Need for Speed Carbon PSP (working title) First Look

Need for Speed Carbon is the upcoming entry in EA's venerable racing series, and the recently announced title is poised to hit consoles and portable systems this fall. As with last year's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the PSP incarnation of the game will differ some from its console cousins. This year's installment complements the racing action you'd expect from a Need for Speed game with a more involved story, new gameplay mechanics that revolve around building a racing crew, and the open-world gameplay seen in the console games. We had the opportunity to get an exclusive look at the forthcoming game to get an idea of what to expect.

Need for Speed Carbon is coming to the PSP with some interesting new gameplay features.

Need for Speed Carbon will feature three main game modes along with a handful of the extras that we've come to expect from the series. The core of the game will be the career style mode, called Own the Streets, which will revolve around the story. Quickplay will let you jump into a race if you just want to get a quick run in without sweating the story. Multiplayer will offer ad hoc and infrastructure races for four players. You'll find 20 circuit tracks, as well as five point-to-point and sprint tracks to use when taking on friends in the mode. Besides the game modes, Carbon will also feature a media center that will house all music and videos for you to check out once they're unlocked, and a feature to let you customize various aspects of the game to your liking.

The story, which will unfold via animated stills, is a mystery for you to piece together. The team drew inspiration from noir films for this year's tale, which is set up by an unfortunate accident that leaves you hospitalized and not entirely clear on what happened. Your lady friend, Sara, is on hand after the smashup and she fills you in on what's going on, including telling you about the death of your brother. For your part, most of what's happened is a blur, although you can remember the bird logo of the car responsible for your crash. Finding out what happened and tracking down the driver of the car that led to your crash is your big motivator in this year's game. In order to do that, you'll set out to take control of the various neighborhoods in the city by facing off against the crews that control them.

If this sounds like a pretty tall order for someone who was recently in a car crash, it is. Thankfully, you'll have a little help from your friends, and this ties into one of the key new aspects of Carbon's gameplay: crew racing. As with the previous Need for Speed games, you'll find yourself tearing through the city streets and competing against rival drivers. However, the crew mechanic now puts a new spin on the action. Over the course of the game, you'll find and recruit different racers to be part of your crew. Once you start to have a posse, you'll be able to select a wingman to join you in a race. Each wingman will have his or her own unique ability that you can trigger during a race to help give you an edge when facing off against the competition.

All told, you'll find 17 different characters that will fit into one of three different classes: brawlers, drafters, and assassins. Brawlers will take out whatever car you've targeted; drafters will move in front of you and let you gain a speed boost if you can position yourself behind them and fill a draft meter; and assassins will speed out in front of you and your opponents and lay down a spiked strip that will temporarily incapacitate any vehicle that drives over it. Unfortunately, the spiked strip doesn't distinguish between friend or foe, which means the hazard also applies to you, so you'll have to be careful when using it. Given the different challenges you'll face over the course of the game, it appears that there's going to be a degree of strategy involved in picking out your wingman, as you'll want to make sure you have someone with the most useful ability.

You'll need to take over 14 territories in order to find your brother's killer in the game.

A nice aspect of the wingman mechanic is that each member of your crew will gain experience over the course of the game when they're used in a race, which will power up their unique ability in role-playing game style. Gaining these various wingmen will revolve around your progression in the game and, more importantly, your crew's reputation. While your journey to take over the 14 territories that make up the city is obviously an important aspect of gaining access to more folks, having a high reputation is going to be equally important, as new crew members may not want to join you if your rep isn't high enough. Your reputation will be tied to your success rate, so you don't want to lose many races if you want to have a diverse crew. Getting new faces into the crew will be important, because even though you'll likely have reps from each class in your group early on, crew members will have unique attributes within their class that will grow as you evolve them. So, for example, some assassins may have wider spike strips than others, which may wind up being more useful to you during a race depending on the race conditions.