Cars (PS2)

...Just to let you know, Cars The Game doesn't follow the plot of the movie. The jift i got was that it took place a year after the film, as Lightining McQueen is preparing for the next Piston Cup tournament, with Chick Hicks rivaling him and trying to retain his title. McQueen races around Radiator Springs, preparing by racing against locals and other cars. it helps if you've seen the film so you can understand some of the plot.

-(The ...
...racing. There's up to 5 cars on the track, including you, and whoever makes it to the finish line first wins. It's like any other racing game. Next there's the Piston Cup Races. These are 20 cars with 12 laps. If you've seen the film where lots of cars are on a oval track then you'll be familiar with this. You even have to take pit stops if your car is too damaged. And finally there's the mini-games. These are what the title suggests, where you do ... more

-(Game Information)-
Name:Cars
Publisher:THQ
Developer:Rainbow Studios
Genre:Racing
Release Date:
Age Rating:Jul 14, 2006
Number Of Players:1-2
Online:No
Developer Site:www.rainbowstudios.com
Product Site:www.carsvideogame.com
Memory Card Usage:254KB minimum

-(History)-
THQ is the company that has made a load of action-based games that appeal to a wide variety of audiences. THQ's licences include WWE, Red Faction and the Pixar Brand. Rainbow Studios are the developers of games like Splashdown, Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 and ATV Offroad Fury. If you loved Cars, then look out for Cars:Mater-National, which is hitting your consoles and handhelds later this year.

-(The Story)-
Just to let you know, Cars The Game doesn't follow the plot of the movie. The jift i got was that it took place a year after the film, as Lightining McQueen is preparing for the next Piston Cup tournament, with Chick Hicks rivaling him and trying to retain his title. McQueen races around Radiator Springs, preparing by racing against locals and other cars. it helps if you've seen the film so you can understand some of the plot.

-(The Controls)-
Cars controls like other racers on the PS2. Gas, brake and the emergency brake can be done with the X, Square and Circle buttons. Steering is done with the left analog stick or the directional buttons. Boost can be done by pressing the R2 button and tilting can be done by holding down the L1 and moving the left/right analog in the direction you want to tilt. The car handling is a little sensitive, but you'll be able to get to grips with it. When taking turns, you may take a skid, but if you hit other vehicles you don't go spinning around.

-(The Gameplay)-
Cars, as you can tell by the title, is a racing game. There's three types of gameplay in Cars. The first is your standard racing. There's up to 5 cars on the track, including you, and whoever makes it to the finish line first wins. It's like any other racing game. Next there's the Piston Cup Races. These are 20 cars with 12 laps. If you've seen the film where lots of cars are on a oval track then you'll be familiar with this. You even have to take pit stops if your car is too damaged. And finally there's the mini-games. These are what the title suggests, where you do things like tip tractors, stop speeders and find abandoned tires.

All of these gameplay types come together in the storymode. This is like the storymode in Crash Team Racing on the PSX. There's two difficulty levels. One for the more mature gamers and one for the nipplers, but it doesn't really matter which difficulty you play as they're both easy. You drive around, doing races and mini-games while progressing through a story. When you win, you get trophies. You need trophies to unlock Piston Cup Races and progress through the story. With the normal races, you get trophies if you come first, second or third. You get more trophies by doing better in these races. As for the mini-games, you get one trophy for completing a mini-game. But don't worry, once you've unlocked the mini-game you can try to win around forty times, which equals forty trophies.

As far as the roaming aspect is concerned, it could be better. You can only interact with other cars by ramming into them, which isn't nice. The only way you can interact with them without wrecking them is by getting to a race. Though somtimes if you go pass a car they'll say somthing like 'hi buddy'. Actually getting to races is quite tedious, as the map is pretty useless and getting lost isn't hard. Plus, it's dull going to an event as you go to an event without having any conversations with people. It can be fun to mess around a bit and ram into everyone, but it's easy to get distracted and lost. Plus you don't have a GPS which helps people find places they want to go to. The roaming aspect would of benefited from a GPS.

