	Cars 2
	Developer: Disney Interactive Publisher: Disney Interactive Release Date: Out Now Players/Online features: 1-4 splt-screen, DLC Cars	Words By:
Oil Baron Professor Z is an archetypal, brilliant but mad, German monocle-wearing scientist who is the brains behind the plot to sabotage the Cars World Grand Prix and deter cars from using a new biofuel. To combat the threat characters from the original Cars movie, Lightning McQueen the racing car and his best buddy Mater the tow truck, train to be James Bond-style agents with C.H.R.O.M.E. (stands for Command Headquarters for Recon Operations and Motorized Espionage). They are taught the tricks of a top car spy by British agents Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell (voice by Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer in the movie) in C.H.R.O.M.E.’s HQ on their cool VR simulator. As soon as training is complete they’re sent on a series of missions to try and track down and defeat the evil Professor and his minions, collectively known as Lemons. Cars 2 has an extremely slick selection screen which allows you to scroll through all the cars you’ve unlocked, and you can’t help but be impressed by the quality of the modelling as the cars pose, posture and talk you into using them. Every car is based on a real one or a composite of several recognizable models; for instance Professor Z is based on a 1957 Zundapp micro car, Finn McMissile looks a lot like an old Volvo P1800 (made famous as The Saint’s car), Miles Axelrod is a Range Rover and Jeff Gorvette (voiced by Jeff Gordon) is a Corvette C6 race car. The cars are indubitably the stars and look superb throughout, and you’ll love the way they react to good or bad driving, or the actions of other cars during races. The way they lean into corners or stick a wheel up on the wall if you get too close to it sets Cars 2 apart from other racing games. From the main menu you’ll find that ‘C.H.R.O.M.E. Missions’ is the main story game and consists of a training mode and six sections of events. You unlock new character cars as you go, up to an impressive choice of 25 different ones (with extra ones available as premium DLC). Completing the C.H.R.O.M.E. training teaches you to drive backwards (with the steering confusingly, but logically reversed), earn boost, drive on two wheels, jump, bash other cars and do aerial stunts. All of the missions are either races or survival/battle type and in most you get to use high-tech gadgets, missiles etc most of which blow enemies sky high if they’re baddies (Lemons) or just slow them down if they’re friends from the movie cast. Each event has three types of trophies: bronze, silver and gold, only the best performances will earn you a solid gold trophy collection, and getting these proves to be quite addictive. Cars 2 is played from a third-person viewpoint in the style of games such as Burnout and Disney Interactive’s cult hit from last year Split Second Velocity, but plays more like racer-with-weapons such as Mario Kart. Cars 2’s pin-sharp handling, instinctive drifting and stunts also reminded us a lot of an old Gamecell favourite and early PS2 classic Rumble Racing. The game isn’t difficult to complete but getting all Gold medals will require a good deal of skill, some of the events are just as challenging as anything in Split Second or Burnout Paradise. The tracks look great and are based on London, Tokyo (city & airport), Italy, Professor Z’s mid-Atlantic Oil Rig base and of course Lightning & Mater’s dusty desert hometown of Radiator Springs. Cars 2 is structured like a grown-up racer, and much like the movie, only a fool would imagine that it’s aimed specifically at kids. Throttle and brakes are on the triggers and the car can jump with a press of ‘A’, drift with ‘B’ (this can be set to ‘auto’ but it doesn’t work as well) and turbo boost is fired with ‘X’. Fill all 4 turbo slots and you can use ‘In The Zone’ which is a mighty, long-lasting turbo boost while encased in a glowing red force field, which will blast enemies off the track if you make contact with them. The Right stick has multiple uses; when travelling along the ground, ‘forward’ makes the car go up on two wheels, ‘back’ makes the car travel in reverse (you can fire forward-facing weapons at cars behind), ‘left’ & ‘right’ perform a nudge that will damage another car and knock them out of two-wheeled or reverse driving. When in the air ‘back’ is a backflip, ‘forward’ is a forward flip, ‘left’ is a barrel roll, and ‘right’ is a flat spin (you can do multiple flips/rolls depending on the height of the jump). All of these stunts help fill up the turbo gauge quicker. The weapons, depending on the game mode include: Machine guns, Impact Mines, Oil Slick, Missiles, Troika Missiles, Skate Jack (a homing skateboard bomb), Satellite Quake (destroys any cars in its path and can also be detonated on demand by pressing ‘Y’ again), Satellite Blitz (seeks out the lead car), Leech (drains energy from any car it hits and transfers it to you) and an EMP weapon that only appears when you’re dead last and freezes all the other cars for a few seconds allowing you to catch up. During the game you’re awarded ‘Spy Points’ (XP in everything but name) for good performances and can also discover hidden bonuses on each level. Collecting Spy Points levels you up and unlocks more races, locations and new cars. Each Car has its own speed and energy attributes, so if the car has a lot of energy it won’t have as high a top speed, and vice versa. Multiplayer allows for 2-4 players in a remarkably good-looking and smooth competitive split screen mode. It’s a shame there’s no online play but when split-screen is done this well it goes a long way to making up for the omission. It is however a shame you can’t team up to help each other in missions as it would have made some of them a lot more do-able. Competitive multiplayer modes allow you to play one versus all or as teams. The race options include Normal race mode against 9 other opponents, Battle race (with weapons and spy gadgets), Hunter mode (chase down and destroy 5 waves of Professor’s Lemons), Attack mode (high-speed pursuits of Lemons, keep blowing them up to extend time), Survival mode (keep collecting batteries to extend time enough to complete 3 laps), Arena mode (multiplayer mode for 2-4 players, most hits wins), Disruptor mode (collect the Disruptor and deliver it to the enemy base and blow it up)and Squad series (various missions to determine who’s the best C.H.R.O.M.E. Agent) “Garage” allows you to look at the entire roster of cars, and handily it also shows you how to unlock others. You can also have a good up-close look at any unlocked cars on a turntable. The “Badges and Crests” section lets you know which ones you’ve earned from your spy career and how to unlock the others, every one of these is an Achievement so it’s nice to know exactly how to get them and the amount of progression you’ve made so far (and us lot at Gamecell think all games should have a section like this on cumulative Xbox Achievements/PS3 Trophies). Overall the game’s presentation is superb, but if I had to find a fault then here it is: because the cars have such differing attributes it makes some much more suited to certain events than others, and having to exit out to the race selection screen and then re-enter with your new choice is a bit of a pain. All in all Cars 2 is another highly-polished Disney Pixar movie tie-in that, like Wall-E and Toy Story 3 before it is good enough to stand on its own merits. The game looks really nice, with plenty going on on-screen, spectacular explosions, an amazing tornado effect and a rock steady frame rate. The game sounds good too, with apt music and many of the voice actors from the movie present and correct although Lightning & Finn are slightly dodgy soundalikes. We’d have liked Cars 2 even more if it was more free-roaming and explorable like the open-world original Cars game that had a full-size Radiator Springs as a ‘hub’. But this cute, fun and surprisingly challenging arcade racer is definitely at the top of the podium right now.

Best Bits
- Looks great.
- Controls well.
- Plenty of different races and different cars to drive.
- Excellent split screen modes.

Worst Bits
- Varied as they are, the career mode is just a list of events.
- Lacks the freedom and personality of the previous Cars game.
- No online multiplayer.


by: Diddly