Cars, or 'Pixar's Cars' to give it its full commercialised title, has already been released on the DS, PS2, Xbox, GBA, PSP, PC and… the GameCube. The question thus becomes: why on earth would you spend hard cash on the Wii version, when cheaper versions are already available on every format under the sun?

Well, maybe you're a Cars enthusiast and want to collect the title on all of the available platforms. If that's the case, we strongly recommend you turn off your computer, go outside, and throw yourself in front of traffic. Maybe you don't have these other consoles – are one of those non-gamers Nintendo is so keen to draft in – and like the look of the game. If this is the case, you may be surprised, because reviews of the game weren't actually terrible.

Cars follows Lightning McQueen, a talking racing car, in a kind of open-ended world where racing and mini-games are available. Given McQueen's particular anatomy, racing is what you spend most of the game doing, and it's not half bad apparently. It has a solid sense of speed to it, and although it might feel to stuck and rigid for some, it all holds together comfortably well. In terms of a companion to the movie, the game has been credited positively, capturing the spirit and the character of its big-screen source, that marks it above the great majority of film licensed games. In this sense it would be a commendable effort – a licensed title that will appeal to the kids who liked the film, and offering them a gameplay that isn't garbage.

Maybe you already do own, say, the GameCube edition, but are curious how much the Wii adds to the experience. It's a fair question, and it's answer can be found by examining the majority of Wii titles at launch that hail from the format jungle. It's bring new ideas to the table, but not in any massively remarkable way. Control is the obvious turning point: you can now race by holding the Wiimote on its side, like how you've seen in the ExciteTruck videos, and turn it left and right to steer. You can turn this control scheme off if you wish, but that just means you've paid full price for an above average Gamecube game. And no-one likes suckers.

I'm out of scenarios now. It'll take a Euro review copy to convince me that all this surprising good talk about the game is justified (metacritic doesn't fall below fifty per cent), but until then I'm holding my doubts, and I'm thinking that if you're after a good racing game on launch day, ExciteTruck makes a bit more sense.