HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED REVIEWS DRIVERS

It’s essentially just a lack of balance between the two types that causes a problem. Arcade racers are almost always at their best in short, fun, creative settings, and at times it can work to stretch out the track to shake things up. Not every track has this issue, and some of them are meant to be long by being a one way course rather than a circuit, but those lines feel difficult to determine when you have circuit tracks that have laps that are potentially upwards of three minutes long. The difficulties that come with the tracks make them each unique and fun, but what doesn’t make them fun however is their length. All this to say that the tracks themselves can be treacherous, on top of how difficult they can already be to manoeuvre on without falling off. The spider is actually one of the least dangerous hazards, as the Yeti leaves spots of ice all over the whole track for you to freeze your wheels on, there’s a dragon who will burn your car to a crisp and a snake who loves nothing more than to bite down on your chances of winning. Giant blue spiders aren’t all you’ll deal with of course, as plenty of iconic hazards from different Hot Wheels collections are included in the game. The trick is being able to go fast while jumping across a giant gap, landing immediately into a sharp turn and boosting past a giant blue spider who loves nothing more than to pray on tiny toy vehicles just looking for a laugh and a race by shooting webs at them, stopping them momentarily on the track. Hot Wheels have always been about going fast, and developer Milestone rightly leans into that. This stripped down gameplay is by no means bad, it’s actually what really makes Hot Wheels Unleashed stand out. You have your boost, which can vary between vehicles in regards to how you use it, and that’s it. There’s no combat whatsoever, so no items or anything of that nature.

HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED REVIEWS DRIVERS

Crazy and fast are the two main drivers in the gameplay because that’s pretty much all there is to it. Plenty of these tracks are challenging, and they’re challenging at a very, very fast pace. The words “crazy” and “fast” are almost understatements when describing the gameplay.

Depending on how well you do in each race though, you can start marking challenges off the list, as you explore all the different tracks the developers created for the game. There’s plenty of time to be spent in the single player portion of the game, the first time you see the map can almost be overwhelming because there looks like so much to do. Hot Wheels just wouldn’t be the same without incredibly inventive and crazy tracks, something that Hot Wheels Unleashed delivers on tenfold. Both of those aspects in Hot Wheels Unleashed feel very well represented, particularly in how the track builder really allows you to create the wildest track you can dream up. Growing up, the core Hot Wheels experience for me was always more focused on collecting the cars, but part of it was also collecting different kinds of tracks so you could eventually build one giant ultimate track. More than just cars, you’re also collecting, albeit at a much slower pace, different elements to add to your track builder. This is also where Hot Wheels isn’t really a perfect game, but we’ll dig more into that later on. The biggest rewards you earn in the single player mode are blind boxes to open, each of which could contain your next ultra-rare vehicle, something you already have or anything in between. They’re all recreated beautifully, it’s almost incredible how good these little metal and plastic cars look, but that’s also key to the experience when playing Hot Wheels Unleashed because the driving force (pun intended) behind everything is to build your collection of cars. I definitely didn’t have every car that’s in the game in my own collection, but just recognizing the ones I did was so incredibly cool to see.

Hot wheels unleashed reviews