Oh God WHY?
Cars 2 was one of my most favorite party games back when I owned an Xbox 360. It had 4 player split screen (for ALL MODES, even the campaign), slick racing, and tons of mechanics such as drifitng, driving on 2 wheels, driving backwards, jumping, ramming, and boosting that gave the game a suprisingly high skill ceiling. The highlight of the game was disruptor, a 2v2 match where you had to plant a bomb in the opposing player's base. The only downside to the game was the lack of online multiplayer. Whenever I showed the game to friends who had never played it before, they were always surprised to see how much fun it was despite it being a movie tie in game. Avalanche Studios, the creator of this game, made a hidden gem.
This brings me to the review. When I started up Cars 2 on my PC, I was so excited to play it again. That is until I got in game. The sight of the game left me speechless and confused. Cars 2 looks HORRIBLE on PC. The textures on everything are super muddy and stretched out, the sound is equalized so badly that it constanly cuts out into loud static, and many assets do not show up in game such as street lamps (you only see a string of lights shining on you from middair). I was appalled. The PC version of a game like this should look better or at least equal to the 8 year old console version. Instead, it looks like a game that came out on the PlayStation 2. In fact, it looks Identical to the Nintendo DS version of Cars 2.
This revelation led me to start researching what the hell happened. How could a PC port be botched so badly? Here's what I found: The Steam port of Cars 2 was not done by Avalanche, it was done by an obscure company named Gamestar. Gamestar is a CHINESE development company that was established in 2002 and is focused on outsourcing. It has a staff of people who used to work at the Ubisoft Shanghai division. In 2008, Disney acquired the studio and set it to work on porting their games.
Disney Interactive VP said during the acquisition, "Gamestar will play an important role in our global growth plans, providing a high quality talent pool for our expanding product portfolio. Our global expansion is aimed at achieving a new level of creative capacity, quality, and expertise in video game software development.”
I sincerely hope the VP chokes on his own horsesh** that he just spewed out of his mouth. Disney bought out this outsourcing company based in CHINA with the sole purpose to lower the cost of porting games. This resulted in this awful, awful port of an originally fantastic game on Steam.
Hear me out: I would have been fine with the downgraded graphics, bugs, and annoyances of the port because at its base, Cars 2 is still a very good game. That is until I found the straw that broke the camel's back. I fired up my 4 controllers and hooked them up to my pc ready to have some fun playing a 4 player race just like I did 5 years ago with the Xbox version. Then I saw it. The game only supports 2 player split screen.
THATS RIGHT, DISNEY AND GAMESTAR SCREWED UP THE PC PORT SO BADLY THAT IT REDUCED THE AMOUNT OF SPLITSCREEN PLAYERS FROM 4 TO 2.
This will be the first (and last) game that I refund on steam. I am so very sad to see what has happened to my favorite party racer. If anyone from Avalanche Studios is reading this, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what it feels like to put your heart and soul into making a great game only to see it eviscerated by an incompetent outsourced chinese studio. But in the end, it's really Disney's fault. They are a company that seeks the highest possible profit margin, and they are willing to turn great games into abominations like this in order to achieve that.
I hope that this review dissuades anyone from buying this game. Avoid any game ported by Gamestar like the plague. There are better racers to choose from on Steam, and the console versions are still avaliable to play.
Rest in peace, Cars 2
:'(
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