Hot Wheels Unleashed review: great racing and visuals make it a winner

A fingerprint stamped on the hazy driver’s side window of my 1985 Audi Sport Quattro, at the end of a race, says it all. In the breathtakingly detailed and utterly charming Hot wheels ReleasedAs of Thursday, cars feel like toys that have actually been played with, and like I’m the one playing.

Previous Hot Wheels games (Released is 27, by my count) they have generally presented the player and the car at an equivalent scale, reducing the viewer’s perspective to their world or making one of them life-size to ours. Hot wheels unleashed scrupulously maintains its fleet of 60 vehicles at their true size, traversing the full-size world we live in, subject (primarily) to its laws of physics. The result is a great legitimately challenging racing video game that brings the allure of Hot Wheels to life.

When the camera zooms into the interior of the Volkswagen Custom, it reveals the matte gray plastic of the real Hot Wheels car, a seat in the center of the floor, the steering wheel is a solid disc glued to a featureless steering column. And when this car rolls off the red plastic track or hits a table leg, there’s living room plausibility in the speed, collision, and rebound of its pops.

This is important, not only because of the aesthetics that the Milanese studio Milestone achieves, but also because it gives the cars a very intuitive handling. It is difficult to describe; I drive game or action racers with life-size vehicle models all the time, but I don’t feel as connected to their movement as I do Hot Wheels unleashed. That’s critical, as AI brokers in Hot wheels unleashed pose an unexpectedly strong challenge on the top two (out of four) difficulty levels.

Hot wheels unleashed It has 60 cars for you to collect and compete in the basic game offerings of online multiplayer, local splitscreen multiplayer or racing against the AI. These cars are classified according to their rarity, and the vehicles can be exchanged for virtual money or parts, which can be used to upgrade them. There is also a campaign mode, called City Rumble, where players unlock new vehicles or earn Blind Boxes that randomly award a different ride. In City Rumble, all races have a mix of grades, with celebrity cameos and collector’s items like the TMNT Party Van or the Back to the Future DeLorean.

Racing in all of these modes involves only two special abilities: drifting and a turbo boost whose strength is balanced by the rest of the car’s attributes. There are no weapons or perks at stake here. For an arcade racer, it’s a refreshing focus on vehicle physics and skill, and Milestone is able to make this design choice due to its experience and reputation building core motorsport simulations over the past two decades.

On the track, you win by being faster, not by what you do to your car or someone else’s. Contact is unavoidable, but speed and direction changes are so rapid that tactical collisions are rarely a critical part of the game. Your winning play is always keeping your car on the track, off the side rails, counter-tacking drifts for staggering distances (measured in inches, hehe) and setting the turbo boost on the cusp of the curve.

Each vehicle has a different turbocharger, related to the design of the car. The Bump Around, which is a bumper car, has a long turbo that is difficult to drain, while the Sharkruiser, which is faster and more dangerous, has three single-use boosters. Increase all recharges slowly while driving, but drift charges them faster.

Running a drift is very simple; learning to hold one longer takes practice. Like most arcade racers, speed is nothing without knowledge of the course. This intuitive physics and the results within Hot wheels unleashed speak in good faith of Milestone as a racing developer. Movement in Hot wheels unleashed that’s right, rendered in Unreal Engine 4. Nothing feels stuck on a surface, or region of the screen, like in other arcade racing games. A wobbly jump landing can make you fall, but it doesn’t feel unfair. Even if I did a right turn across the bare ground and completely missed re-entry to the track, I never felt totally out of a race. Even heading off the track, while on medium difficulty, I was able to go back and boost the turbo in action. Perhaps a victory was out of reach, but the first three always seemed reasonable.

As for the AI, they are legitimately tough competitors, propelling themselves through a modest chase to the finish line. As a general rule, any common car can win against any other common AI in a direct fight. And at lower levels, Hot wheels unleashed It left me plenty of room to counter with my own boosts and turbo charges, creating great leads with the feeling that I had dusted off an AI forever. On Hard and Extreme difficulty, I had to get to the front of the pack at the beginning and make no mistakes, to win or compete.

Hot wheels unleashed It also includes a customization toolkit and track editor, with some unlockable items and decorations that are also awarded in City Rumble. While I didn’t spend a lot of time in the track editor, the robust livery editor caught my eye; quietly is the best asset in the whole game. The decorating options really show the realism in the different finishes and materials of the vehicle, from enamel to flake and gloss paint jobs, polished chrome imitation and matte gray die-cast metal. I was able to easily match the color pattern I use in F1 2021, for example, and pretend my racing team had an officially licensed collectible at Hot wheels unleashed, thanks to the library of stickers included in the editor. Collecting virtual Hot Wheels is fun; making (or repainting) them is a pleasure.

All of this adds up to a very strong and overall attractive broker. Hot wheels unleashed lives up to Milestone’s MotoGP and Monster Energy Supercross, as well as F1 and WRC games, as another winner in the ongoing renaissance of licensed motorsport games. For those who may not be a fan of motorsports or sim racing, it could be a strong contender for your racing game of the year. I have become a virtual reducer for the last four years and Hot wheels unleashed it’s at least in discussion for mine.

Hot wheels unleashed was released on September 30, 2021 on Nintendo switch, Windows PERSONAL COMPUTER, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Xbox Series X using a pre-launch download code provided by Koch Media. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.