Good game - little respect, 16 Feb 2008
I, like most people above, have been a fan of the NFS series for some time. I can't quite understand how people are slating Carbon so much. It IS a good game. I got into this on my brother-in-law's PS2 and got it for my PC - I wasn't unhappy. Great graphics, great gameplay, great challenges and great cars. The only thing I would argue with EA games is the career mode is too damned short.
I got hold of NFS Most Wanted after Carbon and was made aware of the better gameplay and depth of the game - Carbon lacks depth. True. But Carbon is better in a few respects - Most Wanted is lacking in the drifting elements - these were great in the Underground series and Carbon has succeeded in putting them back in - it's a little more interesting drifting on the canyons!
With all that said, Carbon is a game that people SHOULD buy - but don't bother with Pro Street - that IS awful.
EA should consider a merging of Most Wanted and Carbon - perhaps calling it Need For Speed: Most Carbonated?

Surprised..., 16 Sep 2007
I was surprised how easy this game was to complete. 2 days it took me and it was so easy i cud of done it with my eyes shut to be honest. Woudlnt recoemmned buying. I realli shud have saved my money for the upcoming Pro Street. hopefully it will be a lot better! Dont buy now! Wait for Pro Street unless your stupid like me!

Disapointed Really, 11 Feb 2007
After playing NFS Most Wanted and seeing the adverts/ trailers for NFS Carbon, I knew I had to have it. Once I got it I was quite disapointed.

Most Wanted was a real great game and still is my favorite Race game.

NFS Carbon has its good points, also its bad

My Good Points:
1. The Cars in my eyes are better being a huge fan of American Classic cars/ hot rods.

2. The Drift is really cool, The only thing I actully really liked about the game.

3. Car Customisation is alot better

4. The Crew members idea is pretty good but can also get in the way quite alot which gets agrovating after a while.

My Bad Points:

1. Completed this game in 2 days and I played about 3-4 hours max each day of the two. Compared with MW, this was pretty boring, it took me a week to complete MW and there was alot more of a challenge and also more fun.

2. The police side of things is absalute crap, MW police chases were really great, Carbon lacks this.

3. Its always Nightime during race! This gets annoying, I know NW is always day time with weather conditions but I prefered it.

My Advise, If your not into American Hot rods/ classic cars go and buy NFS Most Wanted, it is a much better game !

The highlight of the game to me is the American Cars and changing the parts (pretty good selection of parts) so it looks exactly how you want it. Other than that, I dont play it.


NFS Carbon: Disappointing, 05 Jan 2007
Carbon adds almost nothing to the extremely enjoyable NFS Most Wanted.

Ability to jump straight to a race, Car autosculpt and race crew seem to be only benefits. Game engine seems identical to Most Wanted, game start up has identical series of click throughs which seem to suggest a straight port from NFS Most Wanted with only changes on the graphics rendering and a few add on modules for autosculpt and Crew members.

Races and drift are fun enough and as a fan of the NFS series I'll play them through and probably enjoy them. If however you came to this game new having played other racers like Project Gotham or Ridge Racer you are likely to be severely disappointed.

Recommendation - Go for NFS Most Wanted or NFS Underground - Bypass this one.

Make some effort EA!!, 05 Dec 2006
The game finally arrived after 3 weeks!! too long even for super saver delivery.

Should have listened to others really, the game borrowed a lot of the elements from Most Wanted; the cop cars are the same, the pursuit theme song is the same, the police radio speech is the same, the physics and handling of cars are the same, and even the whole story is a follow up from MW!! It's almost like EA is running out of ideas for future NFS titles.

Another point worth mentioning is the game graphic which is somewhat better than MW but for some reason runs a lot slower.

But there are still good things in this game though such as the drift race, which is a lot better than in Underground 2, and also I love the aotosculpting feature, hence three stars for this game.

All in all it is still playable but I'd much prefer to wait until EA have perfected the game rather than rushing to release before Christmas.

Good game - little respect, 16 Feb 2008
I, like most people above, have been a fan of the NFS series for some time. I can't quite understand how people are slating Carbon so much. It IS a good game. I got into this on my brother-in-law's PS2 and got it for my PC - I wasn't unhappy. Great graphics, great gameplay, great challenges and great cars. The only thing I would argue with EA games is the career mode is too damned short.
I got hold of NFS Most Wanted after Carbon and was made aware of the better gameplay and depth of the game - Carbon lacks depth. True. But Carbon is better in a few respects - Most Wanted is lacking in the drifting elements - these were great in the Underground series and Carbon has succeeded in putting them back in - it's a little more interesting drifting on the canyons!
With all that said, Carbon is a game that people SHOULD buy - but don't bother with Pro Street - that IS awful.
EA should consider a merging of Most Wanted and Carbon - perhaps calling it Need For Speed: Most Carbonated?

Surprised..., 16 Sep 2007
I was surprised how easy this game was to complete. 2 days it took me and it was so easy i cud of done it with my eyes shut to be honest. Woudlnt recoemmned buying. I realli shud have saved my money for the upcoming Pro Street. hopefully it will be a lot better! Dont buy now! Wait for Pro Street unless your stupid like me!

Disapointed Really, 11 Feb 2007
After playing NFS Most Wanted and seeing the adverts/ trailers for NFS Carbon, I knew I had to have it. Once I got it I was quite disapointed.

Most Wanted was a real great game and still is my favorite Race game.

NFS Carbon has its good points, also its bad

My Good Points:
1. The Cars in my eyes are better being a huge fan of American Classic cars/ hot rods.

2. The Drift is really cool, The only thing I actully really liked about the game.

3. Car Customisation is alot better

4. The Crew members idea is pretty good but can also get in the way quite alot which gets agrovating after a while.

My Bad Points:

1. Completed this game in 2 days and I played about 3-4 hours max each day of the two. Compared with MW, this was pretty boring, it took me a week to complete MW and there was alot more of a challenge and also more fun.

