I was just a few minutes into Cars Mater-National Championship when I caught myself thinking that it was far more fun than the last Cars game I played. I then realized that the game I had in mind was the Wii release from earlier this year, which just demonstrates that graphics can't top gameplay. It isn't that Cars Mater-National Championship maxes the DS hardware as much as you notice the design choices. Each track is built with interesting touches and lots of interactivity. Finding secret paths may require a leap of faith like driving through a stand of tall grass or jumping through a waterfall. The visual clues are there, but everything is subtle. If the landscape is moving too quickly on the top screen, you can adjust the touch-screen to show a map of the immediate stretch of track or a pull-back on the entire course.

Music and voice-effects work equally well in Cars Mater-National Championship and enhance the experience rather than make you wince and reach for the volume control. Each character has a signature remark they'll utter as they leave you in the dust or as you pass them. There are some sound clues inserted in several of the tracks that will tell you how to unlock some of that track's special features. The whole package has a good vibe and feels well designed by any racing game standard, not just what can be passed off on kids eager for anything Cars related.

Racing games seem like they should be unbreakable in terms of gameplay, but that is rarely the case. Control is a factor but especially when it comes to racing games designed for younger gamers, the trend is to build a stale kart-racing variation and paste on licensed characters. Cars Mater-National Championship goes instead for a "real" racing game with sufficient variety and depth in each course. There isn't any real semblance of a story other than a few cut-scenes that serve to introduce new characters prior to running a special race. Most races are straightforward, around-three-times affairs where you'll compete with a sampling of three other characters from the Cars movie. You have the option to select characters you've unlocked and new paintjobs for existing characters before the race begins. There isn't any real character development or performance tweaking in this game, which is a shame. Mostly it seems like each character is only a slight bit different than any other character from a performance standpoint, so it isn't meant to be a highly technical racing experience.

Each time you race a traditional track, you'll have a chance to earn a certain number of stars according to how well you place. This system unlocks new tracks and allows less experienced gamers to slide in second or third and still progress through Cars Mater-National Championship. Players that place first consistently still have a final challenge of earning a gold wheel. The wheels are placed in special areas on each track. You'll see something that looks like a shortcut and when you enter, you'll be challenged to avoid obstacles or perform some stunt in order to complete that section of track and earn the wheel. Earning wheels will unlock new characters or paintjobs. It is possible to play through the game happily without earning wheels, but the extra touch adds replay value. Another replay value is the multi-player mode. Competing with three other live players in single- or multi-card competition is a lot more exciting than racing against the CPU. Another fun but brief part of the game is a series of challenges that you'll play and unlock in sequence. These are really just like the traditional races, but with a goal to collect items, come in under a specific time, or in first place. The necessity of these extra modes is apparent once you realize how quickly you'll burn through the single-player racing action. Short but sweet, this one.

As mentioned above, the level of challenge isn't terribly high when racing against the CPU. For younger players it may be acceptable, but anyone that has learned to move around a track in a more "grown-up" racer will find Cars Mater-National Championship way too easy. The shortcuts you take to earn gold wheels are actually not short at all and place you behind the competition in most cases. This requires some strategy as you consider how many laps you've run and how much time you'll have to catch back up with the pack. There isn't an option to turn off or on a "catch-up" feature, but there almost certainly is one at work here. In other words, you'll never end up too far behind the pack as long as you're making a reasonable effort (i.e. not driving backwards in the wrong direction) and your competition won't ever be too far behind you. The actual shortcuts in the game, of which there are a few, don't seem to give you or your opponents a tremendous advantage, which is odd. The difficulty of nailing some shortcuts balanced against the small benefit you'll gain means that you can happily play the entire game by staying on the track. The only exception is earning the gold wheel for each track, which requires some off-road driving. There are some boss stages where you'll face a new car that is built up to be more challenging than the regular cast of characters. It's true that these boss characters always ended up placing at least second in their own course, but they didn't seem that much more challenging. The most challenging aspect of Cars Mater-National Championship is learning and mastering each track. This is as it should be for any racing game, so no big surprise to you there.

For a DS game, Cars Mater-National Championship doesn't make any great use of the touch-screen controls. Tapping the lower screen during a race changes the viewpoint and not much else. This works just fine since the racing action is best handled on the D-pad. Using the (A) and (B) buttons to accelerate and brake works fine and you can tap the (X) button to use your boost. Until you play human opponents, you won't ever need the boost, but it's a nice feature if you just have to gain that unstoppable lead. You can jump by pressing a shoulder button and this only becomes useful in a few places. Some of the challenges that you'll face while gathering those gold wheels require jumping skill and some special controls that you'll be prompted for during the challenge. Otherwise the action is all about maneuvering through each track and balancing speed with control. Sliding around corners will add to your boost gauge, which is not all that useful or practical. There are various places in the game where you can take shortcuts or use the environment to your advantage, similar to the wall-driving that happens in the Cars movie. If you do happen to crash, you'll lose a few seconds before respawning on the track and maybe losing your place in line. As long as you aren't in the final stretch of the final lap, you can easily make up the lost time. The moral is that you don't want to experiment too much with tricky driving until you really know the layout of each track.

There would be a few improvements to Cars Mater-National Championship such as more tracks and more use of the touch-screen controls. There aren't many technical racing features such as upgrades to the cars or noticeable handling differences between each character. The goal, it seems, was to make a fairly light racer that conveyed the fun of Cars by being true to the characters, but amounted to more than a kart racer. The 30,000-foot view would probably still classify Cars Mater-National Championship as a kart-racer, but there are a few extra control options that make this feel more like a real racing game. Fun for the kids, and a good investment if they have friends to join them in the multiplayer action. Sometimes making a light, fun game is its own reward; not everything has to be War and Peace...