Cars: Mater-National Championship
Do Mater and the gang “git ‘R done” on the DS?
Tags: Cars Mater-National Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Nov 26th, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cars Mater-National (title page) | 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Racing | No | ||
Back when Pixar’s Cars first raced into theaters a year ago, the various game platforms were naturally all graced with games based on the film. On the Nintendo DS, Cars took the form of a substandard and uneven collection of minigames. In retrospect, this made little sense – a movie about cars, starring cars, with a protagonist that’s a race car trying to win the race of his life… you’d think a film like this would be a perfect candidate for a racing game.
Perhaps to right the wrongs of the past, this year THQ is making a sequel – A sequel that’s *gasp* a racing game! Who’da’ thunk it? However, come to think of it, there’s good reason to do so, even now that Pixar’s Cars is old news and their next film, Ratatouille, has already hit home video. Quite frankly, there aren’t too many good racing games on the DS. You’ve basically got Mario Kart, and… um… well, that’s about it. Just about everything else kinda’ sucks.
Oddly, the folks at developer Tantalus Interactive have opted to make this game play more or less like a kart racer, even though the game’s biggest (read: only) competitor is Mario Kart DS, a game that is arguably the best title in a series that invented the kart racing genre in the first place. Yet, surprisingly, Cars: Mater-National Championship actually holds up fairly well, even in the shadow of Nintendo’s massive hit.
Players take the role of Lightning McQueen, Mater, or one of the other characters from the film (along with new ones created specifically for the game), and race in one of numerous courses based loosely on the film’s fictional town (and outlying area) of Radiator Springs. This can be done either in the main story mode, or in “challenge” modes that have you racing the clock, collecting items littering the course, or competing in an elimination race.
However, the brunt of the game is in the story mode, and it actually manages to inject a bit of originality into the game’s races, largely due to the “golden wheels” hidden in every course which players use to obtain new cars and paint jobs. You see, as with any good kart racer, Cars’s tracks have some good shortcuts hidden here and there, with one shortcut in particular that leads to a minigame of sorts that, when completed, brings you into the path of one of these coveted golden wheels. These minigames generally involve jumping or dodging obstacles, and are played within the race itself, with you tackling this challenge while the other cars go on with the race. This game mechanic actually works surprisingly well, and really adds some originality to the experience.
The controls for the game are very responsive and feel just about right for this kind of thing, complete with powerslides that charge a turbo meter, and a jump button on the shoulder. My only real complaint here it the button configuration, which can take some getting used to before you start pulling off powerslides with comfort and regularity.
Graphically, the game looks very nice – the characters are well-animated, the courses are large, varied and detailed, and in general everything mostly looks like you’d expect a top-notch 3D racer on the DS to look. However, issues do crop up – most notably pop-up, which plagues the game to the point where it really dampens an otherwise wonderful presentation.
Another big complaint for me is the game’s use of rubber-band AI – seriously, there are games that still pull this crap? Also, while Cars: Mater-National Championship does support 4-player matches, even with only a single copy of the game, it doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles Mario Kart does – it doesn’t play online, and the list of courses and game options isn’t nearly as lengthy or impressive as Nintendo’s title. It’s also annoying that it doesn’t give you any indication what the differences between the game’s cars are.
Still, if you already have Mario Kart and you’re looking for another good racing game on the DS, Cars: Mater-National Championship is a quality title that looks good and is a lot of fun to play. Fans of the film disappointed by THQ’s first DS title based on the movie will undoubtedly find that this was the game they were hoping for.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Great gameplay + Nice graphics + Single-cart multiplayer is a nice feature |
8.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Pop-up problems - Rubber-band AI - Not quite as feature-rich as Mario Kart DS |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you can have only one racing game on the DS, get Mario Kart DS. However, after that, you’d do well to check out Pixar’s Cars: Mater-National Championship. | |
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Tags: Cars Mater-National
Posted by Jake McNeill on Nov 26th, 2007 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