2. The police side of things is absalute crap, MW police chases were really great, Carbon lacks this.

3. Its always Nightime during race! This gets annoying, I know NW is always day time with weather conditions but I prefered it.

My Advise, If your not into American Hot rods/ classic cars go and buy NFS Most Wanted, it is a much better game !

The highlight of the game to me is the American Cars and changing the parts (pretty good selection of parts) so it looks exactly how you want it. Other than that, I dont play it.


NFS Carbon: Disappointing, 05 Jan 2007
Carbon adds almost nothing to the extremely enjoyable NFS Most Wanted.

Ability to jump straight to a race, Car autosculpt and race crew seem to be only benefits. Game engine seems identical to Most Wanted, game start up has identical series of click throughs which seem to suggest a straight port from NFS Most Wanted with only changes on the graphics rendering and a few add on modules for autosculpt and Crew members.

Races and drift are fun enough and as a fan of the NFS series I'll play them through and probably enjoy them. If however you came to this game new having played other racers like Project Gotham or Ridge Racer you are likely to be severely disappointed.

Recommendation - Go for NFS Most Wanted or NFS Underground - Bypass this one.

Make some effort EA!!, 05 Dec 2006
The game finally arrived after 3 weeks!! too long even for super saver delivery.

Should have listened to others really, the game borrowed a lot of the elements from Most Wanted; the cop cars are the same, the pursuit theme song is the same, the police radio speech is the same, the physics and handling of cars are the same, and even the whole story is a follow up from MW!! It's almost like EA is running out of ideas for future NFS titles.

Another point worth mentioning is the game graphic which is somewhat better than MW but for some reason runs a lot slower.

But there are still good things in this game though such as the drift race, which is a lot better than in Underground 2, and also I love the aotosculpting feature, hence three stars for this game.

All in all it is still playable but I'd much prefer to wait until EA have perfected the game rather than rushing to release before Christmas.

Pretty tiresome, repetitive and inconsistent, 23 Jun 2008
I bought this game as a huge fan of Need for Speed: Carbon, but was very disappointed. Although the game runs fine on my old single core 3.2Ghz, 3Gb RAM, Radeon 1650, and looks nice, the storyline is less than waferthin and it's not alway very clear what you're supposed to be doing. The upgrading procedure for your car isn't always obvious - in Carbon, you knew when you started to get beaten in races that you had to upgrade or buy a new car, but in Pro Street, it doesn't seem that intuitive.

It's a nice touch that the visual modifications are free, but you have to unlock the highest grade parts which you need to really beat the game, and you can't always guarantee that you'll unlock them because of the random rewards system at the end of each race. The point system used for scoring is also frustrating - you can come first in each race on a race day, but still not dominate it to get the higher rewards, which seems counter-intuitive.

The cars handle ok, and they do seem to respond differently depending on the upgrades you get. The drag racing is a nice touch, and the speed challenge where you try to get through the race and maintain as high a speed as possible over a long period of time, is particularly nerve-wracking.

The race order is a bit annoying as well - in the middle, you seem to have to repeat races. At the end, you also have to do three race days of the same race in order to challenge the 'king' of that kind of race. I do like a good race, but doing three drifts per race, for example, six races per race day, three race days and then nine to challenge the drift king is really monotonous - that's over fifty drift races in a row to beat him. Some of the 'kings' are also ridiculously easy - the (haha) drag king barely finishes a quarter mile in fourteen seconds, and the overall Street King only has one car, which really limits him on the drag racing and grip racing.

Although some of the races are run, the tracks are fairly boring and you have to be quite committed to finish it. Overall, some nice touches, but really, it's monotonous, dull, inconsistent, frustrating and not much fun a lot of the time.

If you don't have Carbon, buy that instead. If you do, then think twice before you buy this one.

Dull as Ditch-water..., 04 May 2008
I promised myself that after the total let-down of Carbon I wouldn't buy another NFS... What a mistake I made forgetting that promise. Whilst I applaud the damage element of the game the rest is just dull dull dull. The story line is pathetic, the tuning of the cars is pointless and has very little actual effect on the handling, in the fact the whole 'realism' is as contrived as it is possible to be and is about as real as the bit-mapped track babe.
Whilst other racing games are embracing the free-romm like NFS Most Wanted, Pro Street leaves the racer stuck on track after track with cars that handle like milk floats, accelerate with all the speed and agility of startled slugs and brake like the QE2.
I fervently wish I could get my money back for being terminally bored... twice, but as the games are locked to your user name it's not even possible to sell them on. If it were possible to give a negative value to this game, and Carbon, I would.

Awful, 06 Mar 2008
Not a great buy. I rarely review items I've bought but this is very disappointing. They've totally ruined the fun of the old NFS games without adding anything new. The graphics are very good but that's worth nothing unless the gameplay is good too. And the gameplay is awful. When you turn a corner, the car wobbles like it's made of jelly. Rubbish.

definitely an improvement, 20 Feb 2008
Many keep on saying NFS is getting worse with every new release. However, the only instalment I thought was worse than the previous one was Carbon. This one is definitely an improvement. Now when you bang your car at full speed into a wall you can't just reverse out or if your car turns upside down, it won't just magically reset itself onto the road. If you damage your car, you pay for it, just like in the real world. Also for first time you can tune the aerodynamics of your car.

Graphics are also great. They finally got rid of the annoying blur effect. I am running it on a high-end laptop though so I don't know how it will run on a mid/low-range computer.

Basically, EA has made the franchise more realistic. If you're looking for a realistic car racing game/simulator, this is for you. If you just want a fun game in which you can just keep your finger on the accelerator all the time, go for something else.

