What's this? A movie tie-in game that's actually good? Is there a glitch in the Matrix? If the received wisdom on movie tie-in games is that they're generally atrocious, then Cars 2 doesn't just buck the trend, it throws it off completely. In fact, it's good enough to appeal to a few curmudgeons who have no time for the Pixar film of the same name.
The reason for this is partially due to the fact that in most instances, movie tie-in games are hampered somewhat by their developers having to crowbar in plot points from the film source material.
Cars 2 doesn't have this problem; Avalanche has tipped its hat to the Pixar film's plot but it's not allowed it to dominate the proceedings. It's simply mined its premise – which, believe it or not, involves an automobile secret agent bureau fighting against global domination – for inspiration and then applied that to the finished product.
Players start the game by picking from a long list of animated cars, and then heading into a training session at Command Headquarters for Recon Operations & Motorised Espionage (C.H.R.O.M.E). That is, they're put through the game's tutorial.
Here, they learn how to use power-ups and how to fill their turbo meter through drifting, jumping, driving on two wheels and driving backwards. Once that's out of the way, it's time to get down to some racing.
In Cars 2, events can be split between regular racing and then activities that require weapons. In the former race type, winning is easy to begin with but with each new level of race the player unlocks, they'll find that they'll need quite a bit of skill and practice to beat off all comers.
Not only will they have to learn the tracks – taking note of obstacles, jumps and shortcuts – but they'll need to keep their turbo meter filled and to that end, they'll find a lot of stunt work is required.
The weaponised battles are arguably the best thing about Cars 2, and it's here the second large source of inspiration becomes apparent; Mario Kart. Like Nintendo's classic racer, players need to run over power-ups on the track to pick up armaments to make their opponents' lives hell.
However, in Cars 2 they'll gain access to items such as missile launchers, machine guns, oil slicks, explosive homing drones, energy weapons and more.
Battle races are won or lost by a player's ability to deploy their weapons at the right moment, while keeping their turbo topped up; when the turbo meter is completely full, players can double-tap the X button to give themselves a boost and a shield, which comes in very handy if they have opponents breathing down their necks.
Away from the races, players can also take part in Hunter events in which they drive around in an enclosed space, picking up power ups and blasting opponents for high scores.
There are also Disruptor events, which is only available after the career mode's been clocked, which plays like a version of the capture the flag match type so prevalent in shooters. Here, players face off against each other in Hunter arenas and have to blast each other's bases to smithereens as often as they can by picking a Disruptor which spawns in different parts of the map.
Cars 2 has a lengthy career mode and supports four-player drop-in/drop-out play. It doesn't have an online multiplayer, but given that this seems to be a title designed with the family in mind, that's perhaps understandable (if not entirely forgivable).
Aside from that gripe, Cars 2 is a solid, exciting and fun game which should appeal to kart racing fans of all ages.
