Cars: Mater-National

Rating Everyone Genre driving Publisher THQ External Links THQ Website

Cars: Mater-National is a “free roaming, choose your destiny, collect ” racing game based on the Pixar movie Cars. You play the role of Lighting McQueen in Radiator Springs after the movie takes place. The cars of Radiator Springs have decided to open up a new racing stadium to attract more visitors. As Mr. McQueen, you will drive around Radiator Springs accepting races in three main event types: the three-lap race, tag races, and item pickup events. In town you can also just drive around and collecting items, flags, and paint tokens. These items are used to open up new events and paint jobs for Lighting. Most of the races can be done in any order, allowing you to skip most of the events you may not care for. When a race is over you are sent back to the Radiator Springs overworld to repeat the process until the game is complete.

Steering is done by use of the Nunchuck joystick, which is surprisingly sloppy and unresponsive. You can go into the options on set the game to just use the Wii Remote, which seems to have better results. I’m 21 years old and I got used to the controls and its quirks rather quick, but my six-year-old sister had a pretty hard time getting Lighting to do what she wished. She had problems for two reasons: first, she didn't really understand the concept of the free roaming overworld, and secondly, the joystick controls were difficult. Isn’t it ironic that the intended age group may have a hard time actually playing the game?

Almost all of the games music was created specifically for the game and it’s forgettable. Only one of the movie's songs ended up in the game, “Life is a Highway”. As for voice acting, all of the movies voice actors returned, which does not happen often in the game industry. Good graphics anyone? This game has some of the best graphics and animations I have seen on the Wii from a third party developer. Finally, a game released across multiple platforms that isn’t sub-par, visually!

Cars is an average racing game that has a good amount of replay value for younger players. The controls can be a bit frustrating for younger children and they will probably need your help setting the controls to just the Wii Remote for easier-to-use, motion sensitive gameplay. All in all, Cars: Mater National is a fun play for any Cars fan.