The best racing game ever? I think so!, 29 Jan 2008
This is one hell of a racing game. I'm totally hooked. The graphics are slick, the racing is brilliant, the customisation and tuning add a very real element to the game.

I read other reviews for this game and I have to say I cannot understand why some people find the very real aspect of this game a bad thing! OK there are no more street races, but the tracks you get to run on are really challenging, nearly every one has a corner or two that has you tuning and retuning the car to get around it quick without having to sacrifice the straight line speed. That is RACING. The only oversight I can see in this is that you cannot set the spoiler angle anywhere other than the garage, once in a race day you'll have to leave, to go reset you spoiler angle in your garage then play it again, but that's a small gripe.
There's no cops is another gripe, personally I don't care with a racer this good, I owned the very NFS1 & NFS2 where the second edition ditched the cops, that was not liked. The problem back then was that the game couldn't really carry itself without them, you selected a car and drove it around a track, then you did it again and again, there was no real competition at all. That's seriously fixed in Pro Street, this game does NOT need cops.
It's not like I don't suffer for playing this, my processor is below minimum spec, I own an AMD 64 Athlon @ 2.2Ghz, they recommended level is 2.8Ghz (and a multicore processor wouldn't hurt). So in between races during loading and saving I can end up waiting literally minutes to get where I'm going, that's frustrating and I have to restart the system sometimes to clear the choke. However I'm not going drop the maxed out levels down a bit, I will wait because every aspect of this game is amazing. The great thing is that the races run at full speed with almost the full frame rate and don't seem to suffer from the slow down, so it's a small price to pay.

So if you're thinking of buying this game, check to see that you've got the required spec or that you have the patience of a saint, because you'll need it if you don't have the hardware. The car doesn't handle like previous editions of NFS, you'll get a nasty surprise (I know I did), until you get the hang of things, but the hurdle is not a great one. You CANNOT drive these cars properly without a Force Feedback Steering Wheel, it's the only way to really FEEL what the car is doing, so invest in one - You won't regret it. Game Controllers and Keyboards just don't cut it, not with this game - Sorry Game Console fans, (Can you buy something similar?) Lastly you will have to TUNE the car to make it run properly around a race track, I have two sublime Grip Racers - a Nissan 240SX & 350Z. They didn't start out with the handling credentials they have now, with the exception of one or two corners in the entire Battle Machine series, these cars a blindingly fast and a nailed to the road surface. Maybe I'll share the blueprint, but I don't think I'm quite finished tuning it yet.

This game is not like Most Wanted or Carbon, it's more like a race simulator than the arcade racer that the other two were. You can wreck you car if you crash in this, that's pretty realistic. All told, with the huge customisation options, the tuning options, the Practise laps where you can tune the car on the fly to maximise it's potential. To the mind boggling array or race types - Grip, Grip Class, Grip Time Attack, Grip Sector Shootout, Quarter & Half Mile Drag. Drift, Dual Drift. Speed King - You won't be bored. The Visual Customisations are all free and you immediately have access to all of it, so now you can make a really sick looking machine from the word go. Even in the Bodywork you get a couple of freebies at the start to help sculpt the car. The Cartoon graphics of Carbon are gone and in my opinion are even better than those in Most Wanted. This game has a story to follow that seems much bigger than Carbon too and that's a good thing. The computer opponents could be better, by that I mean make you work for your win, once you get ahead you can simply leave them miles behind, which makes the track records a bit too easy to break. On a half mile drag race I'm posting 185mph in a Cobalt SS, the next nearest guy is only doing 104mph they should be much faster - That's Sunday Driving right there. Perhaps if they do Pro Street 2 (Pleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee do it - EA) they might let the users set the difficulty the opponents can provide, more so than in this game. If you're a Motor Racing fan, this is the game for you, if you expect this game to be like previous version of NFS then you might want to give this a miss.

10/10 EA - This is one totally slick racing game (Better than Forza 2 easily).

Good game - little respect, 16 Feb 2008
I, like most people above, have been a fan of the NFS series for some time. I can't quite understand how people are slating Carbon so much. It IS a good game. I got into this on my brother-in-law's PS2 and got it for my PC - I wasn't unhappy. Great graphics, great gameplay, great challenges and great cars. The only thing I would argue with EA games is the career mode is too damned short.
I got hold of NFS Most Wanted after Carbon and was made aware of the better gameplay and depth of the game - Carbon lacks depth. True. But Carbon is better in a few respects - Most Wanted is lacking in the drifting elements - these were great in the Underground series and Carbon has succeeded in putting them back in - it's a little more interesting drifting on the canyons!
With all that said, Carbon is a game that people SHOULD buy - but don't bother with Pro Street - that IS awful.
EA should consider a merging of Most Wanted and Carbon - perhaps calling it Need For Speed: Most Carbonated?

Surprised..., 16 Sep 2007
I was surprised how easy this game was to complete. 2 days it took me and it was so easy i cud of done it with my eyes shut to be honest. Woudlnt recoemmned buying. I realli shud have saved my money for the upcoming Pro Street. hopefully it will be a lot better! Dont buy now! Wait for Pro Street unless your stupid like me!

Disapointed Really, 11 Feb 2007
After playing NFS Most Wanted and seeing the adverts/ trailers for NFS Carbon, I knew I had to have it. Once I got it I was quite disapointed.

Most Wanted was a real great game and still is my favorite Race game.

NFS Carbon has its good points, also its bad

My Good Points:
1. The Cars in my eyes are better being a huge fan of American Classic cars/ hot rods.

2. The Drift is really cool, The only thing I actully really liked about the game.

3. Car Customisation is alot better

4. The Crew members idea is pretty good but can also get in the way quite alot which gets agrovating after a while.

My Bad Points:

1. Completed this game in 2 days and I played about 3-4 hours max each day of the two. Compared with MW, this was pretty boring, it took me a week to complete MW and there was alot more of a challenge and also more fun.

