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The motorvational technique, pardon the godawful pun, of the day is this: Drive fast. Cute and cartoonish though it may be, the multiplatform and child-friendly offering Cars does not suffer slowpokes.

In Pixar’s vaguely unsettling Radiator Springs, the cars all sport manic grins on their front bumpers and have big googly eyes set where their windshields should be. The anthropomorphized automobiles talk, too, some with the voices of, say, Owen Wilson, George Carlin, Michael Keaton, Paul Newman, Cheech Marin and, may God have mercy on our souls, Larry the Cable Guy.

Come on and Take a Free Ride!

Cars expands on the Pixar movie of the same name, letting players joyride around the brightly colored, dusty desert town of Radiator Springs and its outlying areas. Mission markers littered around town offer advancement opportunities, but these can be selected or ignored at a player’s whim; it’s very much the journey and not the destination with Cars.

As the film’s protagonist Lightning McQueen, players can go where they will, collecting lightning icons to earn bonus points, spinning out on dust-choked roads, or just exploring Springs’ various nooks and crannies; Developer Rainbow Studios has fleshed out Radiator Springs with a series of rolling hills, deep valleys, and winding pathways to the point where it’s a fun place to drive through.  This free-form play serves as a concession to the kiddies, the game’s target audience, but it’s certainly no afterthought in terms of game design. The exploration bits are every bit as rewarding as the missions and, sometimes, they’re even more enjoyable.

A map allows players to poinpoint where the action is at a glance. At the check points, races, minigames, and collection challenges are offered, and these preceded by cut-scenes featuring McQueen yakking it up with Springs’ inhabitants such as Mater, a rusted, crooked toothed tow-truck; the wizened Hudson Hornet Doc Hudson; and Mack the truck.

Mileage with the game’s challenges certainly varies. Some, like Luigi the Fiat’s tire-collecting challenge, are the Edsel of the minigame set. After collecting X number of tires in a timed challenge, which isn’t really fun in the first place, players are then tasked with collecting more tires in an even shorter time span. As insult to injury, there’s even a third tier of tire collecting for players to plod through. When tire retrieval loses its appeal, there are also 20 postcards to collect, and neither child nor adult will want to see these duds to completion. Thankfully, any competition can be exited at will.

Other minigames fare substantially better; Mater’s tractor tipping blends elements of stealth driving with goofy fun. As Mater, players must approach sleeping tractors and blare their horn to tip their targets, all the while avoiding detection by a giant combine.

Races are genuinely fun, regardless of whether McQueen or one of his pals is pitted against the clock, a small group of four cars, or a pack of 15 on a professional track. Informal sprints are punctuated by sharp turns and thrilling jumps, and it’s possible to use special techniques such as powersliding and turbo boosts to win the day. The more standard racetrack-based competitions prohibit the use of boosting, but are thrilling in their own way. Here, McQueen has to navigate through a pack of 15 other drivers, weaving his way up and down the course to find gaps, and then taking a well-earned breather with a series of abbreviated pit-stop minigames.  

Come on, let’s go…

The game tends to recycle the songs in its soundtrack with great efficiency, with Richie Valens’ Come On, Let’s Go; the Stray Cats’ Rock This Town, and Free Ride as done by Edgar Winter serving, in equal measure, as Cars’ titanic threesome as well as its Axis of Evil.

Yet this is a mere pothole in an otherwise remarkably smooth ride. Cars provides solid races challenges and a nice free-play experience, and does so without losing either children or older game players in the process. It is, in fact, a rarity in the video game world: a title built primarily for children but possessed of a universal appeal.

Children’s games often deal poorly with design issues such as difficulty level, or fail to grasp the concept that 8-year-olds do not possess sawdust and apple cores for brains. Rainbow Studios never stoops to condescend to its intended audience, but rather makes allotments for it by including a shortened version of its story mode. It has also taken pains to ensure that its game is neither a cakewalk for anyone who touches the controller to play it, nor a Gordian Knot that can only be untangled by the big-boy set.  

Kicks on Route 66

There’s little variation among the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox versions of Cars, and each hits the mark in terms of racing game basics such as framerate and sense of speed. Rainbow Studios has performed admirably here.

And Cars, simply, never guzzles the gas its been given. Go, Lightning, go.

Article By: Greg Orlando
Video Produced By: Ross Beeler