We are still waiting on a suitable Amiga AGA emulator with robust recording features before tackling such games.
Need for Speed: Carbon - Own the City
Need for Speed Carbon - Own the City, developed by Exient Limited and published by Electronic Arts in 2006.
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Player's Review
"Your Crew, Your City. Edit your dashboard on the touch screen. All-New Hunter Mode. 12 Circuit Tracks and 12 Licenced cars."
NFS Carbon was released on just about every mainstream platform of it's time. The handhelds in particular got there own special 'Own the City' literation of the game which has a completely different story.
Even amongst the handhelds, the game is presented differently. Unlike the PSP game, there is no free roam. Instead between each event you go to the map screen to choose the next race. There are 12 races in each of the main sectors and you need to do 7 of them before the crew members unlock to race against. Once those are completed that's 9 of the 12 event needed to unlock the next area. Completing all 12 will award more points to spend.
Overall the game is not bad for an NDS graphically although the small screen can make it challenging to play. Taking place at night doesn't help with track details seemingly being lost in the shadows especially when moving at speed with a heavy blur filter applied. The controls are terrible. It is far to easy to oversteer sending you car all across the road and it only gets worse with the faster cars. The AI opponents are always on your back just waiting for you to slip up. It can be quite important to save some boost for the final stretch as that is when they will make there move and make a dash for the finish. By the time I got to area two, the challenge ramped right up. I have the fastest car and all mods applied at this point and the AI racers are just brutal. There were a few points I wasn't sure if the game was going to be completable. Thankfully the way the map works you can skip events and come back later when you have an even better car. It really is strange how aggressive the racers can be from one race to the next.
As you progress through each sector, you will pick up crew members with greater skill levels. During a race you can call upon your selected crew member to assist you. While I start off with Nitro boost I quickly found this less useful against the ever aggressive ai racers If they pass you, they will shoot off and unless you have a full boost, you wont see them again. The rubber banding seems to only work one way although there is an 'ai catchup' in the game options but I'm not sure which way round that is and if it will be a help or a hindrance. I spend most of the game using the Attacker wingman as I can set him off the moment I am overtaken and he will crash the ai racer putting it back in it's place. You do have to watch out for the attacker attacking you though which can become annoying.
So going through all six areas and defeating the boss car will complete the game unlocking the final car which you wont likely need anymore. The game just thrown you back to the map screen and I need to manually run the credits. I tried to show a few cars through the run of the game and applied some of the visual stuff but am not sure what the Visual meter is supposed to represent in the game or if it affects anything at all. Overall the game is a little lacking compared to other versions. I miss the canyon run boss car battles which adds some variety to the normal track racing. Thankfully each set of tracks stays in there respective areas so you always get new stuff to race on as you progress and not racing the same old content all the way through.
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:38 Tutorial
00:13:10 Sector 1 - Lucky 7
01:06:22 Sector 2 - Eastsiders
01:50:16 Sector 3 - Syrens
02:42:32 Sector 4 - The Corps
03:26:04 Sector 5 - Clutch
04:17:14 Sector 6 -Ex
------------------------
04:36:19 - A quick run in the unlocked DB9
04:40:20 - Credit roll
NFS Carbon was released on just about every mainstream platform of it's time. The handhelds in particular got there own special 'Own the City' literation of the game which has a completely different story.
Even amongst the handhelds, the game is presented differently. Unlike the PSP game, there is no free roam. Instead between each event you go to the map screen to choose the next race. There are 12 races in each of the main sectors and you need to do 7 of them before the crew members unlock to race against. Once those are completed that's 9 of the 12 event needed to unlock the next area. Completing all 12 will award more points to spend.
Overall the game is not bad for an NDS graphically although the small screen can make it challenging to play. Taking place at night doesn't help with track details seemingly being lost in the shadows especially when moving at speed with a heavy blur filter applied. The controls are terrible. It is far to easy to oversteer sending you car all across the road and it only gets worse with the faster cars. The AI opponents are always on your back just waiting for you to slip up. It can be quite important to save some boost for the final stretch as that is when they will make there move and make a dash for the finish. By the time I got to area two, the challenge ramped right up. I have the fastest car and all mods applied at this point and the AI racers are just brutal. There were a few points I wasn't sure if the game was going to be completable. Thankfully the way the map works you can skip events and come back later when you have an even better car. It really is strange how aggressive the racers can be from one race to the next.
As you progress through each sector, you will pick up crew members with greater skill levels. During a race you can call upon your selected crew member to assist you. While I start off with Nitro boost I quickly found this less useful against the ever aggressive ai racers If they pass you, they will shoot off and unless you have a full boost, you wont see them again. The rubber banding seems to only work one way although there is an 'ai catchup' in the game options but I'm not sure which way round that is and if it will be a help or a hindrance. I spend most of the game using the Attacker wingman as I can set him off the moment I am overtaken and he will crash the ai racer putting it back in it's place. You do have to watch out for the attacker attacking you though which can become annoying.
So going through all six areas and defeating the boss car will complete the game unlocking the final car which you wont likely need anymore. The game just thrown you back to the map screen and I need to manually run the credits. I tried to show a few cars through the run of the game and applied some of the visual stuff but am not sure what the Visual meter is supposed to represent in the game or if it affects anything at all. Overall the game is a little lacking compared to other versions. I miss the canyon run boss car battles which adds some variety to the normal track racing. Thankfully each set of tracks stays in there respective areas so you always get new stuff to race on as you progress and not racing the same old content all the way through.
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:38 Tutorial
00:13:10 Sector 1 - Lucky 7
01:06:22 Sector 2 - Eastsiders
01:50:16 Sector 3 - Syrens
02:42:32 Sector 4 - The Corps
03:26:04 Sector 5 - Clutch
04:17:14 Sector 6 -Ex
------------------------
04:36:19 - A quick run in the unlocked DB9
04:40:20 - Credit roll
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