A fun racing game that makes a really good first impression but quickly wears out its welcome.
Hot Wheels Unleashed feels like the perfect Hot Wheels game - you can collect a ton of exact replicas of Hot Wheels cars from your childhood and then take them to the courses that are made up of a bunch of orange track pieces that weave all around your basement. The driving feels surprisingly pretty good and executing a perfect drift feels great. But once the initial shock of "hey this is actually pretty fun!" wears off, the flaws become apparent pretty quickly.
While the tracks built around different environments like your basement, a skatepark, a construction site, etc. are kind of neat, it's hard to really enjoy them. The game doesn't do much with camera tricks or anything to make you feel small and you're racing through these levels so fast I don't usually notice I'm racing under a couch or driving around a kitchen sink until I crash or flip off the track. And if you’re not noticing those big background set pieces, there’s not a lot that sets one orange track apart from another orange track making the levels all feel kind of same-y and boring. The actual progression loop is built around loot boxes - loot boxes that have no problem giving you duplicates of cars you already have. Luckily, you can’t buy said loot boxes, but that doesn’t change the fact that the random car drops suck.
While the core gameplay and the idea of racing around your living room is fun, that childhood joy doesn’t last more than a couple races. Every aspect of the game feels like it’s intent on being an arcade racer but it never really hits that casual, light-hearted fun that other arcade racers have.
+ Great collection of fun Hot Wheels cars
+ It’s fun to race through tracks set up around a basement
+ Good selection of player-made content
- Loot boxes as primary form of unlocking cars
- Tracks all feel pretty samey and the environments aren’t noticeable
- Very unforgiving races
- Wonky physics
- Boring campaign
- Repetitive generic soundtrack
Hot Wheels Unleashed feels like the perfect Hot Wheels game - you can collect a ton of exact replicas of Hot Wheels cars from your childhood and then take them to the courses that are made up of a bunch of orange track pieces that weave all around your basement. The driving feels surprisingly pretty good and executing a perfect drift feels great. But once the initial shock of "hey this is actually pretty fun!" wears off, the flaws become apparent pretty quickly.
While the tracks built around different environments like your basement, a skatepark, a construction site, etc. are kind of neat, it's hard to really enjoy them. The game doesn't do much with camera tricks or anything to make you feel small and you're racing through these levels so fast I don't usually notice I'm racing under a couch or driving around a kitchen sink until I crash or flip off the track. And if you’re not noticing those big background set pieces, there’s not a lot that sets one orange track apart from another orange track making the levels all feel kind of same-y and boring. The actual progression loop is built around loot boxes - loot boxes that have no problem giving you duplicates of cars you already have. Luckily, you can’t buy said loot boxes, but that doesn’t change the fact that the random car drops suck.
While the core gameplay and the idea of racing around your living room is fun, that childhood joy doesn’t last more than a couple races. Every aspect of the game feels like it’s intent on being an arcade racer but it never really hits that casual, light-hearted fun that other arcade racers have.
+ Great collection of fun Hot Wheels cars
+ It’s fun to race through tracks set up around a basement
+ Good selection of player-made content
- Loot boxes as primary form of unlocking cars
- Tracks all feel pretty samey and the environments aren’t noticeable
- Very unforgiving races
- Wonky physics
- Boring campaign
- Repetitive generic soundtrack