It occurred to me about five minutes after reading Andy's 1,000-post message that after all those posts I have yet to WRITE a single game review.
 
That’s right, you’ve HEARD my opinions, but I’ve never once put them down into words. Well, in honor of this Gamer Andy milestone, I have decided to finally lay down the gauntlet and show the gaming development community that it's time to fear the Hawkes.
 
So I present to you, the first Cooper Hawkes preview of the recently released Xbox 360 demo:
 
“Cars: The Video Game” published by THQ.

In Cars.

Yes I'm serious, I'm going to review Cars: The Video Game. Why?

Because no one else would.

Anyway, in the Cars demo, you play as either Lightning McQueen or his best friend, Tow Mater. McQueen is the hot-shot rookie race sensation who got lost on a long-distance drive to California and wound up in a small sleepy town off Route 66 called Radiator Springs. Tow Mater is the local (and apparently only) tow truck, whose favorite activities appear to be towing things around, and tractor tipping (We'll get to that soon).

In the game there are only two sections to play; one where McQueen is trying out Filmore's (A VW Wagon "hippie") latest organic fuel that will give McQueen a SPEED BOOST. In the other, well, it's playing Mater in a tractor-tipping mini-game.

Yes, in the world of Cars tractors are cows. Let's just digest that and move on, shall we?

The first thing you get when you fire up Cars is a load screen, which after a couple of moments is followed by a menu asking you to select if you want to try Filmore's brew or cause some tractors to fall on their asses. I selected the Filmore level and was met with a load screen.

A pretty decent sized load screen, I might add.

From there you meet Filmore, who's talking to Lightning McQueen about the organic boost fuel he came up with, blah, blah, blah. LET'S RACE!!!

No, no racing yet, just another load screen. Huh, a load screen for a cut scene, and a load screen to do a race, this won't get tedious at all!

So here's the race, and we're not really talking about Need for Speed or Project Gotham Racing 3 or even Mario Kart. It's a pretty simple system: X to accelerate, left trigger for drift, right trigger for boost. I didn't even use the break once, so I couldn't tell you which one it was.

Seriously, we're not talking quantum physics here. You race around a contained area of Radiator Springs. It's pretty cut and dried. The car physics are much more than you would expect for a game of this type, which I welcomed. What I didn't welcome was getting off the track. See, if you leave the track, a clock counts down from three for you to get BACK on the track. Trust me when I say you don't have half that time before you're suddenly transplanted onto the track again. It can be very disconcerting.

So anyway, I jump, I fly, and I notice that the graphics are very pretty. No, they aren't to the quality of the movie, but what could be? It was nice to look at, and it neither detracted nor added to the game-play value.

After the race, comes the dreaded load screen. I make a mental note to send a WTF letter to THQ about their inability to make a game without 30 load screens.

So the menu comes back, and now I choose tractor tipping. Say it with me folks:

LOADING SCREEN.

For a cut scene, with Lightning McQueen saying let's go tractor tipping, and we must watch out for Frank (The giant bull tractor that's a combine harvester). Mater agrees to go and…

LOADING SCREEN.

Watching the little tips on the bottom of the loading screen makes me realize that this would be a fun game, but not so much for kids with attention disorders.

Finally Tractor Tipping starts.

You are Sam "Mater" Fisher, and you must walk quietly through the field, avoiding the lights, and Frank in order to tractor tip eight tractors. I'm serious; it reminded me of Splinter Cell. There was a Frank-meter and everything. It was like a red thermometer that showed the level of Frank's awareness of you. If the thermometer hit the top, Frank found you and then...

LOADING SCREEN.

Before, you would see the big Frank-chases-Mater-and-McQueen-out-of-the-field scene.

There ends the demo.

Well, it doesn't END in the respect that it gives you the "marketing speak" screen and shoves you back to the dashboard, but that's all there is in it.

Now then, when it comes to reviews or previews, I rate games on three basic criteria:

Was it fun to play?
Was it hard to play?
Would you buy or rent this game?

So here we go:

Was it fun to play?

Load screens aside, yeah, it was fun. A much simpler version of a regular racing game, but it certainly was fun. Having seen the movie a ba-jillion times (3-year-old son), it was nice to see the detail that went into bringing the small town of Radiator Springs to life. Heck, they even got a nice approximation of Owen Wilson's voice (in the movie, he played Lightning McQueen, not so much in the video game).

Was it hard to play?

Please! A walk in the park. Rinse and repeat. It's designed for kids, so it needs to be. The driving was a little Mario Kart-esque, which was tough because a part of me was wondering when I would get a mushroom boost or a turtle shell. I understand that the final game is sort of Grand Theft Auto in scope, as you can tool around Radiator Springs and do good deeds or some such. I'm sure that it will be fun for kids.

Would you buy or rent this game?

Rent. My son's too young to really play it, and as much fun as I had with the demo, I don't see there being a lot of play value with the game. Like I said, I understand it's more Grand Theft Auto, but I didn't get ANY of that from the demo, unlike the Superman Returns game, which at least gave you the idea of the scale. I could be encouraged to convert "rent" to "buy" if the game feels like more than just racing various characters from the movie. The tractor-tipping segment shows that there is perhaps more.

I liked it, but didn't love it. I don't believe the demo was well put together as it does nothing but show off two mini-games and doesn't give you any idea how the final open-sandbox style game really is.

Oh, and on a personal note to THQ: I know what you need to do in order to make a game like this better. All you have to do is...

LOADING SCREEN.

Semper Fi!