Those of you who have seen the movie, and are above the age of 13, will have to admit that it was nothing special. We’re a spoilt bunch, us moviegoers of the 21st century-after Shrek, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, et al, we’ve been pampered to the extent where even superb animation movies from Pixar don’t impress much anymore.
Cars (the game) is set in time just after the movie-thank God, because I really didn’t want to have to re-live the movie. No, I’m not biased-I just think that if you make a game that’s inspired by a movie, at least come up with a fresh script! Cars does not disappoint here-though if you plan on buying this game, watch the movie first, else you won’t enjoy it as much.
The story is pretty simple-there are no people; cars are the only “living” things on earth; they can talk, have expressions, fall in love, get embarrassed, and have the voices of very famous Hollywood actors. This may sound like gibberish to the four people who haven’t watched Cars, and is probably a complete waste of a paragraph to the rest of the world. So, that’s all the story background I’m giving!
The graphics are cartoonish, and match the look of the movie. The voice acting is fantastic, the script is funny, and the open-ended map of “Radiator Springs” is just so much fun to explore that you might not feel like playing all the mini games that let you unlock new levels, challenges and features. I know-I took a timeout and explored the world for about an hour!
Most of the mini-games are racing-oriented-and we expected nothing less. Some of the other games bring back the funny characters from the movie. I had a lot of fun “tipping tractors” as Mater, and collecting abandoned tyres as Luigi-two of the funniest characters in the movie. Yes, you get to play as the other characters on and off, which keeps the game interesting-being Lightning McQueen, the fastest racer, kind of gets boring after a while.
The game seems to be targeted at both kids as well as the kids-at-heart, but seems challenging enough only for the former. Even at the highest difficulty level, racing was just a little too easy for my liking-I never lost once, even when I was only half-trying!
| Rating : 7/10 (10/10 if you’re below 13) Developer : Rainbow Publisher : THQ Distributor : E-Xpress Interactive Contact : 022-28850245 Price : Rs 699 Minimum System Requirements: Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 1.5 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, DirectX® 9 compliant graphics card with 64MB RAM |
Of course, the kids-at-heart will be able to enjoy the humour and better appreciate the voice acting and dialogue. Despite being repetitive as hell, I don’t think I was ever bored of hearing my character say “Ka-chow” in mid-air every time I jumped the car.
The game ought to give you about a dozen hours of entertainment-unless you’re under the age of 13, in which case your parents will get bored well before you do-after about the 986287458976th time they hear “Ka-chow” on your speakers.
As an arcade racer, it has most of what you’d want-power sliding, boosting, no damage, custom paint jobs, and more. If you’re a more serious racer, don’t touch this game-it’s not for the realists.
Getting back to whether you should buy this game: I think you should. It’s a must play… once at least! With decent graphics, a good storyline, fabulous voice acting and entertaining mini-games, Cars earns a 7/10 from me.
I should add that I made the mistake of showing my 12-year old cousin this game, and she hasn’t let me touch the home computer since. She spends every waking hour playing it, and now has at least six friends over all the time-they’re not playing (she’s too mean to allow them to have a go at it), but just watching her play-with mouths wide open, cheering for Lightning McQueen and giggling their heads off every time he says “Ka-chow!”