Swerve through traffic, jump over obstacles, nudge your opponents and use a variety of weapons to vaporise them along the way. All that in the company of the characters from the Cars and Cars 2 movies.

This is not the typical movie-to-game experience – and this is reflected in reviews around the web. Avalanche Software has done a pretty good job this time around, and safe to say they’ve done it before with Toy Story 3 – Disney has truly made a good friend in this developer.

Racemodes included: affirmative

Booting up the game, you are introduced to C.H.R.OM.E (Command Headquarters for Recon Operations and Motorized Espionage) by Holly Shiftwell. Missions aren’t more than just different racemodes (after hearing about how great this game is, I was sort of expecting a story mode with driving, shooting and inspecting, maybe like an RPG or action adventure) but there’s plenty of them – going from regular race over deathmatch to survival.

Although I like every aspect of the game, the mode I enjoy the least is the Survival. Here you have to drive 4 laps, collecting batteries to sustain your shield, as Professor Z is hovering over the track in a helicopter, ready to pulverise you. When your shield is up, time is up and the professor will fire the laser beam. Collecting the batteries takes driving skills – because you’ll need everyone of them to sustain your shield – especially in the later challenges.

I always have had a weak spot for cars with weapons, so this is a no-brainer; I love the Battle Race mode and the Arena mode whereof the latter is a simple deatchmatch game; Survive for 5 waves and get as much kills as possible before time runs out. When I went into the Free Play mode I noticed Disruptor mode – which turned out to be catch the flag! There’s no online multiplayer, but you can play with up to four people locally. I know that local is more fun because you can poke fun of your friend, but I still miss the opportunity to jump into an online game with 16 people in a chaotic event of catch the flag.

So who do you want to be?

There’s a plethora of different characters to chose from, and plenty of unlockables as well – even same characters with different skins, such as Carbon Fiber Lightening McQueen and Materhosen Mater. Avalanche studios really made a deal out of letting the player choose their favourite character and included everyone, even small characters such as the competition from the race in the movie.

Graphics and sounds are great with nice reflections in the paint on the characters, great facial animations and funny one-liners made by the actual voice actors from the movie. Everyone is there except from Owen Wilson, but they’ve casted well enough for the character – it isn’t Owen’s distinguished voice, but you won’t miss it, since you generally tone out the voices after the first couple of identical remarks.

Short, yet entertaining

If you just race through the game from first challenge to last, getting at least bronze without worrying about the gold and you’re a racing fanatic, there’s only a couple hours of playtime. After reaching clearance level 3, more and more challenges gets tough, and even experienced players will battle the urge to throw their controller at the TV. In the end, the games brilliance is at the multiplayer, and this is why I miss the option to play online – I can’t wait until butchering my friends in disruptor mode with bombs, missiles and bullets from my machine gun. I need to get more gaming friends in my every day life and arrange gaming nights…

The gameplay is fun and enjoyable for all age groups, provided you like a racing game that doesn’t take itself it too serious. Cars 2: The Videogame’s gameplay borrows elements from the somewhat overlooked racing title of last year; Blur. And if you’re familiar with the vehicular combat game Vigilante 8, you’ll feel right at home in some of the game modes. If you like arcade racers with weapons, or the cars franchise in general, this is a must buy title. Opportunity to play online should have been included because a game like this is best playing against other people.