Cars

The game Cars for the Wii, is a game tie-in made by THQ, based on the film by Disney/Pixar with the same name, but acts as a type of sequel to the beloved kids film. The game follows on from the movie, in which you play as Lightning McQueen (as voiced by Owen Wilson), and are in preparation to race in the 2006 Dount Party season. This involves you to fulfil plenty of races and mini-games with the implemented tilt control of the Wii-mote, as to try and make the game feel more realistic.

You start off by preparing yourself for the up and coming Piston Cup season, though having to get ready to beat the current champion of the cup, Chick Hicks, but you get a lot of help from all your 'friends' of Radiator Springs.

Now, I got this for Christmas the year before last, and I'll be honest; on first impressions when my father said 'Michael, I have a surprise present for you,' my adolescent excitement rose as I was presented with another gift. Though, however much I appreciated the kindness of being given an additional treasure on this fateful day, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself on the inside. Well, what do you expect? At 16, you expect a pack of 6, and a calendar of Cheryl Tweedy at least. But none the less, I was grateful, and soon flopped it into my Wii Console.

Well to my surprise, it didn't turn out that bad. I was introduced to a pleasant music/video combo on the Disc Channel, rather then a type of Mary Poppin's style theme tune I was expecting.

I skipped straight through, and found there are a few main modes before you start the game, the obvious 'career' mode (can't remember exactly what that's called) and an arcade mode.

I started the game, and noticed that the graphics were pretty cool (not bad for animation-like graphics) until I actually started playing; finding out that everything was the same. During a race (usually of 3 laps) wherever you turn, all you have to hope for over the horizon is a long road and sandy grass, with the odd cliff here and there, and after 1/100th of a lap of looking at it, I was already unentertained by it.

The controls I found difficult. In NFS : Carbon, when turning a sharp turn, you just have to tap break, make a lil' drift, and perfect. This is a different story. You can't just turn naturally so I thought, right I have to break, but that failed to. Yeah, maybe I just didn't have the hang of it, but even with my failure of controlling my Owen Wilson enhanced godmobile, that rather then crashing is able to bounce off of walls without crashing, the races are so easy to win, which proves that I wasn't meant to own this game at my age.

The voice acting was top notch from the actors featured in the films, but once again, it would have been more appealing to me to be sick in my hands and rub it in my face (everyone loves an extremist). But yeah, though my Dad would stand behind me, chucking at the little cars every time they spoke, I became quite bored of how the same typical things were chucked out of there engine-based voice box's, and how I felt I was no longer a child so couldn't appreciate the humour that was meant to bring joy to the player.

Overall, I felt the game had its ups and downs. Though, I've been pretty negative, the game has some appeal, such as the 12 mini games are somewhat entertaining on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and trying to outrace family members on a Christmas day is always fun/competitive in the Multiplayer mode. But, this game really needs to be reviewed by someone who's nearer the age range so it's not biased by someone who wants chicks and guns in a game, rather than chirpy cars.