This whole system is reasonably cool in setup, though since you're allowed to retry any race you fail you're never really in much danger of losing anything you've earned. After you're in possession of a territory, other crews will occasionally try to take them from you and you're prompted to compete in a defending race. Each territory has a number of individual races, and taking over more than half of them will earn you the territory. Need for Speed Carbon's single-player story is focused around taking over and defending territories. Like the Canyon races, they're basically tests of how far you want to push your car to win. The drift races wind up being a decent bit of simplistic fun. You'll get bonus multipliers for stringing multiple turns together, but that's about as complex as it gets, for better or worse. Rather than being based on moves like faints or over-steering, everything is based on speed and how sideways you can get. Drifting is very arcadey in Carbon, with a simple tap of the brake being all you need to put the car into a slide. One returning competition type from the Underground games is drift racing. It's pretty cool in concept, though we wish they were more prevalent in the game.

These races are pretty cool in that the side of the track is a simple barrier that overlooks a very long drop, so if you push your car too much you may wind up at the bottom of the canyon in a heaping wreck. After finishing enough races to take over a territory on the map, you'll meet up with that crew's boss along a cliff side in a winner-take-all competition. The main new race type in Carbon is the Canyon races. We're certainly supportive of this design. Cop Heat is still an issue that you'll have to contend with, however, meaning that while the cops have taken a backseat to the actual racing, they're still prevalent. While cops are still about, you don't need to build up evasion runs like you did in Most Wanted to progress. Many of the race modes from Most Wanted have returned, namely things like the Speedtrap races. Released not too long ago on the Xbox 360 and current-gen systems, the game is something like a sequel to last year's Most Wanted, but has enough changes to the layout and format that it warranted a new name. EA's Need for Speed series still has the pedal to the floor with its latest release, Need for Speed Carbon, launching alongside the PlayStation 3's North American premiere.

Need for speed carbon ps3 split screen