I tought the whole street racing thing had run its course, but it looks like EA disagreed. So says Need for Speed (NFS) Carbon, which is really the third iteration of the Underground series. I see no reason for EA to release a third version in the series other than EA knowing that everything Need for Speed sells (i.e. cash cow).
Seriously, I figured by now everyone would have done the street racing until they were ready to puke, and move on to more interesting aspects of the NFS series. I assumed the car pimping thing was played out by now. Silly me. Never under estimate the EA marketing machine.
I never played the Midnight club series, but I spent plenty of time with NFS Underground, and just enough with Underground to know that I was done pimping.
Traditional NFS with exotic sports cars, and great multi-stage tracks is what NFS is all about. Not illegal street racing, pimp daddy stuff. The only thing that will save this thing has to be the graphics, which look impressive, but I still have to wonder why EA would not go after the broader NFS audience. Pimping has to have limited market potential compared to something like NFS Hot Pursuit 2, which is really one of the high points in the NFS series.
Yet another sign that I must be moving further outside of anyone’s target audience for fun. I hope the gaming companies remember that as games get more expensive, my demographic actually has disposable cash spend on nonessential items, such as video games. No pimping for me, but give me a new NFS with some sort of Hot Pursuit mode – and of course some pretty graphics – then call me happy.
