If you are a parent, then you are probably surrounded by your kids as the summer holidays have begun. Of course, companies like Disney k is this and to help you out they release films like Cars 3 that give you 90 minutes of relative piece in the cinema. Of course once you have bought the popcorn, hot dogs and drinks as well as all the merchandise you’ll need to remortgage.
To coincide with the release of movie, Cars 3: Driven to win has been released and it’s much better than I expected. Cars 2 on the Xbox 360 was played for more hours than I’d like to admit by my two boys, their excitement levels went through the roof when I showed them my latest game to review.
Despite being the game of the movie there is very little reference to the movie itself apart from Lightning McQueen’s desire to beat his new rival, Jackson Storm. Before their final showdown Light isn’t needs to practice by racing through various events until his new mentor Cruz feels he is up to task. You’ll race through lots of different event types until you unlock the Master Showdown against Jackson. It’s interesting that this game features a progression system, there are 136 challenges for you to complete whilst racing, adding some longevity and an extra challenge to the game.
The challenges range from completing scoring a set number of stars in a race to completing a lap in reverse there is nothing in the list that is overly difficult and it has certainly kept my two boys well entertained. At the end of each race they can see clearly what challenges have been completed and what still needs to be done, the game also highlights challenges as a suggestion of what to aim for next. As a reward other showdown races unlock along the way as well as other characters in the game unlocking too.
There are just over 20 cars to race with, but it’s a shame that you can’t drive as other cars from earlier films, it was one of the first things that my boys noticed and were disappointed by. At the beginning of each race you can customise which horn sound you want, the colour of the lights on the underside of your car as well as the colour of your turbo flames. It makes no difference to the actually racing but it was a nice improvement over the previous games.
Cars 3: Driven to win has been developed by Avalanche Software, those of you that have played Disney Infinity will recognise the name as the worked on that too, in fact the driving mechanics have essentially been lifted from Disney Infinity which is no bad thing as it makes it immediately accessible to all players. The cars handle fairly well and it’s fun drifting round corners. Like the previous cars games you can jump, drive backwards and on two wheels. The more tricks you perform the quicker you unlock turbo boosts which are essentially in helping you win. We played the game mostly on easy, but I spent some time playing on the harder difficulties to see how hard things got, even just moving up to medium see a huge spike in difficulty, you need to constantly have turbo available and even then the rubber banding does its best to make life difficult.
Driven to Win comes with a fair few game modes, including Race, Stunt Race, Battle Race, Takedown, and Master-Level Events. The stand out modes are Stunt Race and Battle races, the former allows you to perform as many tricks as possible while Battle Race gives you access to all sorts of weapons, giving you a chance to destroy your opponents while racing. There is also a playground for you to explore that has mini games to play, and plenty to explore.
I was impressed with the amount of tracks available and how good they all were, you’ll visit Radiator Springs, plus many tigers. The game doesn’t look as good as most of the current generation of games but it’s a huge improvement on previous versions, the presentation is let down by port voice acting, clearly there was no budget or desire to have Owen Wilson voice Lightning in the game. Admittedly, only adults are likely to pick up on that sort things as the children certainly didn’t, the scripts in the game are generally funny and entertaining hearing the characters talk to each other while racing.
Cars 3 allows up to four players to play locally, and it’s seamless adding new players to the game, there isn’t a online multiplayer available but I Don’t imagine there is a huge desire to play this online.
Driven to win is a welcome return to the cars games, the tracks are impressive as is the amount to do in the game, but it’s let down by the lack of cars and difficult spikes on higher level, ultimately though, if you have children who loves Cars then this is a wise purchase.
Thanks to WB Games for supporting TiX
