Cars [PSP]

We typically cringe when movie tie-in games arrive in the post, but Cars has been a different story. On consoles, the efforts of well-known racing developer Rainbow Studios led to a surprisingly entertaining sandbox racing game. On the DS, misguided love for mini-games led to a multi-car pileup of depressing proportion. We expected this PSP release to be more like the DS version -- call it portable prejudice -- but in reality, it's a solid, family-friendly racer.

The PSP is already blessed with great racing games, but what it doesn't have is a racer to satisfy those not interested in white-knuckle competition. Cars fills the niche perfectly. The blend of recognizable and endearing characters is made more attractive by tight, responsive control and an excellent adaptation of the physics that made the console game so much fun. Though there's not much of a story, fans of the film will enjoy the likenesses and voice acting.

Those migrating from the PS2 or Xbox game will immediately notice one key difference: the sandbox gameplay is nowhere in sight. Instead, there's a basic story about Radiator Springs being overrun by garish, loudmouth racers. Hero Lightning McQueen and friends have to win a series of group and one-on-one trials to force them back out. All the story action takes place in cutscenes which act as bumpers for the game's 25 races. At no point will you have the option to roam freely around Radiator Springs. But the races are good enough that it's not a huge loss.

The racing is quite straightforward, though laced with a few good touches. Boost pads liberally sprinkled on the track offer lots of speed, and by drafting (tailgating, essentially) behind other cars you can quickly fill the boost meter, which is essential for passing. The meter fills slowly on it's own, which means the race leader can also boost to keep his position. Powersliding is also a key tactic -- start to slide as you go into just about any turn, and it's easy enough to keep the lead.

The track layouts are also fairly basic, though each is dotted with jumps and shortcuts, and token landmarks from the film. We'd like a little more track variety, but the game keeps the location constrained to Radiator City, which means lots of desert roads, a few canyons, and the opportunity to blast through the drive-in movie screen now and again. Cars isn't a great game to play all the way through, since the one primary location can lead to monotony, but as something to dip into, it's perfect.

Cars isn't going to displace Burnout or WipeOut in any PSP software collection, but it is the rare movie tie-in that can be enjoyed without embarrassment. It's also a great racing game for kids and adults alike, which is something the system definitely needed.