Cars 3: Driven to Win

Cars 3: Driven to Win is a racing video game based on the 2017 film Cars 3, developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the first Disney game not to be published by Disney Interactive Studios since its shutdown in May 2016. This is because Avalanche Software was acquired from Disney by Time Warner (later WarnerMedia and now Warner Bros. Discovery) before the game's release, so the finished game was released under the Warner Bros. name even though the Cars franchise is not actually owned by it.

Gameplay
Cars 3: Driven to Win is a racing game like many of the "Cars" games that precede it. Like in Cars 2: The Video Game, players will be able to collect weapons along the track and use them against their competitors as they drive.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game is just a rehash of Cars 2: The Video Game, but with less base game content.
 * 2) The manual contains only four pages, so it's barely helpful.
 * 3) Fewer characters than the predecessor having only 23 compared to Cars 2's 58 (including skins for certain characters and DLC), which is a big issue since a Cars game hasn't had a small playable cast like this since the 2006 game (except the PSP version).
 * 4) There are some minor glitches where you can go into places you aren't supposed to be in.
 * 5) The plot is almost non-existent.
 * 6) Out of the 17 unlockable characters, two of them which are just special paint jobs of Lightning McQueen (Fabulous Lightning McQueen) and Mater (Mater the Greater), which just goes to show how much effort was put into this game's roster.
 * 7) The Hall of Fame objectives basically serve as an arbitrary checklist of simple tasks to do instead of actual missions.
 * 8) Boring track design with the track being incredibly long and taking as long as 6 minutes to complete!
 * 9) No online multiplayer.
 * 10) The PS3 and Wii U versions only support up to 2 players, which doesn't make sense considering other platforms (which are the other current-gen systems and the Xbox 360) support up to 4.
 * 11) Sadly, the voice acting somehow ranges from decent to annoying, in a similar way to the English dub of the Cars mockbuster film The Little Cars in the Great Race, unlike the film this game is based on. How this happened!? Well, this was due to the game actor strike of Oct 2016-Sep 2017. Because of this, only Darrell Waltrip (Darrell Cartrip) and Junior Johnson (Junior Moon) reprised their roles from the movie.
 * 12) *In addition, the characters also never shut up during gameplay. Sally, in particular, has the worst voice actors out of all, and some characters, an example being Bobby Swift, sound absolutely nothing like they did in the film.
 * 13) Lots and lots of grinding, which was never even explained in the instruction manual (see above).
 * 14) Most of the game modes were ripped directly from the previous game, with some exceptions such as the addition of Stunt Showdown.
 * 15) Long loading times.
 * 16) While it's nice to see free roaming return as the Thomasville Playground, the map is very small compared to the map from the previous Cars games.
 * 17) Continuity error: Doc Hudson is shown to be still alive and well at the very beginning of the game, despite it taking place after the events of the film. Wasn't he supposed to stay dead?
 * 18) * However, the reason is this, because the first mission is considered to be more of a flashback.
 * 19) Unlike Cars 2: The Video Game and most other Cars games, Guido does not speak, and therefore his voice actor Guido Quaroni is not credited.
 * 20) Just like mh:awesomegames:Cars 2: The Video Game, there is yet again still no speedometer, which is unacceptable for a racing game released by modern-day standards or console games. The same example is followed by Fast & Furious Crossroads, where there is no speedometer and mini map twice at the same time, an even lower-quality game released in 2020 by mh:awesomegames:Bandai Namco Entertainment.
 * 21) *On that topic, both games were overpriced, even Fast & Furious: Showdown (despite that game having a speedometer and mini map).
 * 22) *The HUD in the game is even almost a copy of the HUD from Cars 2: The Video Game.
 * 23) There's even no PC release, despite that most of the previous Cars games did have one for this treatment in the past.
 * 24) It was over $60 at launch.
 * 25) * Also, there's no new DLC or updates.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The graphics are pretty good.
 * 2) The tutorial does a solid job at teaching the player how to play the game.
 * 3) If you think you can do better in the game, it's possible to train in the Thomasville Playground, a free-roaming area where you can practice, your driving skills and stunt skills.
 * 4) The controls, driving, and handling model are well-done.
 * 5) The Stunt Showdown game mode is cool and fun.
 * 6) If you don't like (or hate) them, or are tired of them, at least there's surprisingly thankfully an option that does allow you to mute the voice actors and just only leave the subtitles enabled on if you want (most will).
 * 7) Some voice actors are decent at their roles or do decent impressions of the cast from the movie, like A.J. Hamilton as Jackson Storm, or also Adam Burton as Mater (even though he still got nothing on Larry the Cable Guy).
 * 8) *As said before in BQ #11, at least Darrell Waltrip and Junior Johnson did reprise their roles from the movie, and their performances are still very good.
 * 9) Multiplayer here is still decent despite the lack of online play.
 * 10) It does at least have some effort put into it unlike most licensed games despite the blatant rehashed gameplay mechanics.
 * 11) The game runs well.
 * 12) The ability to honk (and even change) your horn, and also change each characters' flame color seems kind of very interesting.
 * 13) Seeing tracks from the previous game is quite interesting too.
 * 14) Jackson Storm actually gets his comeuppance.
 * 15) The idea of bringing back free roaming is nice, even if it's just not large enough or a normal road (as mentioned above).

Reception
The game received mixed reception amongst critics; however, Cars fans are much harsher towards the game, declaring it to be one of the worst games, if not the absolute worst in the entire Cars franchise.

Videos
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Trivia

 * Despite Doc Hudson's death being followed by Paul Newman in 2008, this is his latest appearance of him being shown alive as seen in the first cutscene (although he has no lines).
 * This is the only Cars video game not to have a handheld, Wii, nor PC version. This is most likely because the PS Vita (because of not enough room to support the game) and 3DS (because of some commercial failures) were dying out of popularity.
 * At some point in one stage, there is a dark green flatbed truck that actually reuses Smokey's model.