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Cars Mater-National: Reviews

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Game Score: 7/10

Movie tie-ins have become a fact of life in the gaming world. Whenever a halfway decent action, family, or kiddie flick comes out, a less-than-stunning game brought out to rake in a little extra revenue is inevitable. Still, every once in a while, a game manages to avoid being a complete cash-cow, and puts on at least the semblance of a decent game. Cars - Mater National is one of them.

The game is (unsurprisingly) a racing game, and a simple one at that - pick a track, select your favorite character from the movie (or one of the unlockable game-specific characters), and go out for a short, one-lap spin. The graphics are nothing special, but the game deserves some credit for being a fully 3D game - and on a handheld console, that's nothing to be sneezed at.

Controls are fairly basic: left, right, accelerate, brake. The game is aimed at a younger audience, and this shows in the handling of the cars: for the first few tracks especially, you can literally just leave you finger on the "A" button and stay on track regardless (although handling does have some level of realism, in that slowing down for corners will make life easier).

As for the storyline... What storyline? Well, ostensibly, yes there is a story mode - however, this just consists of a few short, semi-related cut scenes spaced out between the tracks. That said, the fact that the game has its own storyline, separate from the movie, prevents them from being completely droll.

The game's main flaw, however, is not the story, nor the simplistic controls, but the save system: or rather, the lack of one. Progress is recorded through the use of passcodes: the problem is that, instead of a letter combination, you get a set of icons of the movie's main characters (Luigi, Luigi, Lightning McQueen, Doc Hudson, Mater, for instance), very "Cars", but as a working system it proves cumbersome at best and downright annoying at worst. This is definitely a game that will benefit from save states. Assuming you don't clock the game in one go, which given the low level of difficulty, is not too unlikely a scenario.

Despite all this, the game is actually fairly playable - it demands very little from the player, and although its replayability is next to nothing, in small doses it is actually enjoyable. A good rom to have in your collection for when you get sick of losing to the Elite Four for the seventh time in a row.