Cars - more fun than you could shake a steering wheel at!

In PIXAR’s brilliant animated movie Cars, young rookie racing car Lightning McQueen battled his way to victory - well, very nearly - in the prestigious Piston Cup. In this official game of the movie, we find McQueen at home with his buddies in Radiator Springs, training for the new season and hoping to go one better. However, before he can compete in the tournament, much is to be done…

Featuring all the lovable characters from the movie, Cars has various playing modes but I’ll deal with the most important one first - the story mode. This features 30 levels and associated cut scenes describing the whole season from McQueen’s first dream of a race in Radiator Springs itself to the big final of the Piston Cup. You mainly control Lightning, though at times you take control of various other characters (there are 10 playable characters in all). As you explore Radiator Springs and the surrounding area, you can access some of the levels - each one a race of some kind or a mini-game - on successful completion of these levels (usually a top-3 finish if it’s a race) will open up more levels, game areas, and abilities.

The races vary greatly in location and number of competitors - the first few seem far too easy but after a while they get tougher. The Piston Cup races - held on actual race circuits rather than the open road (or off-road) - have a completely different feel to them than the other races, and include a pit-stop game where you must help Luigi perform the pit stop as fast as possible. This is an enjoyable addition to these races which actually seem rather tame compared to some of the others in the game. On the dust tracks or open road you can do power slides and other cool tricks that aren’t possible in the Piston Cup competition (trust me, doing the power slides never gets boring!! - or maybe I’m just sad… :-d)

The mini-games also have a fair bit of variety to them, some of them get boring quite quickly but some of them are great fun (backwards racing in pursuing speeding cars as the Sheriff are particularly good!). Tractor Tipping is fun for a short time, and collecting postcards sounds easy but most definitely isn’t…

The graphics, music and sound are great - obviously, most taken directly from the game. The voices sound authentic because… well, because the same people voice the characters in the game as did in the film. It’s nice as well that, rather than simply rehashing the story from the movie or having a number of loosely connected sub-games, this game has a proper storyline with cut scenes that will make you smile almost as much as the film itself did. The game was made with one concept in mind - that it should be FUN. The interface works well and there’s no messing about changing gears or even having an automatic gearbox - you just accelerate, break, power slide, and crash your way round the environment. (Don’t worry, you can’t die, and neither can the other inhabitants of Radiator Springs - but they might tell you off for not being careful enough!) There’s plenty of long-term challenge to be had (also a shorter version of the story mode for younger ones - or adults in a hurry!), an arcade mode where you can play any game that you’ve already unlocked in story mode, and a multiplayer challenge mode. There’s also plenty of replay value for many of the levels. It’s not perfect -you do tend to spend a lot of time driving round trying to find the next area that’ll give you a race or mini-game - an overall map on screen would have been nice - and some of the mini-games are a bit boring. However, overall, Cars is an extremely enjoyable movie tie-in game and thoroughly recommended for young and old alike.

Tested on: Packard Bell imedia J2489 Desktop PC

PC and Mac version on same CD-ROM - budget re-release by PC Fun Club.



Related Links

Cars - The Movie

And two other games based on PIXAR movies - though I hadn’t realised when I bought them that they weren’t the official games of the movies, just secondary tie-in games (and thus nowhere near as good):

Finding Nemo: Nemo‘s Underwater World of Fun
The Incredibles:When Danger Calls