once you get them down you'll absolutely demolish every single one effortlessly. Even if you mess up a few times you'll still get so many points that it seems like the AI isn't even trying.
- Visual Customization
While I personally think Autosculpt isn't all that great an addition as it's both extremely ricey and just adds the illusion that your car is one of a kind, the vinyl editor in particular steals the show here. You can move, scale, rotate vinyl anyway you want.
- World Design
Firstly, a lot of people will say that Carbon's map is so curvy that tuners are favored heavily throughout. They aren't really wrong, but I can see what the devs were going for. Exotics suffer in Downtown because of the varied road structure not giving them a chance to reach top speed, but excel in Kempton because it has the most straight-ish roads. Tuners suffer in Kempton because of the straighter roads, but excel in Fortuna because there are so many winding curves. Muscle cars suffer in Fortuna because the winding curves don't give them a chance to accelerate anywhere, but the varied structure of Downtown makes acceleration important. Note that you never start in an area where your car class is meant to excel or suffer. I think this is an absolutely PHENOMENAL idea. It further enhances replay value of this game by giving you chances to take corners that you normally couldn't before by the different car classes. Game also doesn't highlight the shortcuts which raises the skill ceiling.

The Bad
- Crashes
Game sometimes crash during a cutscene. This can happen in the cutscenes after a boss race. When this happens you have to play the boss race again because game saves your progression after the cutscene. It can sometimes be infuriating.
- 6th gen ports
Game is heavily downgraded on these platforms. I really don't recommend you to play on these platforms. 7th gen versions are the definitive Carbon experience.