Cars review

Summer? Check.
Kids’ film from Disney/Pixar? Check.
Rubbish videogame to try and cash-in on the film’s success? Che-…oh, wait.

The attempt to cash-in on the almost-guaranteed success of Cars might be there, but the actual game itself, shockingly, isn’t rubbish. What’s gone wrong?

The film on goes on release this weekend in the UK, but Cars has already reached the top of the videogame sales chart. Marketing power in all its glory there, folks. It’s the same with any licensed game, usually; release a game with characters, levels, or even just some box art that people recognise, and it will sell. Unusually though, Cars is actually a fairly decent game. Nice to see something bucking the trend for once.

Racing Up the Charts

The main game sees you playing as the film’s main character, the sports car Lightning McQueen. He’s a “hotshot rookie” and your typical cool, calm guy (well he's a car, but you know what I mean) who’s also a hit with the, er, ladies. You guide him around the town of Radiator Springs, competing in races, doing challenges and helping people. The main goal is to win the prestigious Piston Cup, but Lightning has plenty of other things to get stuck into.

The central hub of Radiator Springs is actually pretty big, and you can drive for a long time just tearing around, going over jumps or ramming other cars. Challenges, races and other events are highlighted by different coloured dots on the in-game map and radar, and it’s simply a case of driving to the dot and pressing square to start the event. It can be a bit tiresome having to drive to somewhere on the map just to get on with the next race, and this isn’t helped by the colour of the dots on the map not corresponding to the colour of the dots on the radar, making it trickier sometimes than it needs to be to just find the event.

The events themselves vary in how enjoyable they are; races are the best of the bunch, although they’re often too easy. They’re still decent though, and you’ll spend most of your time on them. Other driving events are usually related to one of the other characters.

For example, there’s a pursuit event where you plays as the police car, and have to chase down speeding cars. These other events are generally ok, although some are more tiresome than others. Finally, there are challenges either set by other characters or challenges that you need to do in order to help other characters. These are often, to be blunt, very boring and drag on needlessly. Twenty levels of the same boring minigame really does nothing to add to the game’s appeal.

Nice Body Work. Or Not.

If you’re a fan of the film, or have got kids who are, characters and locations will be instantly recognisable. The same voice-actors from the film provide speech for the game, and all of the models look like their film counterparts. Sadly, they’re not quite up to the same graphical standard. At times, this game wouldn’t look out of place running on an N64.

For a game that’s going to be ported to pretty much every format under the sun, this isn’t surprising, but as a PlayStation 2 game in the console’s twilight years, a lot more could have been done here. Saying that, it does mean that there’s no slowdown in the game, and a stable frame rate keeps things looking better than they could have been. The game’s soundtrack fits well alongside the authentic voice acting, and sound effects are decent if not amazing.

Fans of the film will be pleased to see that there’s plenty of unlockable content up for grabs, in the form of artwork, new characters, and clips from the film. To unlock these you’ll need to fork out bonus points, with each item costing a certain amount.

Bonus points are collected in the main story mode, by racing, picking up Bolt Icons, getting air by doing jumps, and a whole range of other things. It’s very easy to rack up a lot of these points, but at least gives added incentive for playing on if you want to open up all the unlockable content.

Champion or Chump?

Alongside the main story mode there’s a two player option and an arcade mode (this just lets you race on any unlocked track or play any unlocked minigame). While the two player options is a nice addition, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to do any race again via the arcade mode, and only one or two minigames will warrant any additional attention outside of the main game.

Saying that, I’m not a kid, and it’s clear that this game is aimed at children. If you have a child that’s a fan of the film, this will no-doubt appeal to them and they may well find it a lot more enjoyable than older gamers. There are two difficulty modes; one for younger players and one for older players, and the lack of difficulty mentioned earlier can probably be disregarded if a child is playing.

Cars is by no means a great game, but it’s decent, enjoyable at times and marks an upward turn in the quality of film-licensed videogames.