No longer was the game purely about racing now, borrowing ideas from the film where some of the cars were secret agents with secret weapons, this game turned into a blend of the first Cars game and Mario Kart. When Cars 2: The Video Game was released, again in June but in 2011 this time, things had moved on a bit. Of course, when you are four years old, you don’t tend to notice. Seriously, the engine note was a long, drawn-out drone, kind of like a bored hairdryer, and while the commentary was newish for the time, the stock phrases did start to repeat fairly quickly and begin to grate. While for the kids it was pretty good, my overriding memories of the game are that the graphics weren’t great, even by OG Xbox standards, and the sound was dreadful. Letting him drive around town is one of the first gaming experiences he had, as he was just old enough not to fall for the old “controller with no batteries in” trick and wanted to play himself. A very good touch was that of the use of all the real actors from the film, including Owen Wilson and even the mighty Paul Newman, and this helps with the immersion, especially playing with younger children – driving around, looking for characters from the film, performing the various tasks that they somehow need doing were par for the course.Ĭars was viewed from an above and behind the car perspective (by far my least favourite viewpoint in a racing game) and while we were stuck in that view, my son did seem to find it easier to play the game from this perspective. The game itself is a kind of sandbox environment, where you have to drive around the town and find missions to take in.