Cars Race O Rama

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Let me state right off that I am neither into racing games nor kids games. However, I always make it a point to review every game I play, so here is my review of 'CARS : Race-O-Rama', since I bought this game for my 4 year-old boy (who is surprisingly better at it than I ever thought he would be!) as something that he & I could play together on the PS3. Since I'm a bit of a trophy hunter, I figured I'd try and get the Platinum trophy on this just for kicks since it looked easy to do and there were only 22 trophies anyway. Well, it WAS easy. Very much so. Except for the glitch I encountered, but more on that later. Suffice it to say before I dive in here, I haven't played this game on any difficulty setting other than the easiest as, like I said, I've been playing this w/my 4-year old. Additionally, the difficulty level doesn't affect the trophies, so there you have it. As for the game itself, I'm going to try and keep things in perspective here and review this as a kid's game (IE, how is this for a kid), since I don't imagine there are going to be too many teenagers or adults who say " Yeah! This looks awesome! I'm all about this!"

THE GOOD : A pretty good bit, actually. To begin with, there's a surprising amount of variety in this game. Not only are there a number of different tracks to race on and events to complete, but there are different locales (cities, countryside, beach towns, etc.), characters you can be, customizations to said characters (paint jobs, wheels, tailfins, hoods, etc.), mini-games and different types of racing. IE, not only will you race as a car, but also as a monster truck, a demolition tow truck and the small 'guido karts'. Naturally, each of these race tracks and vehicles has their own 'feel' to them which affects the overall ease of control over your car, sometimes making it easier, sometimes more difficult (see : guido kartrs). As for making things easy, this game takes its' core audience to heart and plays to them, in that, it's pretty darn forgiving. You can be in dead last place on the final lap of a race and still have a damn good chance of winning it outright, provided there's enough of the lap left and you race well the rest of the way. I guess you could say it's 'encouraging, as anything for kids should be. And this is all for the 'story mode'. There's also an arcade mode which allows you to play different races and mini-games based on, or directly from, the story mode. Events like the guido kart racing, monster truck racing, tractor tippin', for instance. And on top of all this, whatever city you're in, you also have the ability to just drive around the city and collect lightning bolts for additional point value. All in all, it's a pretty simple, straight-forward, 'clean-fun' type of game geared directly for kids.

THE BAD: The one thing that struck me right off about this game in a negative way, was that it's not always clear exactly where you should go or what event to do next. If you don't know that by pressing the start button you can access the map and just select an event from there, you may end up driving around a city or town aimlessly looking for the next thing to do. It's not that you can't figure this out, it just doesn't seem to be as straight-forward as it maybe should be. Something else I wasn't crazy about was the difficulty involved in controlling the guido karts. Again, it's not impossible, they're just very twitchy & sensitive to control. Even on the easiest setting, it wasn't a total walk-in-the-park for a full-grown adult, so it certainly won't be easy for kids. As a matter of fact, my four year-old gave up pretty quickly on this type of racing and opted instead for some of the others, never to come back to the guido karts. Something that my four-year old found disappointing and I found surprising was the omission of one of the main characters from the film : Sally. Worse yet, they had a 'similar' character to Sally in the game, but you couldn't select her which even deepened the disappointment. Not sure what that was all about or why they elected to leave her out considering pretty much every main character in the movie is in the game and then some. One last thing that I personally found irritating is that one of the trophies is glitched and it's not an easy fix. This complaint only holds up if you're a trophy / achievement hunter, but the trophy that requires you to get all the spark plugs from each Gold event (these are the races that actually progress the story along) for some reason doesn't work for some people. Unfortunately I was one of them. Sometimes the fix requires you to race the first Gold event again, sometimes you have to create a new save file and race every Gold race again. That's what worked for me. And for some rare few, sometimes it just doesn't work at all. Again, this is a minor complaint and only worth noting if you're into that kind of thing, but it definitely bears mentioning.

THE BOTTOM LINE : Definitely a game for kids, but tolerable if you're playing it with them as something to 'bond' over. The controls are easy, the racing is easy, there's good variety in things to do & play, the game is exceptionally forgiving and it's a property that kids love. All in all it's a pretty wholesome game and, if you're a kid, there's nothing not to like.

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My 5 year old LOVES playing this game! I love that it is easy to change the difficulty level. I can put it on beginner for him and advanced for me or his father so he still gets a fair shot at winning. The graphics are amazing, there are tons of cars and load of fun races! A must have if you are a fan of the movie!

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I've never been a fan of video games and even as an adult I don't like them but I love how my 2 yr old nephew and 9 yr old niece play with this game. There aren't more than a handful of kid oriented PS3 games for young children. They need to make more! I love the fact that my 2 yr old nephew can mess up and turn the wrong way and the game automatically corrects his direction and even though he always comes in last he thinks he's won lol. This game is aimed for YOUNG CHILDREN not adults. I've seen many reviews online giving this particular game a bad grade. Okay folks it's not meant to challenge us old folk....it's for the kiddies and they love it!

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Boys who are fans of the movie will really enjoy this game. Most boys will chose to be Lightning McQueen first, but will soon try other characters. Game has "guard rails" literally during racing. Cars run too far will get reset back on track. Great for kids going nuts with the steering wheel.

The "kart" game features Luigi and Guido and their "foes" from the Chick Hicks' camp in the final race. It's like Mario's Karte game.

The story mode maybe a bit challenging for younger kids, so most may just have fun in the arcade mode.

This is a simple racing game compared to other more serious ones. So as such there is no good support for pedals that come with some steering wheels, or force feedback. I took a Thrustmaster Ferrari Wireless GT Cockpit 430 and re-mapped controller buttons to pedals (accelerator and brake/reverse), which allow my boys to drive like a car.

I notice there is only automatic transmission (I could be wrong), which make sense as a game for younger kids.

The game has the right price for its functionality, and if your kids like the characters in Cars the movie, then this game has very good entertaining value.

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I bought this for my son, he's only 3yrs old at first we would crash alot but now he's getting the hang of it. He even tries to tell me how to do it lol! There isn't many ps3 games for 3yr olds and this is an ok game for them.