Cars
More Pinto than Cadillac.
Tags: Cars Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Aug 3rd, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cars (title page) | 1-2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Racing (Kart Style) | Yes | ||
The struggle with most movie tie-in videogames is figuring what sort of game to make. Making a platformer seemed to be the common response to the “What kind of game should make?” question. This is one problem the makers of Cars didn’t have, as it was pretty evident what kind of game to make from a movie that’s pretty much about cars driving around.
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The majority of the game is played from the point of view of the movie’s protagonist, Lightning McQueen. Players drive around meeting other characters from the movie, participating in local races and minigames in an attempt to win enough trophy points to compete in the main NASCAR-style oval track races.
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That’s … pretty much it. Driving, driving, and more driving. The minigames break it up a little by giving players a chance to drive from a slightly different perspective or with a different character. Unfortunately theses changes to the game are frustrating because they are changes. The minigames that have players driving from an overhead perspective rather than ”behind the wheel” throw away all of the skills the player has learned up to that point. The challenges that utilize other vehicles frustrate because the other vehicles are generally inferior in some way: slower, less responsive, or some combination of the two.
The “big races” themselves are also maddening because they rely on a completely different style of driving than the races completed to get the player to the big races. Skills such as powersliding and jumping are disabled in the oval track races, and winning is mostly based on completing the pit stop Simon-style minigames as quickly as possible to get a lead over the computer-controlled opponents.
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On top of this, it is difficult to discern what needs to be done to advance the story mode. Race events and minigames are indicated on the map, but no differentiation is made between places that have old repeatable races and places that have new events available. While free-roam driving is fun, constant free-roam driving with no idea how to get the next stage of the story is a Sisyphusian struggle and engenders similar amounts of pain.
The auto-centering camera tends to drift for no apparent reason, and the default control setup means the player has to stop accelerating to manually adjust the camera with a thumbstick. There were also a few times where the camera became locked in some impossible-to-use angles that required a game restart to reset.
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Aside from these problems, the game accurately captures the feel of the movie. Passing cars will greet Lightning and will say “Ouch!” when Lightning rams into them, and the game makers got the original voice talents to voice the game – so if the prospect of hearing Owen Wilson saying “Kachow!” ad infinitum is abhorrent to you, be warned now.
Along with the Story Mode, the game offers Arcade and Versus Modes, where minigames and completed races from Story Mode are available. Bonus “bolts” can be collected in Story Mode and used to open new bonus characters and items.
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There’s no arguing that a kid who enjoyed the movie will enjoy the game: the game’s look and sound are so well-done that it’s as close to playing the movie that a person could get. Whether that excitement will override the frustrations presented by the game will certainly differ from child to child.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Accurately captures the look and feel of the movie + Original voice cast |
6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- "Boss" races rely on different skillset than races leading up to them - Camera is wonky - Ways to advance the storyline aren't as evident as they could be |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| There are better driving games, certainly, but if you absolutely must have a driving game based on this movie, this is pretty much your only choice. | |
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Tags: Cars
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Aug 3rd, 2006 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 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.