2. The police side of things is absalute crap, MW police chases were really great, Carbon lacks this.

3. Its always Nightime during race! This gets annoying, I know NW is always day time with weather conditions but I prefered it.

My Advise, If your not into American Hot rods/ classic cars go and buy NFS Most Wanted, it is a much better game !

The highlight of the game to me is the American Cars and changing the parts (pretty good selection of parts) so it looks exactly how you want it. Other than that, I dont play it.


NFS Carbon: Disappointing, 05 Jan 2007
Carbon adds almost nothing to the extremely enjoyable NFS Most Wanted.

Ability to jump straight to a race, Car autosculpt and race crew seem to be only benefits. Game engine seems identical to Most Wanted, game start up has identical series of click throughs which seem to suggest a straight port from NFS Most Wanted with only changes on the graphics rendering and a few add on modules for autosculpt and Crew members.

Races and drift are fun enough and as a fan of the NFS series I'll play them through and probably enjoy them. If however you came to this game new having played other racers like Project Gotham or Ridge Racer you are likely to be severely disappointed.

Recommendation - Go for NFS Most Wanted or NFS Underground - Bypass this one.

Make some effort EA!!, 05 Dec 2006
The game finally arrived after 3 weeks!! too long even for super saver delivery.

Should have listened to others really, the game borrowed a lot of the elements from Most Wanted; the cop cars are the same, the pursuit theme song is the same, the police radio speech is the same, the physics and handling of cars are the same, and even the whole story is a follow up from MW!! It's almost like EA is running out of ideas for future NFS titles.

Another point worth mentioning is the game graphic which is somewhat better than MW but for some reason runs a lot slower.

But there are still good things in this game though such as the drift race, which is a lot better than in Underground 2, and also I love the aotosculpting feature, hence three stars for this game.

All in all it is still playable but I'd much prefer to wait until EA have perfected the game rather than rushing to release before Christmas.

Pretty tiresome, repetitive and inconsistent, 23 Jun 2008
I bought this game as a huge fan of Need for Speed: Carbon, but was very disappointed. Although the game runs fine on my old single core 3.2Ghz, 3Gb RAM, Radeon 1650, and looks nice, the storyline is less than waferthin and it's not alway very clear what you're supposed to be doing. The upgrading procedure for your car isn't always obvious - in Carbon, you knew when you started to get beaten in races that you had to upgrade or buy a new car, but in Pro Street, it doesn't seem that intuitive.

It's a nice touch that the visual modifications are free, but you have to unlock the highest grade parts which you need to really beat the game, and you can't always guarantee that you'll unlock them because of the random rewards system at the end of each race. The point system used for scoring is also frustrating - you can come first in each race on a race day, but still not dominate it to get the higher rewards, which seems counter-intuitive.

The cars handle ok, and they do seem to respond differently depending on the upgrades you get. The drag racing is a nice touch, and the speed challenge where you try to get through the race and maintain as high a speed as possible over a long period of time, is particularly nerve-wracking.

The race order is a bit annoying as well - in the middle, you seem to have to repeat races. At the end, you also have to do three race days of the same race in order to challenge the 'king' of that kind of race. I do like a good race, but doing three drifts per race, for example, six races per race day, three race days and then nine to challenge the drift king is really monotonous - that's over fifty drift races in a row to beat him. Some of the 'kings' are also ridiculously easy - the (haha) drag king barely finishes a quarter mile in fourteen seconds, and the overall Street King only has one car, which really limits him on the drag racing and grip racing.

Although some of the races are run, the tracks are fairly boring and you have to be quite committed to finish it. Overall, some nice touches, but really, it's monotonous, dull, inconsistent, frustrating and not much fun a lot of the time.

If you don't have Carbon, buy that instead. If you do, then think twice before you buy this one.

Dull as Ditch-water..., 04 May 2008
I promised myself that after the total let-down of Carbon I wouldn't buy another NFS... What a mistake I made forgetting that promise. Whilst I applaud the damage element of the game the rest is just dull dull dull. The story line is pathetic, the tuning of the cars is pointless and has very little actual effect on the handling, in the fact the whole 'realism' is as contrived as it is possible to be and is about as real as the bit-mapped track babe.
Whilst other racing games are embracing the free-romm like NFS Most Wanted, Pro Street leaves the racer stuck on track after track with cars that handle like milk floats, accelerate with all the speed and agility of startled slugs and brake like the QE2.
I fervently wish I could get my money back for being terminally bored... twice, but as the games are locked to your user name it's not even possible to sell them on. If it were possible to give a negative value to this game, and Carbon, I would.

Awful, 06 Mar 2008
Not a great buy. I rarely review items I've bought but this is very disappointing. They've totally ruined the fun of the old NFS games without adding anything new. The graphics are very good but that's worth nothing unless the gameplay is good too. And the gameplay is awful. When you turn a corner, the car wobbles like it's made of jelly. Rubbish.

definitely an improvement, 20 Feb 2008
Many keep on saying NFS is getting worse with every new release. However, the only instalment I thought was worse than the previous one was Carbon. This one is definitely an improvement. Now when you bang your car at full speed into a wall you can't just reverse out or if your car turns upside down, it won't just magically reset itself onto the road. If you damage your car, you pay for it, just like in the real world. Also for first time you can tune the aerodynamics of your car.

Graphics are also great. They finally got rid of the annoying blur effect. I am running it on a high-end laptop though so I don't know how it will run on a mid/low-range computer.

Basically, EA has made the franchise more realistic. If you're looking for a realistic car racing game/simulator, this is for you. If you just want a fun game in which you can just keep your finger on the accelerator all the time, go for something else.

