Cars Race-O-Rama [PS2]

Licensed games are a cash cow, that much is absolutely certain or publishers wouldn't pay out their hoo-ha to pick 'em up and rush to get something out in time to meet the big-screen complement. Kids' games are especially prone to being dumped on some poor developer with the expectation that come hell or high water, the game will be in stores to help bilk unsuspecting but well-meaning parents, grandparents and the otherwise blissfully uninformed out of a few more bucks.

Except... there's no Cars movie coming out -- at least not for more than a year and a half when the sequel finally hits theatres -- prompting many of us in the office to wonder why in the hell THQ would even bother pumping out a half-dozen versions of the same basic game. It's made all the more perplexing by the fact that Rainbow Studios' original movie tie-in was at the very least decent, but by no means bucked the usual license game trend. The inexplicable follow-up, Cars: Mater-National, was all but ignored by us (and, we hope, everyone else), so the arrival of Cars: Race-O-Rama could only be fiscally-inspired. Not surprisingly, it feels every bit like the cheap let's-get-this-out-before-our-license-expires cash-in that we suspect it must be.

There is zero doubt in my mind that this is a lucrative franchise. Devin, my friend's son, still watches Cars on DVD. Every. Friggin'. Day. To be honest, I can't completely blame him; Cars is definitely one of Pixar's most endearing properties, which makes it all the more uncomfortable when dealing with a third-party treatment of that source material -- especially so when it's the third third-party treatment. It should come as no surprise that Race-O-Rama feels every bit like the soulless husk of a great movie, then. There's nothing offensively bad about Lightning McQueen's quest to out-race the returning Chick Hicks and his crew of generic bad guy-errr... cars, but it's certainly not anything to get remotely excited about either.

In contrast to the sort of open-world nature of the first Cars game and the more mini-game-driven Mater-National, things are a bit more compartmentalized. You'll travel from one bite-sized hub world to the next, taking on main race events that help further the story while juggling optional side quests and collecting little bolt icons that help unlock new skins. In the main races, scooping up three oft-out-of-the-way spark plug icons will help unlock new sets of paint, tires and body kit mods, but these are purely for show (though you will get upgrades to Lightning's basic form to make him a street racer or off-roader or monster truck or what have you during the story bits, though they handle largely the same).

Controls-wise, the games are more or less identical. The Wiimote is used in the now-common horizontal position, with tilt determining steering, down on the d-pad initiating drift, 2 laying on the gas, 1 kicking off turbo and a flick upward causing a jump. It's a bit confusing, especially when the B button is your handbrake and the A button serves as both normal brake and reverse, but after a few minutes most of the nuances of controlling McQueen can be understood, if not fully wrestled with.

For those that don't feel like dealing with motion controls, the Nunchuck can take over steering duties with the analog stick, at which point B becomes gas, A is brake, C is turbo and Z starts a drift, with the more cumbersome functions like Tilting your car or slamming on the e-brake moved to the up and down positions on the d-pad. It definitely makes for a more "ordinary" experience, but the layout is quite a bit more logical in terms of the most commonly-used functions, too, so don't go ditching that Nunchuck quite yet.

The actual races are fairly simple affairs. The inclusion of Doc's "sometimes you have to go left to go right" drift lesson introduced at the end of the movie makes an appearance here, allowing Lightning to scoot around corners without losing too much speed or to kick out the back end for a flashy points-grabbing wide drift, both done by holding the drift button and adjusting the angle constantly, but otherwise, it's basically a game of catching the odd bit of air, going as fast as possible and waiting for the auto-charging turbo meter to fill back up again. Yes, it's about as boring as it sounds, though I realize most six year-olds probably aren't looking for a comprehensive sim experience in their funny cartoon race car games.