Carbon was on the short side, but it was fun the whole way through.
Gameplay-The campaign is a huge open city. The only problem with it is that there isn't much in it. It is divided into 4 sections. Each of them are run by either exotics, muscles, tuners, or a mixture of them all. Muscle cars are pretty fast, but they have loose handling. Exotics (my personal favorite) are an all around car with solid stats in everything. Tuners have sharp turning, but their cars suck in comparison. Once you beat all of the races in each of the major sections, you have to fight the boss. They aren't too terribly hard, but you need your car upgraded to stand a chance. You race them in canyons, which is very fun. The goal is to outrun your opponents car. The farther away you are, the better, but there is a second part where you need to chase them. For that, you need to get as close as possible. Other race modes include ones that have been in the previous NFS: checkpoint, circut, sprint, drift and some others. The canyon races are brand new. You manage everything in campaign at your safe house. There you can customize your car. The customization isn't as deep as it has been but it balances that out by the new autosculpt feature which is very fun to use. There are crew members in this game, which are brand new. There are three types of members: Drafters, scouts, and blockers. They are pretty fun to use and very useful. I like the new crew feature, and I hope they keep it for later installments.There are cops in this one. They sometimes chase you while you race but mostly when you are just driving around. They are moderately hard to outrun, but they're easy to kill. There is a story in the game, but you will probably forget about it. The acting is pretty aweful in the cutscenes. Now for the online. The online is fun, but there are only two game modes, and they both involve cops. This was a dissappointment. You probably won't spend that much time in it also, since there aren't a lot of people on. Other than that the game is a lot of fun. My only complaint with the gameplay is they don't incorporate the city enough since you can just jump to races and there aren't a lot of secrets.
Graphics-There are pretty much two kinds of graphics. The SD and HD. This game looks AWEFUL in SD. It truly looks worse than NFSU2. The problem with it is that the lines are so jagged and there are lots of pixels. What makes it worse is that you can't adjust the video at all. This is the only game that I have that looks bad in SD. I have 3 other games. But I have heard that it looks good in HD so I will give the graphics a solid 7. The lighting is great even in SD. The trees light up has your headlights shine at them. There are lots of reflections off of your car too. The motion blur is ok. Sound-The sound effects are top notch in this game. The engines sound incredible and the music fits the game well, although it can get a little annoying. The only complaint I have with the sound is the voice acting is pretty bad in the cutscenes. During the races it is actually pretty good though. Value-The campaign length is the biggest downer. It is relatively short compared to other NFS games. But you can still easily spend 20 hours on it. Plus you can replay it again with different cars. The online won't last long though because of its limited use. There is split-screen which is nice. Last but not least there is a challenge mode. Overall, this might be a buyer, but at least a renter. It all depends on how much have liked these games.
There are a lot of cool new things that have been added in Carbon. I think just about everyone should be kept. With a little better online and some added length, this game could have been awesome. It still didn't beat my liking of Underground 2 though.