Republished on Wednesday, September 28, 2022: Following the announcement of the PlayStation Plus lineup in October, we’re bringing this review back from the archives. The original is below.
After spending years tweaking various motorcycle racing titles, developer Milestone has taken a major detour with Hot Wheels Unleashed. Instead of pursuing simulation-style handling and realistic tracks and locations, this new project brings Mattel’s popular die-cast vehicles into the modern game. It’s certainly a change of pace for the studio, but their racing expertise and dedication to high-quality visuals has resulted in Arcade His Racer, which looks and feels absolutely amazing.
Especially car models are great. There are dozens of Hot Wheels vehicles to collect in the game, each meticulously recreated. Frankly, it’s fun just to watch. Materials are well represented, down to imperfections such as the joints where the plastic contacts in the mold. I spent more than a little time just twirling the car through the selection screen.
They look like little toy cars and drive the same. Driving along a classic bright orange track (much wider than it actually is), this is a very arcade-like race. Sweeping turns allows for big power slides, and smooth slides feel great. It may take some time to understand how the game works, but once you get used to it, you can spend less time hitting barriers and more time boosting and drifting like a champ. It’s fast and chaotic, cars can collide with each other, and many of the included tracks are full of twists, turns, and jumps to deal with.
That means you may need a boost to get through the loop-de-loop. You can also use this boost to control yourself in the air and correct your course if you hit the ramp at an odd angle. The skill cap is surprisingly high. It feels like there’s definitely room to find ultra-technical maneuvers in aerial maneuvers. and young or more casual racers can have a good time just drifting around the curves and collecting cars.
Hot Wheels City Rumble is the pinnacle of single-player experiences, offering dozens of quick races and time trials across the game’s extensive course selection. In-game currency, new parts to customize your basement, and a car or two for filling the map. As you slowly make your way through the overworld, you’ll also come across boss races. These are key events that feature some of the game’s more interesting hazards and longest tracks, rewarding you with the most. You must meet the conditions. A fun idea, but it seems almost dependent on winning races with a particular car. This can get a little tricky when most of the collection is unlocked randomly.
Yes, blind boxes in the game are the primary way to acquire new vehicles. While you can unlock specific Hot Wheels in the City Rumble campaign, most cars are found in these lootbox-style items. Earned in the aforementioned single his player event or purchased with currency can open these things fairly often. Due to the rarity of cars, when your collection is full, it can become repetitive and not very fun.
The good news is that replicas can be dismantled or sold in exchange for gear or currency. This will allow you to upgrade your car, purchase other things, etc. The exclusive offers section of the shop rotates with a handful of vehicles, so take a look there and see if your favorite appears. You can check it out or continue to try your luck in a blind box. It’s kind of fun to open them up and get some cool stuff, but if you want to fill your garage with all the cars, I think you can grind for a while.
Still, there are plenty of other ways to fill the time between collecting Hot Wheels itself. It introduces split screen for two players and doesn’t noticeably affect the game’s smooth 60 frames per second performance. Online multiplayer lets you race against up to 11 racers on Milestone tracks or community-created tracks.
Speaking of which, a robust track editor lets you take to town on your own circuits and tracks. It’s an amazingly detailed mode that the developers seem to have used to build their own stages. The track pieces click together, but there’s a lot of freedom in the shape of each piece, and you can throw in special modules to give the race some hazards, split paths, anti-gravity sections, etc. I can do it. It’s easy to use once you understand how it works and you have to validate your tracks before sharing them so you can’t troll other people with impossible circuits. Combined with our coloring editor, this means you have many options to customize your own experience.
The problem with game tracks, whether user-created or developer-created, is that they all feel very similar. There are some surrounding environments that give you a change of scenery, but they are very static and don’t add much to the gameplay. Hazards, such as stray snakes, are more annoying than funny and blur many tracks.
Also, it doesn’t make sense to collect cars once you find a good one, unless you really care about having them all. If he has one or two rides that he can consistently win in races and time attacks, there is little reason to spend energy to get another. Bumper cars are cute, but they don’t compare to slick speedsters, which have high stats in every category. All you need is a couple.
Conclusion
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a solid arcade racing game that does many things right, but falls short in some areas. The drift-heavy handling and physics-based mayhem make for a lot of fun action on the track, and the car itself looks just as good to drive. The tracks tend to feel a bit the same, and the random nature of the unlocks can be frustrating, but the end result is a robust racing game that will appeal to fans young and old.
