Over at FileShack you can now download the Need for Speed: Carbon demo. The 650mb download includes a Circuit track and a Drift track as well as a Canyon Duel. Thanks 3D Gamers.

Following Chris' preview of the game comes a Q&A with Need for Speed Carbon producer Kristian von Fersen. I got a chance to find out even more about the game's three unique car classes, Canyon Races, as well as other features EA is implementing to keep the NFS series a fresh choice for racing fans. Check out the interview here.

Kristian von Fersen: The Canyon Duel is a 2 stage race. The player's car is in the "follow" position during the 1st stage and his goal is to stay as close as possible to the lead car without going over the edge of the cliff. The closer you can stay to the bumper of the car in front of you, the more points you'll score during this run. If you successfully reach the finish line, you will end up with a total score. During the 2nd stage, the player's car is in the "lead" position and you are trying to get to the bottom of the run as fast as possible while putting as much distance as you can between you and your opponent. Your goal is to defend the score you put up in the 1st stage against your rival when the roles are reversed [...]

EA recently officially announced Need for Speed Carbon, the latest in its long running multiplatform racing series. At the company's Summer Showcase, I had the opportunity to check out the Xbox 360 version of Carbon. This time around, developer EA Black Box has added some new twists, including car class affiliations, the ability to build up a crew, heavy vehicle customization, and more. Check out this first look.

Hiring a fabricator gives you access to Carbon's new Autosculpt feature, a comprehensive tool allowing you to shape many physical aspects of your vehicles. It's quite similar to Oblivion's slider-based character customization tool. A huge number of body attributes including rims, tires, hood, side panels, intakes, spoilers, grills, and many others, can be tweaked by way of realtime slider controls. Spoilers can be enlarged, intakes can be widened, wheels can be deepened, the front grill can be shrunk down a bit; there are a huge amount of changes that can be made to each vehicle. However, the changes are purely cosmetic and do not affect gameplay in any way.