The best racing game ever? I think so!, 29 Jan 2008
This is one hell of a racing game. I'm totally hooked. The graphics are slick, the racing is brilliant, the customisation and tuning add a very real element to the game.

I read other reviews for this game and I have to say I cannot understand why some people find the very real aspect of this game a bad thing! OK there are no more street races, but the tracks you get to run on are really challenging, nearly every one has a corner or two that has you tuning and retuning the car to get around it quick without having to sacrifice the straight line speed. That is RACING. The only oversight I can see in this is that you cannot set the spoiler angle anywhere other than the garage, once in a race day you'll have to leave, to go reset you spoiler angle in your garage then play it again, but that's a small gripe.
There's no cops is another gripe, personally I don't care with a racer this good, I owned the very NFS1 & NFS2 where the second edition ditched the cops, that was not liked. The problem back then was that the game couldn't really carry itself without them, you selected a car and drove it around a track, then you did it again and again, there was no real competition at all. That's seriously fixed in Pro Street, this game does NOT need cops.
It's not like I don't suffer for playing this, my processor is below minimum spec, I own an AMD 64 Athlon @ 2.2Ghz, they recommended level is 2.8Ghz (and a multicore processor wouldn't hurt). So in between races during loading and saving I can end up waiting literally minutes to get where I'm going, that's frustrating and I have to restart the system sometimes to clear the choke. However I'm not going drop the maxed out levels down a bit, I will wait because every aspect of this game is amazing. The great thing is that the races run at full speed with almost the full frame rate and don't seem to suffer from the slow down, so it's a small price to pay.

So if you're thinking of buying this game, check to see that you've got the required spec or that you have the patience of a saint, because you'll need it if you don't have the hardware. The car doesn't handle like previous editions of NFS, you'll get a nasty surprise (I know I did), until you get the hang of things, but the hurdle is not a great one. You CANNOT drive these cars properly without a Force Feedback Steering Wheel, it's the only way to really FEEL what the car is doing, so invest in one - You won't regret it. Game Controllers and Keyboards just don't cut it, not with this game - Sorry Game Console fans, (Can you buy something similar?) Lastly you will have to TUNE the car to make it run properly around a race track, I have two sublime Grip Racers - a Nissan 240SX & 350Z. They didn't start out with the handling credentials they have now, with the exception of one or two corners in the entire Battle Machine series, these cars a blindingly fast and a nailed to the road surface. Maybe I'll share the blueprint, but I don't think I'm quite finished tuning it yet.

This game is not like Most Wanted or Carbon, it's more like a race simulator than the arcade racer that the other two were. You can wreck you car if you crash in this, that's pretty realistic. All told, with the huge customisation options, the tuning options, the Practise laps where you can tune the car on the fly to maximise it's potential. To the mind boggling array or race types - Grip, Grip Class, Grip Time Attack, Grip Sector Shootout, Quarter & Half Mile Drag. Drift, Dual Drift. Speed King - You won't be bored. The Visual Customisations are all free and you immediately have access to all of it, so now you can make a really sick looking machine from the word go. Even in the Bodywork you get a couple of freebies at the start to help sculpt the car. The Cartoon graphics of Carbon are gone and in my opinion are even better than those in Most Wanted. This game has a story to follow that seems much bigger than Carbon too and that's a good thing. The computer opponents could be better, by that I mean make you work for your win, once you get ahead you can simply leave them miles behind, which makes the track records a bit too easy to break. On a half mile drag race I'm posting 185mph in a Cobalt SS, the next nearest guy is only doing 104mph they should be much faster - That's Sunday Driving right there. Perhaps if they do Pro Street 2 (Pleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee do it - EA) they might let the users set the difficulty the opponents can provide, more so than in this game. If you're a Motor Racing fan, this is the game for you, if you expect this game to be like previous version of NFS then you might want to give this a miss.

10/10 EA - This is one totally slick racing game (Better than Forza 2 easily).


good solid well priced game, 19 Jul 2007
This is a good game that i would recommend you by it is especily good if you have a stering wheel and pedals if i were you i would recommend you by this game especily at the price it is. You need a fairly decent pc to run it yet it should work fine on most pc's overrall a very good game.

Yes but no!!!, 28 Jun 2007
Previously EA brought out some absolutley cracking games but this one just dosent quite match the exhillaration that you need when playing on a car game. Yes the graphics are quite good but the amount of fun that you can have on it is very limiting. Go ahead and buy it if it appeals to you but i would give it a serionus thought before you waste 20 odd pounds on a PC game with only 5/10 fun factor. Make the right choice look at others before you buy this!!! Please (sorry about the spelling i was in a rush).

Great game but dissappointing, 01 Feb 2007
EA has some good new features built into NFSC including aquiring territory and exclusive game modes for online play as well as most of the best bits from Wanted & Underground 2. However; graphics are a let down, and there are bugs in the game. I found that once I installed it I couldn't play online, but this can be fixed by downloading the European v1.3 patch (uk one has issues). Links to it can be found on EA NFSC forum. It's still a good game, but I found it was bit of hassle to find a patch that worked. Hopefully a new one will be coming from EA soon that fixes crashes n other problems. Summary: Reccomended driving game, but perhaps best to wait a while.

TO EASY, 22 Jan 2007
This game is ok good graphics reallistic cars etc. but the races are to easy to win compared to nfs most wanted,

Carbon, 29 Dec 2006
This game is a really good game but has a major fault. After playing the game you need to select quit to return to windows, but for some reason when selecting quit it often freezes and causes the computer to crash, the only way to get around this problem is to press Ctrl,Alt,Del before quiting and end the game like that. This is very annoying but it is still a good game with very good graphics. I have searched on the internet and have found that other people are also having this problem and i think this is very poor.

