Well, gosh; where to begin? When I first immersed myself in the NFS series with Underground 2, I found myself immediately enthralled with the sport of racing.

When Carbon came along it was a nice change of pace from the basically dull city-atmosphere of the Underground. It has its ups and its downs, just like any game does. I'll begin by pointing out that Carbon has something that every NFS fan likes: Police. The thrill of being chased and running from the law is a guilty pleasure that everyone experiences at least once in their lifetimes, because nobody is perfect. To have cops cracking down on you at every corner you drift through, hunting you down with progressively toughter tactics and forcing you into hiding is what really makes the game worthwhile. Where the game would otherwise be dull, law enforcement will keep you on your toes and satisfy those fantasies.

Yes, Carbon definitely has what it takes to instill an adrenaline rush, but it also gave up something else that really should've stayed: drag racing. Those flat-out 1/4 mile burnouts are one of the true tests of skill with the clutch, but Carbon doesn't have it. In place of drag races, Carbon provides you with what's called a "touge" racing option, better known as the Canyon race. These races truly bring out the best (or worst) of your cornering skills and put you to the ultimate test in a game of cat-and-mouse. But when you chase down your opponent and lose in the 2nd stage, only to have to repeat the 1st, it gets kind of monotonous and I threw down my controller in frustration after doing this for 5 times in a row during my first run of the game.

Speaking of those Canyons, I wish Carbon gave you the option of roaming them freely like you could roam Palmont City in Career mode. For those fleeting seconds when you cut the corners in the canyons, you get a glimpse of the scenery and the view of Palmont City from a distance. And the city display itself in all its glory to you with towering skyscrapers, blazing lights, its moronic traffic, and best of all: destructable condiments. Road signs, bus stops, newspaper stands, all of them will shatter the moment you barrel through them at 150 mph, and there's something satisfying about bringing down a pyramid of pipes onto your opponents as you dart down the home stretch to the finish line. As far as graphics go, the Gamecube's hardware doesn't say much, but Carbon can speak for itself in that regard. The fact that you can manually sculpt body parts for an infintesimally large combination of styles is also a plus, even if you're only given a few bases to start with. The few graphical attributes that did annoy me, however, included the fact that damage modeling amounted to nothing more than cracked windows and scratched paint on your car, whereas police vehicles could be near-totalled simply by sideswiping them, and the fact that vinyls appeared rather pixellated when applied to your car, compared to the shiny chrome paint job. Needless to say, said vinyls stuck out like sore thumbs. Only the custom jobs that belonged to the bosses and the other unlockable logos really made it up to scratch.

And while we're on the subject of scratching, who the hell threw together the EA tracks for this game? The greatest bane of the NFS series seems to be the mixed-artist-and-genre tracks that play during free roam. Whoever throws these soundtracks together needs to be drug out to the street and shot. But not all the music is bad; the scores that play during police pursuits and Canyon Races boast excellent quality that will have you cranking up the volume. The sounds of the engines roaring as you fly through the gears, the turbo and supercharger systems exhaling with every downshift, and the screech of the tires during the pre-race burnout are all nice touches as well. And to tip the hat in favor of the cops, the police radio chatter you hear during pursuits sounds very realistic (if annoying due to how often you hear it). I found it satisfying every time I heard the sound of shattering glass when I smashed through police roadblocks and the anger of the policemen themselves as they complained about the fact that I rammed their cruisers, putting them into the wall at hundreds of miles an hour.

But with all this and the whole kit-n-kaboodle, the game loses its playability. Once you've completed Career Mode, all the Challenge Series events, and lit up every Reward Card there is to offer, that's it. The game is practically over and you're only left with the option of starting a new alias or finding other ways to waste your time in the city that you now own. Money becomes extremely hard to come by once you clear all the races once through. All the tougher characters have high-tailed it, and all that's left is the occasional free-roam challenge or police pursuit until your last car is impounded, then it's game over.

As I said before, Carbon is for those racer die-hards. If you're just out blowing money for no particular reason, don't make Carbon your primary choice. Grab it if you see it on sale.