As you play through the game you earn points. Earning points can be done during races or while exploring. While you're exploring, you can find these bolts which give you up to 2000 points. As you race, you get points by driving safely, tilting, powersliding, driving backwards or doing them all. What i mean by this is that you could get more points by driving safely while tilting. These points can unlock the extras. You can also unlock things to help you during the story. You will unlock boost, which is helpful if you crash. You also get more starting boost by winning more races. You also unlock the ability to drive backwards. This is cool as you can see the characters great faces animate. But it's not that hard to race the whole thing backwards, as long as you remember right goes left and left goes right-if you know what i mean.

Aside from the main storymode, there's a mode where you can play all the races you've unlocked with any of the cars you've unlocked as well. Then there's the multiplayer component. While there's no online play, there's two player split screen, which is decent, but would of been better with four players. You can also play any of the races you've unlocked in the multiplayer as well. Sadly, this mode isn't as good as it could be as it's not really intense. Burnout:Revenge was really intense for me and my mate playing it with me and left us wanting to play through it again, but Cars left us feeling a little cold as me and my mate found it boring.

-(The Graphics)-
Graphically, Cars looks great. The car models are all recognisable and look excellent with lots of detail and smoothness. While the cars themselves look smooth, the animation from them is top notch, especially the facial animations and the lip synching. The facial animation is really expressive and it's like Rainbow Studios ripped the characters from the film. The lip synching is top notch and never looks odd or awkward. The cutscenes are top notch, as they show off both the excellent animation and the top notch lip synching. And there's tons of cutscenes as well. There's pretty much a cutscene before and after an event, and considering the amount of events that's a lot of cutscenes. The environment of Radiator Springs looks great as well. A huge chunk of Radiator Springs makes up of desert, but there's a lot of city areas, mountains sides and even a derby arena. It not only looks exactly like the film, it's really fun to drive around in. There's a couple of ugly textures, but the game is moving so fast you probably won't even notice. While the sense of speed isn't nearly as fast as Burnout:Revenge, Cars has a pretty good sense of speed, especially when you boost. The frame rate is smooth as far as i noticed.

-(The Sound)-
Soundwise the game is also great. All the actors from the film, from Owen Wilson; Bonnie Hunt and Tony Shaloub to Michael Keaton and Larry the Cable Guy-they're here, and they're on top form. They sound as great as they do in the film, and they do a great job of giving the cars all the charm from the film. Wilson is just as endearing as he was in the film, Larry is just as funny as he was in the film and all the other actors are putting in as much effort as they did in the film. The licensed soundtrack featured in the game is good as well. The acts on the soundtrack include The Stray Cats, All American Rejects and Lynryd Skynryd. The songs fit the theme of the game and are good to listen to. Sadly, the catchphrases that the cars spurt out can become repetitive (I AM SPEED, I AM SPEED, I AM SPEED!). Also some of the songs repeat a lot as well. But this all is great stuff so that kind of softens the blow.

-(Replay Value)-
Cars is a little lacking in this area. There's no online multiplayer here. This would be okay if the single-player campaign wasn't so short, but considering the main story takes about seven hours to complete, this is more disappointing. But there's still plenty to do. There's lots of extras to unlock, a fun multiplayer component to waste away the hours, and more. Plus, the game is fun too play through again.

-(Score)-
Controls=8
Gameplay=8
Graphics=8
Sound=8
Replay Value=7
Overall Score=7.8

-(Ending Comments)-
Usually, games based on movies suck! I've played tons of movie-based games and most of them suck, with some exceptions like King Kong. But Cars is a good game and definitely bucks the movie based trend. Rainbow Studios have obviously put a lot of effort into this, as the game has a lot of polish to it. The graphics are great, the game has all the actors from the film and they sound great, the gameplay is fun and there's a decent amount of modes. But lack of online play or 4-player multiplayer cut the value down, and the single-player mode isn't very long either taking about 7 hours to finish. But hey, anyone heard the phrase 'quality is better than quantity'? Well that's the case with Cars. Kids will love this game and fans of the films will get a kick out of this as well. if you're a fan of the THQ/Pixar film based games then you'll enjoy this as well. And even if you're a fan of games like Gran Turismo or Need For Speed then you should buy this as well.

-(If You Like This I'd Suggest)-
Need For Speed
Gran Turismo
Midnight Club
Burnout
Rumble Racing
OutRun

-(Where You Can Buy It)-
Amazon:£31.99 or used and new from £8.99
Platinum Version-£14.48 or used and new from £10.99 

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