Good game - little respect, 16 Feb 2008
I, like most people above, have been a fan of the NFS series for some time. I can't quite understand how people are slating Carbon so much. It IS a good game. I got into this on my brother-in-law's PS2 and got it for my PC - I wasn't unhappy. Great graphics, great gameplay, great challenges and great cars. The only thing I would argue with EA games is the career mode is too damned short.
I got hold of NFS Most Wanted after Carbon and was made aware of the better gameplay and depth of the game - Carbon lacks depth. True. But Carbon is better in a few respects - Most Wanted is lacking in the drifting elements - these were great in the Underground series and Carbon has succeeded in putting them back in - it's a little more interesting drifting on the canyons!
With all that said, Carbon is a game that people SHOULD buy - but don't bother with Pro Street - that IS awful.
EA should consider a merging of Most Wanted and Carbon - perhaps calling it Need For Speed: Most Carbonated?

Surprised..., 16 Sep 2007
I was surprised how easy this game was to complete. 2 days it took me and it was so easy i cud of done it with my eyes shut to be honest. Woudlnt recoemmned buying. I realli shud have saved my money for the upcoming Pro Street. hopefully it will be a lot better! Dont buy now! Wait for Pro Street unless your stupid like me!

Disapointed Really, 11 Feb 2007
After playing NFS Most Wanted and seeing the adverts/ trailers for NFS Carbon, I knew I had to have it. Once I got it I was quite disapointed.

Most Wanted was a real great game and still is my favorite Race game.

NFS Carbon has its good points, also its bad

My Good Points:
1. The Cars in my eyes are better being a huge fan of American Classic cars/ hot rods.

2. The Drift is really cool, The only thing I actully really liked about the game.

3. Car Customisation is alot better

4. The Crew members idea is pretty good but can also get in the way quite alot which gets agrovating after a while.

My Bad Points:

1. Completed this game in 2 days and I played about 3-4 hours max each day of the two. Compared with MW, this was pretty boring, it took me a week to complete MW and there was alot more of a challenge and also more fun.

2. The police side of things is absalute crap, MW police chases were really great, Carbon lacks this.

3. Its always Nightime during race! This gets annoying, I know NW is always day time with weather conditions but I prefered it.

My Advise, If your not into American Hot rods/ classic cars go and buy NFS Most Wanted, it is a much better game !

The highlight of the game to me is the American Cars and changing the parts (pretty good selection of parts) so it looks exactly how you want it. Other than that, I dont play it.


NFS Carbon: Disappointing, 05 Jan 2007
Carbon adds almost nothing to the extremely enjoyable NFS Most Wanted.

Ability to jump straight to a race, Car autosculpt and race crew seem to be only benefits. Game engine seems identical to Most Wanted, game start up has identical series of click throughs which seem to suggest a straight port from NFS Most Wanted with only changes on the graphics rendering and a few add on modules for autosculpt and Crew members.

Races and drift are fun enough and as a fan of the NFS series I'll play them through and probably enjoy them. If however you came to this game new having played other racers like Project Gotham or Ridge Racer you are likely to be severely disappointed.

Recommendation - Go for NFS Most Wanted or NFS Underground - Bypass this one.

Make some effort EA!!, 05 Dec 2006
The game finally arrived after 3 weeks!! too long even for super saver delivery.

Should have listened to others really, the game borrowed a lot of the elements from Most Wanted; the cop cars are the same, the pursuit theme song is the same, the police radio speech is the same, the physics and handling of cars are the same, and even the whole story is a follow up from MW!! It's almost like EA is running out of ideas for future NFS titles.

Another point worth mentioning is the game graphic which is somewhat better than MW but for some reason runs a lot slower.

But there are still good things in this game though such as the drift race, which is a lot better than in Underground 2, and also I love the aotosculpting feature, hence three stars for this game.

All in all it is still playable but I'd much prefer to wait until EA have perfected the game rather than rushing to release before Christmas.

Pretty tiresome, repetitive and inconsistent, 23 Jun 2008
I bought this game as a huge fan of Need for Speed: Carbon, but was very disappointed. Although the game runs fine on my old single core 3.2Ghz, 3Gb RAM, Radeon 1650, and looks nice, the storyline is less than waferthin and it's not alway very clear what you're supposed to be doing. The upgrading procedure for your car isn't always obvious - in Carbon, you knew when you started to get beaten in races that you had to upgrade or buy a new car, but in Pro Street, it doesn't seem that intuitive.

It's a nice touch that the visual modifications are free, but you have to unlock the highest grade parts which you need to really beat the game, and you can't always guarantee that you'll unlock them because of the random rewards system at the end of each race. The point system used for scoring is also frustrating - you can come first in each race on a race day, but still not dominate it to get the higher rewards, which seems counter-intuitive.

The cars handle ok, and they do seem to respond differently depending on the upgrades you get. The drag racing is a nice touch, and the speed challenge where you try to get through the race and maintain as high a speed as possible over a long period of time, is particularly nerve-wracking.

The race order is a bit annoying as well - in the middle, you seem to have to repeat races. At the end, you also have to do three race days of the same race in order to challenge the 'king' of that kind of race. I do like a good race, but doing three drifts per race, for example, six races per race day, three race days and then nine to challenge the drift king is really monotonous - that's over fifty drift races in a row to beat him. Some of the 'kings' are also ridiculously easy - the (haha) drag king barely finishes a quarter mile in fourteen seconds, and the overall Street King only has one car, which really limits him on the drag racing and grip racing.

Although some of the races are run, the tracks are fairly boring and you have to be quite committed to finish it. Overall, some nice touches, but really, it's monotonous, dull, inconsistent, frustrating and not much fun a lot of the time.

If you don't have Carbon, buy that instead. If you do, then think twice before you buy this one.

