Cars 3: Driven to Win

It’s a fun loving game that is colourful and a great way to get the kiddies involved with racing their favourite characters

The previous Cars games were surprisingly fun and well put together. Let's see if the latest entry in the game series (that happens to complement a brand new Cars movie) lives up to its predecessors.

The bar of expectation was not set particularly high for Cars 3: Driven to Win, yet by focusing on the right things and not patronising its intended audience, the game is a surprisingly enjoyable racer that's a pleasure to handle.

All in all, Cars 3: Driven to Win is one of the better titles in a sea of movie tie-ins. You won't find any groundbreaking stuff here, but the game is definitively above average for what it is, and an easy kart racing recommendation for families. I don't know if I could necessarily recommend it right now with it's $60 price tag, but if you see this game discounted even by $10, it's definitely worth picking up.

Overall then, Cars 3: Driven to Win isn’t really a bad game. It can be fairly enjoyable in short bursts, especially in co-op. At the same time, however, it’s not what I’d call a good game either. It’s decidedly average, chock full of content and variety, but let down by being prescriptive, uneven in difficulty and quite frankly, a bit dull. Still, if you’re after a colourful game that will keep one to four fans of Disney’s Cars franchise happy for a while, I dare say it’ll do the job quite nicely. It certainly could have been a lot worse.

Cars 3: Driven to Win is a fun and eclectic racer, and one that boasts plenty of content that’ll keep fans of the films happy for many hours, especially younger gamers who may well overlook some of the flaws. It’s a shame then that the game’s poor performance, lack of polish and often unfair difficulty level make it that much harder to recommend to anyone else.

Driven to Win has a soundtrack made up of forgettable songs that fit the Cars series, ranging from fast-paced tracks to more country-based tunes. The voice acting is an entirely different story unfortunately, thanks to the abysmal voice impressions. None of the actors seemed to return to voice their characters, leading to a litany of poor imitators assuming their roles. Everybody sounds just off enough to be an annoyance, especially since you’ll be yelled at by your opponents for the majority of each race.

A movie tie-in game is a dime a dozen and rarely more than a quick cash-in. Developers tasked with making a movie tie-in nonetheless have an opportunity to make an interesting game. Avalanche Software has done this with Cars 3: Driven to Win to middling success.