Hot Wheels Unleashed review: Nice racing game with scratches on the paintwork
With Hot Wheels Unleashed, the Italian development team Milestone, which is known for its large portfolio of racing games, is now releasing a game with the well-known toy cars from the manufacturer Mattel in the “leading role”. We will clarify in the test whether the small cars can impress just as much as real runabouts.
An arcade racing game with lightning-fast rides, track editor and all in a fantastically accurate, faithful Hot Wheels look? That sounds almost too good to be true, one or the other may think, and unfortunately that’s partly true. Because Hot Wheels Unleashed doesn’t necessarily fail on these basic points, but on the things around it.
The Toy Goes Full Throttle!
Let’s start with the biggest and most important point, the driving gameplay. At this level, Hot Wheel Unleashed is pretty convincing. It’s just fun to choose your little set of wheels and then go full throttle down one of the slopes. On the one hand it feels very powerful and there is a nice feeling of speed, but on the other hand you always have in mind that you are not controlling a full-fledged vehicle or the like, but driving a toy car over plastic tracks.
That may sound a bit derogatory, but on the contrary it is one of the biggest advantages of the game. For example, it is quite easy to knock your competitors off the track and throw them off the track in a high arc. A mechanic, which in other games only works by exploiting bugs, is due to the suitably built-in driving physics of toy cars.
The two secondary mechanics to master are boosting and drifting. You can activate the boost to get a short speed boost, which even works slightly differently depending on which vehicle you are using. It is charged primarily through the correct use of the other mechanism, drifting. So if you slide properly through the corner with a drift, you not only have the advantage that you can easily get around it better, but you can then use the boost out of the corner or on the next straight to make even better progress. The boost is therefore the most effective way to catch up with or outperform your competitors.
Small Cars Really Big!
There are different Hot Wheels to discover.
Visually, Hot Wheels Unleashed (buy now €14.99) pretty much everything that can be extracted from the setting. The individual toy cars are worked out to the absolute maximum with extreme attention to detail. It will be a special treat for fans to see the collectibles digitally reproduced one-to-one and to be able to drive around with them. The selection ranges from real cars in miniature form to absurd chassis in the form of dinosaurs to custom-made products such as the DeLorean from Back to the Future . The carts can also be optically personalized according to your mood. So there is something for every taste.
The surroundings are also convincing all along the route. There are a few different areas in which the snapped together plastic pieces are built up to provide some variety to the eye. Above all, the beautiful light effects that shine towards you when racing across the road are positively remembered.
The small signs of wear and tear and imperfections are also very nice, which both the vehicles and the parts of the track show and significantly increase the immersion. Toys no longer look 100 percent new in real life after use. Unfortunately, the sound cannot keep up with this high quality. In addition to the engine noise, only an interchangeable soundtrack hums along.
(Loot) Pit Stop
New Hot Wheels are unlocked by opening loot boxes.
Aside from a small shop that offers a handful of Hot Wheels for direct purchase every few hours, the only way to get new rides is by opening loot boxes . Why you can’t just buy the car you want directly doesn’t make sense at all. Instead, you have to take this detour and hope for luck. At least the whole thing only works with in-game currency and there is no way to purchase anything with real money. The currency required to buy the loot boxes is primarily earned as part of the campaign.
Ready To City Rumble?
The campaign called City Rumble comes with a nice overview map that connects different tracks, puzzles and boss fights. That sounds pretty cool on paper, but it’s a sobering system in practice. Apart from normal races against the AI and races for the time, there isn’t much to see here. Oh, except “riddles”, with big quotes. These then consist, for example, of completing one of the previous missions with a specific vehicle. These tasks are so trivial that they could have been left out entirely.
And there are also “boss fights”, you see, we’re using quotation marks again. These are simply slightly longer and more difficult, but still normal races against the AI. So you end up choosing race after race on the map to get money to buy loot boxes or upgrade already unlocked Hot Wheels.
Crazy Multiplayer
Completely stupid tracks like this built by the community are unfortunately not uncommon.
The local multiplayer relies on two-player split-screen, works flawlessly and lets you enjoy the good gameplay together with a friend without any noticeable loss in performance. The online multiplayer causes problems. In theory it shouldn’t be all that difficult: you join a lobby, choose your preferred vehicle, then choose a track and then compete against other players on that track. However, the developers underestimated two things: The playerbase’s absolutely underwhelming game design talent and the far too high probability of encountering trolls online.
The problem is that every player in the lobby can choose their preferred map from a selection of five different routes. The one with the most votes will be driven next. So far so good. Out of the five tracks, three are part of the normal game, but the other two are community-made. It’s surprisingly common for a completely awful track to win the vote and be forced to ride it.