Dull as Ditch-water..., 04 May 2008
I promised myself that after the total let-down of Carbon I wouldn't buy another NFS... What a mistake I made forgetting that promise. Whilst I applaud the damage element of the game the rest is just dull dull dull. The story line is pathetic, the tuning of the cars is pointless and has very little actual effect on the handling, in the fact the whole 'realism' is as contrived as it is possible to be and is about as real as the bit-mapped track babe.
Whilst other racing games are embracing the free-romm like NFS Most Wanted, Pro Street leaves the racer stuck on track after track with cars that handle like milk floats, accelerate with all the speed and agility of startled slugs and brake like the QE2.
I fervently wish I could get my money back for being terminally bored... twice, but as the games are locked to your user name it's not even possible to sell them on. If it were possible to give a negative value to this game, and Carbon, I would.

Awful, 06 Mar 2008
Not a great buy. I rarely review items I've bought but this is very disappointing. They've totally ruined the fun of the old NFS games without adding anything new. The graphics are very good but that's worth nothing unless the gameplay is good too. And the gameplay is awful. When you turn a corner, the car wobbles like it's made of jelly. Rubbish.

definitely an improvement, 20 Feb 2008
Many keep on saying NFS is getting worse with every new release. However, the only instalment I thought was worse than the previous one was Carbon. This one is definitely an improvement. Now when you bang your car at full speed into a wall you can't just reverse out or if your car turns upside down, it won't just magically reset itself onto the road. If you damage your car, you pay for it, just like in the real world. Also for first time you can tune the aerodynamics of your car.

Graphics are also great. They finally got rid of the annoying blur effect. I am running it on a high-end laptop though so I don't know how it will run on a mid/low-range computer.

Basically, EA has made the franchise more realistic. If you're looking for a realistic car racing game/simulator, this is for you. If you just want a fun game in which you can just keep your finger on the accelerator all the time, go for something else.

The best racing game ever? I think so!, 29 Jan 2008
This is one hell of a racing game. I'm totally hooked. The graphics are slick, the racing is brilliant, the customisation and tuning add a very real element to the game.

I read other reviews for this game and I have to say I cannot understand why some people find the very real aspect of this game a bad thing! OK there are no more street races, but the tracks you get to run on are really challenging, nearly every one has a corner or two that has you tuning and retuning the car to get around it quick without having to sacrifice the straight line speed. That is RACING. The only oversight I can see in this is that you cannot set the spoiler angle anywhere other than the garage, once in a race day you'll have to leave, to go reset you spoiler angle in your garage then play it again, but that's a small gripe.
There's no cops is another gripe, personally I don't care with a racer this good, I owned the very NFS1 & NFS2 where the second edition ditched the cops, that was not liked. The problem back then was that the game couldn't really carry itself without them, you selected a car and drove it around a track, then you did it again and again, there was no real competition at all. That's seriously fixed in Pro Street, this game does NOT need cops.
It's not like I don't suffer for playing this, my processor is below minimum spec, I own an AMD 64 Athlon @ 2.2Ghz, they recommended level is 2.8Ghz (and a multicore processor wouldn't hurt). So in between races during loading and saving I can end up waiting literally minutes to get where I'm going, that's frustrating and I have to restart the system sometimes to clear the choke. However I'm not going drop the maxed out levels down a bit, I will wait because every aspect of this game is amazing. The great thing is that the races run at full speed with almost the full frame rate and don't seem to suffer from the slow down, so it's a small price to pay.

So if you're thinking of buying this game, check to see that you've got the required spec or that you have the patience of a saint, because you'll need it if you don't have the hardware. The car doesn't handle like previous editions of NFS, you'll get a nasty surprise (I know I did), until you get the hang of things, but the hurdle is not a great one. You CANNOT drive these cars properly without a Force Feedback Steering Wheel, it's the only way to really FEEL what the car is doing, so invest in one - You won't regret it. Game Controllers and Keyboards just don't cut it, not with this game - Sorry Game Console fans, (Can you buy something similar?) Lastly you will have to TUNE the car to make it run properly around a race track, I have two sublime Grip Racers - a Nissan 240SX & 350Z. They didn't start out with the handling credentials they have now, with the exception of one or two corners in the entire Battle Machine series, these cars a blindingly fast and a nailed to the road surface. Maybe I'll share the blueprint, but I don't think I'm quite finished tuning it yet.

This game is not like Most Wanted or Carbon, it's more like a race simulator than the arcade racer that the other two were. You can wreck you car if you crash in this, that's pretty realistic. All told, with the huge customisation options, the tuning options, the Practise laps where you can tune the car on the fly to maximise it's potential. To the mind boggling array or race types - Grip, Grip Class, Grip Time Attack, Grip Sector Shootout, Quarter & Half Mile Drag. Drift, Dual Drift. Speed King - You won't be bored. The Visual Customisations are all free and you immediately have access to all of it, so now you can make a really sick looking machine from the word go. Even in the Bodywork you get a couple of freebies at the start to help sculpt the car. The Cartoon graphics of Carbon are gone and in my opinion are even better than those in Most Wanted. This game has a story to follow that seems much bigger than Carbon too and that's a good thing. The computer opponents could be better, by that I mean make you work for your win, once you get ahead you can simply leave them miles behind, which makes the track records a bit too easy to break. On a half mile drag race I'm posting 185mph in a Cobalt SS, the next nearest guy is only doing 104mph they should be much faster - That's Sunday Driving right there. Perhaps if they do Pro Street 2 (Pleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee do it - EA) they might let the users set the difficulty the opponents can provide, more so than in this game. If you're a Motor Racing fan, this is the game for you, if you expect this game to be like previous version of NFS then you might want to give this a miss.

