Well it's not really a bad game but personally I'm disappointed to say the least.

The game plays fine, the cars look great and collecting cars is satisfying, but there's so much paid content, the game literally feels unfinished.

Some of the mechanics don't work well either, tilting the car mid-air, or drifting, the handling just doesn't feel good.

Also there isn't enough content, every race feels the same, even the boss races are just normal races but longer.

As for the stages, I really like how they look, and the stage builder is a nice addition.

Final Rating: "Weak" ~ 4/10.

Fun arcade racer with some flaws that hold it back from reaching greatness.

Hot Wheels as a franchise has had a rather mediocre history of games often missing what I feel is the biggest appeal of the IP over other racing games: racing as a toy car in a normal sized environment. Hot Wheels: Unleashed hits that mark in some ways but misses it in others unfortunately..

Unleashed has you racing on orange and blue tracks (much like the toys) across 5 maps. The issue with this is that for about 90% of the races, the maps serve more as a backdrop than part of the race itself and leads to races feeling samey and unmemorable. There's a handful of hazards as well such as wooden barriers, spider webs, and border-less tracks that must be managed. You encounter more of these as you play but they mostly boil down to being different flavors of puddles that must be avoided if you wish to not be slowed to halt. These detailed maps would have served far better had the various races taking place on them actually incorporated them into the course itself more than the odd rarity. The basement is probably the best map as it is full customization using unlocks you've earned playing the game.

Music and sound design is excellent. I believe the track music is original while the menu music utilizes royalty free music. Either way, the music is fitting. The menu music is bass-heavy funk that serves as an excellent backdrop for looking through your collection of cars. On the other hand races are accompanied by upbeat electronic music that sets the ideal tone for high speeds, jumps, and drifting. There seems to be a variety of sounds between different vehicles that makes racing between them feel slightly different as well.

Graphically, Unleashed's cartoony aesthetic works well for its IP. The cars themselves are lovingly recreated with finer details you would expect on toy cars such as little scrapes and dents included. There's a fair amount of graphical settings present including up scaling options though the game runs very smooth natively as well. Whether intentional or not, I did find the glare of the sun in some of the tracks to be more of an annoying hindrance than a visual spectacle.

The game has a "story" mode which is really just a means to serve the player the races in a slightly more interesting way than simple list. There are 5 bosses within the mode each with a unique track and hazard such as poison spit that drains your boost gauge. Non-boss races will either be a standard race against AI opponents or a time trial. I found the AI difficulty options to scale very poorly with easy being too easy and medium being a drastic step up from it. I'm not a fan of some of the time trials essentially requiring clever shortcuts to complete either.

There's a multiplayer component as well as track builder. Community made tracks are were the game shines, but unfortunately you are not able to race on these maps against AI opponents which feels like a big missed opportunity given that the multiplayer is nearly dead at the time of writing this. The last thing I want to bring up is the ridiculous amount of DLC this game pumped out. While you can get most of the DLC content for cheap during a sale, MSRP for ALL of these is too high for what's on offer.

I had a fun time with Unleashed, but I do think that fun has a somewhat short lifespan for a racing game due to tracks lacking an identity and the choice for community tracks to be only raced on as a time trial (outside of multiplayer). Luckily most of these issues are things that can be fixed in a sequel. Regardless, I believe it is the best Hot Wheels video game to be released up to its release date. Check it out if you are looking for a fun, albeit flawed, arcade racer.

Hot Wheels unleashed succeeds at exactly what it's trying to do, nothing more and nothing less. It's a competent arcade-y racer that uses the Hot Wheels IP well.

I had fun playing it. It served as a great game to play while listening to a podcast or hanging out on the couch. So I'd definitely recommend it for that purpose. I just wish it aspired to be something more than just an alright racer. They almost have something that could be really good here.

Still, it's fun if you go in with the mindset that it's nothing special.

Sights & Sounds
- It honestly looks far better than I was expecting, especially in motion. Flying around the tracks featured plenty of colorful eye candy
- Seeing several of the car designs made me feel a bit nostalgic. I collected some cars I owned as a kid, except these didn't have their paint all chipped to ♥♥♥♥ by my Criss Cross Crash
- The sound design is also pretty nice. The soundtrack is forgettable, but otherwise the "game sounds" are well done

Story & Vibes
- It's a Hot Wheels racing game. It's a cynical corporate cash grab featuring a beloved children's toy, and also a game about making your car go fast. There is no story worth mentioning

Playability & Replayability
- If you've played any arcade racing game since the invention of the drift button, this will feel familiar to you. Car handling is way ramped up, presumably to not frustrate the younger target audience
- In that regard, the star ratings on the cars don't mean much except for the speed rating. Just pick the fastest car you have access to, and you'll probably win any race you try (barring a mistake)
- The game modes aren't anything worth mentioning, though the track builder is a neat feature. I didn't delve into the multiplayer. For a single player experience, I mostly focused on the challenge map, which contains a nice variety of regular races, time trials, 1:1 face-offs against special opponents, and other tasks. None of them will take more than a few tries to complete
- Unfortunately, once the map is filled out, there's not really anything left for you to do besides online play (which I assume is dead at this point)

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It would be irresponsible to not mention the absolutely ridiculous DLC tomfoolery at work here. There's hundreds of dollars worth of add-ons in the form of other cars that aren't available in the base game. None of them are better than what you can unlock yourself, so don't waste your money
- The game ran better than I thought it would given the quality of the visuals, which is something

Final Verdict
- 5.0/10. It's just an average arcade racer with a Hot Wheels veneer and ridiculous amounts of DLC. It runs well for a cash grab, but it's still an uninspiring racing title that you'll forget about within a month

Why this rate: The driving mechanics and feel give the feel of Hot Wheels, it has its own acceleration and drift mechanics, it progresses smoothly, different gameplay styles are supported with different tracks. Let's get to the bad parts, the difficulty level of the game is unbalanced, when you switch to easy mode, you always come first, in normal mode, one mistake and you lose first place. If you don't come in first place, new tracks will not be unlocked. Tools can be improved. Since I played the game with the full package, I had the opportunity to play with the fastest vehicles. However, since track control is important, not speed, and there is no rewind in the game, I did not want to master each track one by one and took it easy. For this reason, the competition disappeared and became boring, and I had to play by watching movies on the side. Anyway, while I was thinking of finishing the game easily and uninstalling it, time-limited challenge modes appeared. If you do not complete it in the given time, you cannot progress. I passed the normal tracks with pain. I thought about quitting the game many times, but thanks to the movie I watched (Resident Evil series), they balanced each other out as the Resident Evil movies were also boring.

Bronze Medal

Medal System:

0.5 stars - This game will make you its b*tch! (Coal medal)
1 star - Extremely boring (Broken medal)
1.5 stars - Boring (Empty medal)
2 stars - Not fun (Wooden medal)
2.5 stars - It could have been fun but... (Bronze medal)
3 stars - Normal fun (Silver medal)
3.5 stars - I had more fun than usual (Emerald medal)
4 stars - I had so much fun (Gold medal)
4.5 stars - I loved it but something is missing (Platinum medal)
5 stars - Special for me / my favorites (Diamond medal)

This game was great and had a ton of support at launch. Plenty of content to go through and different locations to see. There is also a track creator and community liveries that you can create or share. The mechanics are very arcadey and satisfying. There is plenty of polish in the drifting, boosting, and cornering. However, this game lacks proper balancing on the heavier vehicles, making some tracks near impossible to race on, slower vehicles also stand no chance, so it isn't perfect by any means, but aside from that, great game!