The absolute “highlights” are routes where the destination is placed right at the start and you endure loading times and waiting times in the lobby for minutes and then it takes exactly one second to drive the route. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. What’s also completely missing is any sort of leaderboard or other progression system.
Creativity That Falls By The Wayside
You can let your creativity run free!
As mentioned, the environments in which the tracks are set up are very nicely designed. Unfortunately, they often hardly come into their own, since you are on the Hot Wheels-typical plastic track parts 95 percent of the time. Here we would have wished for a lot more excursions into the living room or garage pampas. You might drive under a pizza box or a small part of a route leads over a sofa. Unfortunately, this always feels more like a gimmick than a central element of the routes.
That’s a pity, because with the beautiful surroundings and the toy car setting, all the necessary points for interesting courses are actually offered. In theory, the community can remedy the situation by using the extensively built environments to build creative courses there themselves. However, this does not work particularly well in practice at the moment. The editor really offers many opportunities to let your creativity run free, as long as you can get used to the somewhat counter-intuitive controls.
Not The Best Time, But Over The Finish Line
From the setting to the gameplay to the visual implementation, Hot Wheels Unleashed is at the forefront. The overall package of miniature cars is slowed down by many small obstacles. The uninspired soundtrack and somewhat difficult-to-use editor are still points to overlook.
Unfortunately, the decision to prefer loot boxes to a traditional unlock system, the boring campaign and the unthought-out multiplayer present a pothole for Hot Wheels Unleashed that simply cannot be avoided. If you can make friends with the setting and don’t have a problem with all these flaws, you get an otherwise thoroughly convincing arcade racing game with a nostalgia factor with Hot Wheels Unleashed.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Interesting setting in toy form | Loot boxes as an unlock system |
| Good driving experience | Multiplayer with community maps |
| Pretty and detailed optics | Underwhelming campaign |
| Lots of Hot Wheels to collect and customize | Weak soundtrack |
| Extensive editor | Unintuitive controls in the editor |
| Great setting is underused |
PROS & CONS of Hot Wheels Unleashed
Benjamin Lachman author
Just About Gets The Curve
While it has its issues, Hot Wheels Unleashed is quite a lot of fun.
In the hours I spent playing the game, the positives definitely outweighed the negatives.
Sure, the loot boxes are weird, but I’ve always been kind of pleased with the content I got from them.
The campaign isn’t particularly exciting, but the individual missions are still entertaining due to the strong driving gameplay.
But there are also points that spoiled my fun a lot more, such as the stupid online multiplayer.
There remains a constant tinge that Hot Wheels Unleashed could have been so much more.
The toy setting, where the whole world around you seems gigantic, would offer so many opportunities to build extremely customized and special tracks,
that you have never seen before.
There are good approaches, but in the end the ideas never go beyond a small detour onto a sofa cushion or something similar and I really don’t remember a stretch from my entire time with the game.
A route that goes through a living room and has to go under a chair and over a rug, or a route that goes inside a freezer and goes over frozen food would have been nice, for example!
So, even during the best moments of Hot Wheels Unleashed, I had this smack of a missed opportunity throughout.
Ultimately though, the ideas never go beyond a little detour onto a sofa cushion or something, and I didn’t really remember a stretch of my entire time with the game.
A route that goes through a living room and has to go under a chair and over a rug, or a route that goes inside a freezer and goes over frozen food would have been nice, for example!
So, even during the best moments of Hot Wheels Unleashed, I had this smack of a missed opportunity throughout.
Ultimately though, the ideas never go beyond a little detour onto a sofa cushion or something, and I didn’t really remember a stretch of my entire time with the game.
A route that goes through a living room and has to go under a chair and over a rug, or a route that goes inside a freezer and goes over frozen food would have been nice, for example!
So, even during the best moments of Hot Wheels Unleashed, I had this smack of a missed opportunity throughout.
that runs inside a freezer and goes over frozen food, for example, would have been nice!
So, even during the best moments of Hot Wheels Unleashed, I had this smack of a missed opportunity throughout.
that runs inside a freezer and goes over frozen food, for example, would have been nice!
So, even during the best moments of Hot Wheels Unleashed, I had this smack of a missed opportunity throughout.
| Versions | Rating |
|---|---|
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (PC) | 7/10 _ |
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (PS4) | 7/10 _ |
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (PS5) | 7/10 _ |
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (NSW) | 7/10 _ |
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (XBO) | 7/10 _ |
| Hot Wheels Unleashed (XSX) | 7/10 _ |
Version & rating Hot Wheels Unleashed
CONCLUSION
Despite all its problems, it’s a fun and fast arcade racing game, which of course is a dream come true, especially for Hot Wheels fanatics
