Cars

Another sale and friend recommendation pointed me in the direction of the Cars series and what better way to start a series than from the beginning. Cars is apparently a quick, easy game from the outside but once I got started, it was deceivingly difficult - more on that later.

Cars follows the story of Lightning McQueen, the car who wants to be a racecar. I’m not familiar with the movie as I’ve only seen Cars 2 but I’m working on the assumption that the game loosely follows what happens in the movie. You have to take McQueen through a series of races to get him to become some kind of racing champion. It’s a basic principle but I didn’t get on with the gameplay at all.

Cars is an open world racing game which is great... if the game bothered to provide you with a map. This was a real pain in the ass because when you are trying to find the next location for the next event, you basically have a rough idea of where it is and need to find it without really knowing where it is and without knowing where you are which is just fucktarded in terms of providing an enjoyable gaming experience.  In addition, there is nothing to do in the open world except for collecting postcard things but they are so far off the beaten track you won’t just run into them looking for the destination which means they are the only reason that you would go exploring.

On to the races themselves. There are two types of race, a street race equivalent where you race against other opponents in a normal race, and speedway style events which are almost pointless. You just drive round in a circle and it seems to be up to the game whether you win or lose. You can also wait until the last lap before pitting as, for some reason, this puts you 2 seconds in front which hands you the race unless you badly crash.

Graphically it’s a cartoon with ridiculously annoying music. I also have a hatred for Mater and McQueen’s voiceovers. Mater’s because it’s stereotypically stupid and McQueen’s because Owen Wilson has a really untrustworthy tone which is only enhanced when put behind a child friendly car.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 15 Achievements

There’s not a lot to really cover in terms of achievements but there are some awful things it requires you to do. Firstly, you have to win all of the races that are available with achievements attached to them. This isn’t all the races in the game but you can work out which ones you need as the achievement name will match the race. Out of all of these, the most painful one was winning the race as Mater because he is awfully shit and the drifting in the game is really inconsistent. This one still only took two attempts which I was grateful for. You get ten achievements for completing the races and another two achievements for unlocking the additional areas.

The last three are a real pain in the ass too. You have to complete all levels of the tractor tipping mini game where you drive around as Mater pushing over tractors in fields. It’s not particularly hard but it is really dull and I found myself getting caught out because I was not paying attention due to boredom.

The next one, which provided me with the most difficulty, was for completing all levels of the Sherriff Hot Pursuit. This was hard because the Sherriff’s car is really shit and starting a pursuit was often harder than actually catching the offenders. It also takes ages as you have to catch three cars for each level and when you can only close down your opponents a millimetre at a time it becomes massively frustrating.

The last achievement worth mentioning is for collecting all the postcards scattered around but considering the lack of a map, and therefore a reference point, I just used a Youtube video and followed it through from start to finish. A cop out I know, but I was done with the game mentally after the first race.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Cars was not a lot of fun but can be completed in less than 8 hours so isn’t too bad in terms of speed. I will probably still gives Cars II a go to see if they learned from the first one and improved the interfaces. I’m just not sure when I will get to it.