Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure (2017 Remaster) - This Should Have Been Great…

 Available on: Xbox One (Remaster), Xbox 360 (Original)

By Oliver Giles

A game that allows you to jump in and play worlds based on iconic Pixar franchises should have been great on paper. However, if all you have is a gimmick and no idea how to execute it, things will go off the rails pretty quickly. And that is precisely what happened with Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure.

Originally released in 2013 with the intent to take advantage of the Xbox 360's Kinnect peripheral, the game received a Remaster for Xbox One in 2017, the version that will be discussed in this article.

There are some immediate red flags when it comes to Rush, the first being the development team. Disney commissioned developer Asobo Studio to work on the entire game after previously working with them on the equally flawed Disneyland Adventures in 2011, as well as several other Disney titles. 

While Asobo Studio is by no means a bad developer, with some legitimately good titles to their name, such as ReCore and Fuel, their work with the Disney company has consisted of many misses and few hits. 

One of Rush's biggest failures will be immediately apparent to anyone who has tried at least one level from more than one of the in-game "worlds"— they're all the exact same. Practically every game level, regardless of what film it is based on, involves the player racing through an obstacle-course-style level and collecting coins. Sure, this makes sense for the Cars-inspired stories as it fits the theme of a racing game, but who watched Up and thought, "Ah yes, a foot-race game."?

Aside from the design of the environment changing to match the film the level is based on, there is very little done to make anything stand out as interesting or unique. It honestly feels like, because the game was intended primarily for children, the developers really didn't try, which makes no sense at all. Even as a kid, I would have quickly grown tired of Rush and moved on to something else instead.

On top of that, the levels and worlds have very little replay value. What little value they do have is artificially created by the game limiting the player. You can unlock items and upgrades to help you attain faster level times by getting a specific score in each level. This means that, even if you play the level perfectly, you can't attain the highest ranking on your first try, forcing you to replay each level several times if you want to get all the Platinum Medals.

Obviously they couldn’t get the actual voice actors from the films to reprise their roles here, the Disney dollar can only be stretched so far for a cheap game, but they could have at least tried to get better sound-alikes. Ninety percent of the time the voices are so noticeably bad it actually becomes distracting. Add to that the fact that, thanks to the all-around terrible AI, the characters never shut up, and you’ll probably want to play the game on mute.

While there's certainly a lot wrong with this game, it does do a few things right.

If you were a fan of some of the Disney-Pixar Cars games as a kid, then you'll probably like the Cars world in Rush. The driving is fun enough, and the upgrades and levels are unique enough that it doesn't feel like a chore to play through.

Secondly, this is an excellent game if you are looking for some easy achievements. I unlocked 12 of them in just an hour and a half of playing. So if you are looking for an easy achievement/Gamerscore generator, Rush can succeed in that respect.

When it's all said and done, however, the bad certainly outweighs the good in this game. If you have Xbox Game Pass and want to get some easy achievements, go ahead and download it as it's included with the Gamepass subscription at the time of writing. For anyone else, don't waste your money, time, and 20GB of storage on this one; it's just not worth it.