10/10 EA - This is one totally slick racing game (Better than Forza 2 easily).


good solid well priced game, 19 Jul 2007
This is a good game that i would recommend you by it is especily good if you have a stering wheel and pedals if i were you i would recommend you by this game especily at the price it is. You need a fairly decent pc to run it yet it should work fine on most pc's overrall a very good game.

Yes but no!!!, 28 Jun 2007
Previously EA brought out some absolutley cracking games but this one just dosent quite match the exhillaration that you need when playing on a car game. Yes the graphics are quite good but the amount of fun that you can have on it is very limiting. Go ahead and buy it if it appeals to you but i would give it a serionus thought before you waste 20 odd pounds on a PC game with only 5/10 fun factor. Make the right choice look at others before you buy this!!! Please (sorry about the spelling i was in a rush).

Great game but dissappointing, 01 Feb 2007
EA has some good new features built into NFSC including aquiring territory and exclusive game modes for online play as well as most of the best bits from Wanted & Underground 2. However; graphics are a let down, and there are bugs in the game. I found that once I installed it I couldn't play online, but this can be fixed by downloading the European v1.3 patch (uk one has issues). Links to it can be found on EA NFSC forum. It's still a good game, but I found it was bit of hassle to find a patch that worked. Hopefully a new one will be coming from EA soon that fixes crashes n other problems. Summary: Reccomended driving game, but perhaps best to wait a while.

TO EASY, 22 Jan 2007
This game is ok good graphics reallistic cars etc. but the races are to easy to win compared to nfs most wanted,

Carbon, 29 Dec 2006
This game is a really good game but has a major fault. After playing the game you need to select quit to return to windows, but for some reason when selecting quit it often freezes and causes the computer to crash, the only way to get around this problem is to press Ctrl,Alt,Del before quiting and end the game like that. This is very annoying but it is still a good game with very good graphics. I have searched on the internet and have found that other people are also having this problem and i think this is very poor.

Rally Championship Xtreme, 26 May 2004
Look, if you can get your hands on this for a cheap price, then my advice is to do it. If you have a force feedback wheel, you will be pushed to find a driving game that is more absorbing and fun. In this department it whips CMR games outright. As an out and out simulation, no it is nowhere near the level of detail/options as CMR games. What the other dude says about the steering being unresponsive is utter guff. The car takes damage throughout the rally stages and eventually if your steering or suspension become very badly damaged, then yes, the steering can be a little challenging, but thats what you'd expect if you drove a rally car around smashing chunks off it - Is it not?

The game is particularly good fun once you have unlocked the classic cars, they handle a whole lot differently to everything else. In fact all the cars handle a lot more differently which again is an advantage over CMR games.

It will run very well on medium powered systems and of course runs amazingly on 3ghz +

Be sure to patch the game to the latest version to avoid any crashes in the menus.

Failed to qualify, 02 Dec 2002
If this game were to be judged by the quality of its image programming, it would be rated at 5 stars. For sure it's all exceptionally pretty in the visual department. But the quality of the courses and dynamics of the vehicles are simply dreadful.

The courses are ridiculously configured, many of the hazards are hidden in too-deep shadow and many of the routes are indecipherable. The night-time sections are jokes, given that any brush against any object nearly always puts out your lights and makes further progress impossible.

The dynamics of the vehicles are laughable with impossibly unstable steering, with suspensions that do anything but keep the wheels in contact with the ground, and with a number of the cars (including FWD and 4WD vehicles) displaying a dogged determination to have the back wheels overtaking the front wheels. Maybe they put the wrong car images into the game... perhaps they meant to put in racing tractors with bouncey coil springs on grossly over-sized tyres and with little wings sprouting from the sides, because that's what the cars feel like to drive. They spend so much time bouncing about in the air for no apparent reason that I feel the game could be rebilled as Aerocar and controlled through a joystick.

As for the gameplay itself, the game is unnecessarily restrictive about what cars it will let you drive, where and when. There is no opportunity to drive the courses under different lighting or weather conditions than those given. Even on a 2GHz machine, there were several occasions when control lag was evident, making steering (in particular) a very hazardous task. The default keyboard assignations are ill-considered and the game's menu systems are incredibly clumsily structured.

This could have been such a good game because it has so many good things going for it. But its drivability and usability, which should have been hammered into shape during Beta-testing, are virtually non-existent.

A decent arcade rally game..., 26 Feb 2002
Rally Championship Xtreme is a decent arcade rally game. It looks fantastic, it's a lot of fun, but it's certainly not a hard simulation.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it's a shift from the focus of the previous Rally Championship games. Stages now only take a few minutes and are somewhat less than authentic - in the first stage there's a ramp that lets you take a flying shortcut. I'm not sure that kind of thing appears in real rallies... In the second (Manx) rally, the first stage starts out in a rather confusing dockyard.

Again, this is a decent game, as long as what you're looking for is a fun PC driver that's not too taxing.

What Technical Support?, 29 Nov 2001
Well, this simulation promises to be great. I have used it on a machine that it works on and its all that a rally simulation should be. It looks good, flows well and drives realistically.

What a different experience, when I come to use it on my PC. All because the MS FF Wheel I use wont set up properly. End product, throttle stays on full and the brakes dont work at all. Not the best way to drive a car! Not a real problem I thought, contact the support site on the web. This just gives you a phone number.

Still not to be put off so easily, I rang them. They informed me that the developers were aware of the problem which is affecting "hundreds" of people, but sadly they were all on holiday. What??

This is a typically poor support scenario which spoils what should be a great product. Worth thinking about when looking at this title. Come on Actualize, Warthog and EA - sort it out.

At last a decent Rally game, 05 Nov 2001
After what has been a drought on PC for Rally fans like me along comes this.

Great graphics and good physics which is what matters. The game starts you with the lower powered 2 wheel drive cars meaning you have to race your way up to get the more powerful machinery keeping me racing well into the night