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Still, the developer estimates that it will take most players roughly eight hours to obtain all of the available unlockables. Avalanche promises more than 20 tracks in all, split up over the movie’s four locations - London, Italy, Tokyo and Radiator Springs - although some simply offer alternate layouts. These points go toward the game’s unlockables, which include vehicles, skins and tracks. You earn more for performing well of course, but you’ll always pick up at least a few.
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No matter which mode you are playing in, you earn Spy Points. There is also a freeplay mode, in which a range of elements can be tweaked prior to hitting the track, from the number of laps and racers to which weapons are and aren’t available from pickups. Players also have the option of setting up a Squad Series, which pulls together as many as six individual matches to be played in a single circuit. Lastly, there’s Hunter, a chase mode in which players must pursue and take down a target vehicle. Also on the competitive front is Disrupter, a 2v2 capture the flag battle. Arena is the most familiar, a basic deathmatch mode similar to Mario Kart‘s legendary Battle Mode in which players can compete in a free-for-all setup or in 2v2 and 1v3 versus matches. In addition to the usual single race and circuit modes, the game also offers up an assortment of competitive challenge/battle-style modes.
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In what is almost certainly a nod to maintaining a family-friendly appeal, the use of weapons in the game’s races and other modes (more on those later) is justified by the fact that all of the events you compete in are technically training exercises. Players are new members of C.H.R.O.M.E., the Cars equivalent of MI6 which features into a spy/espionage subplot in Cars 2. The 3D effect in the PlayStation 3 version of the game is actually pretty impressive as well, adding quite a bit of depth to the colorful environments.Ĭars 2: The Video Game is set after the events of the upcoming movie.
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While the game pales in the visual department when held up against the eye candy titans of the gaming industry, it still looks like a perfectly acceptable high-def release and seems to do a good job of capturing the universe that Pixar created for the upcoming summer sequel and its predecessor.
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