After enjoying the world of Excite Truck I was looking forward to reviewing the Nintendo Wii version of Need For Speed: Carbon. Unfortunately, while Excite's motion controls seem to be crafted with loving care, Carbon's controls are a sloppy lazy mess. My review at AMN goes into plenty of detail on this disappointment from Electronic Arts.
Carbon suffers from some frustrating steering problems. The game’s default sensitivity setting sends cars veering off the road at a sharp angle if the remote is tilted even slightly, and the two alternate sensitivity levels ("loose" and "tight") do not help matters much. Keeping the car on the road is a major challenge, and sliding off the road into a barricade is a very common occurrence. A small steering wheel icon at the bottom of the screen indicates how far the remote is currently tilted, but unfortunately this information is nothing that players do not already know by simply holding on to the remote.
My (non-gaming) parents are visiting me this week and as I was finishing my work with Carbon they each wanted a turn behind the wheel. My father agrees with me about the poor control, but would you believe that my mother led the police on a twenty minute chase through the streets of Palmont? Go Mom!
