"The car drove itself up a wall, but only once."

Cars the Movie was a decent movie. The game sounded fun because I've always liked open-world games. We bought the game a couple days after the movie came out, and I wasn't disappointed. It was one of the best pixar-movie-based games I've ever played. I only came a across a couple glitches, and none were bad. Most were just funny.

Gameplay: 8 I found this game to work pretty well. There were many little secret areas, and lots of little secrets to find. The racing was really the only thing to do, and it did get a little old, but somehow I was still addicted. I only met a few glitches, and they were all just small things, other than the time I flew out of the race course and got stuck out in the middle of a single-color area. The other times I just drove strait up a wall, which helped me, and twice I somehow got flipped upside-down, although I managed to keep racing, and once I got stuck inside another car. This part of the game was surprisingly good. The game was a little easy, except for a couple of races, and it doesn't take long to beat. Minigames were okay, but I didn't get addicted to any of them.

Graphics: 8.5 For a GameCube game, these graphics were pretty good. They even surpassed some non-licensed games. They were colorful and usually smooth, and all of the accessible areas were nice to look at.

Controls: 6.5 The controls are probably one of the lowest points for the game, but they are not bad. The jumping doesn't work too well though, and neither does some of the sliding, but the rest of the controls work pretty well.

Sound: 9 The music and sounds in this game are great. I liked the background music a lot, and it was nice to hear cars complain when you smashed into them, or just drove by them. The voices were by many of the same people as in the movie, always a plus side.

Story: 6 This is based on a movie, and it would always be good to see it first, but you can play the game without seeing the movie and still understand everything. Most of the game follows it's own story though, and it's all average. It's not great, but there is nothing wrong with it.

Replayability: 6 This game was fun, but a bit short. You might stay for a couple of last quests, some of the minigames, and maybe those darn envelopes! Those were tough to find. I might replay the game once, maybe use a couple of cheats to see what happens, but it's not as much fun the next time around. Especially more than twice.

Overall: 8 I thought this game was very good for a licensed GameCube game. It was one of the last few good games, and it had some great ideas. The graphics and sound are very good. Not many glitches, and none of them should annoy you too much. The world is surprisingly large, I still got lost when I beat the game, but you'll figure out where to go eventually. They have some minigames that aren't bad, and a couple of quests. I think I only found about 3 races challenging, the rest I could crash multiple times and still beat the competition by a minute. If you have a chance to try out this game, I would go for it! It may not be worth buying though, just a week or two of rental.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/07