Skip to main content

Hot Wheels Unleashed review: Banking hard on nostalgia

hot wheels unleashed review featured
Hot Wheels Unleashed
MSRP $49.99
“Hot Wheels Unleashed starts off blazing fast but ends up as a shallow kart racer.”
Pros
  • Stunning visuals
  • Great track design
  • Innovative track-builder
Cons
  • Simple racing mechanics
  • Lootboxes to unlock new cars
  • Pointless game modes
  • No variety in gameplay

The kart-racing genre is one packed with standout titles, all bringing their own twists. Mario Kart is the unquestionable king, but tons of other franchises — Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, just to name a few — have their own somewhat unique kart games. Hot Wheels Unleashed then charges into the fray of this competition, screaming “Look how realistic our cars are!” before promptly being blown away like a piece of paper at a racetrack.

That’s because Hot Wheels Unleashed, while a fun kart racer when you first start playing, quickly shows its shallowness. Behind its extremely impressive visuals, Hot Wheels Unleashed is about as barebones as it gets, offering up an extremely simplified kart racing experience that had so much potential to be more, and a bevy of ultimately boring content.

A blistering start

The experience starts strong, going from zero to sixty out the gate. On its initial boot-up, Hot Wheels Unleashed hands you three “blind boxes,” a tastelessly named loot box. Players immediately get three cars that they can use in races, and that first glimpse at their stunningly rendered plastic and aluminum are all that’s needed to get someone hooked.

A hot wheels race track in Hot Wheels Unleashed.

Before being fun or inventive, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a beautiful game to look at. Everything, from the cars themselves to the tracks players race across, is stunningly detailed. You can even look under the cars and find Mattel’s name (copyrighted, of course) and “Made In Malaysia” printed on the plastic. The game’s vinyl tracks look spectacular, and the sunlight shining off of them and the cars is eye-popping. Of course, those are the visuals that can be expected on a PS5 or PC. If you’re playing the game on a last-gen console, the visual shock-and-awe may not be as punchy.

Regardless, I was sucked into the atmosphere of Hot Wheels Unleashed for the first two hours that I played it. It’s simply a fun game to look at, and its racing mechanics are similarly impressive, although that feeling wears off quickly.

Hot Wheels Unleashed - Gameplay Trailer | PS5, PS4

Racing in Hot Wheels Unleashed is dreadfully simple. There aren’t any power-ups on tracks, with the game’s only quirk being how it treats boosting. By drifting or just driving along, your car builds up boost, which you can then use to break away from a pack of cars or catch up to whoever’s in the lead.

However, not all boosts are made equal. Cars in Hot Wheels Unleashed are extremely varied, each with their own stats for speed, acceleration, braking, handling, and of course, boost. Some cars have individual charges of boost to use while others have a meter that can be spent at any time. Naturally, this system means that you’re directed towards whatever car you have that boasts impressive stats. You can also upgrade any car using gears, one of the game’s two currencies, but it’s incredibly expensive to boost a vehicle from common-tier to legendary.

Before being fun or inventive, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a beautiful game to look at.

All that being said, there’s an unspoken genius in Hot Wheels Unleashed‘s track design. Some races are wonderfully unique and open, with one sticking in my head that forced me to perform a 180-degree corkscrew to land my car after driving on an upside-down magnetic track. Another segment from a different race had me drive off the track for a single turn, with guidance on where to go coming from a handful of traffic cones. Except, the game lets you drive outside of those cones, so I would pull a tight drift and bypass the usual turn completely in favor of my much faster shortcut.

A hot wheels car jumps onto a track in Hot Wheels Unleashed.

It’s a shame then, that Hot Wheels Unleashed never uses either of these concepts to their fullest. If you try to skip over a track by driving with a certain bit of imagination, you’re sent back to the last checkpoint. Gravity and tricks hardly ever come into play, save for a few standout tracks. If used more, these ideas could have set Hot Wheels Unleashed apart in a huge way. Instead of embracing this wackiness though, the game tries to be a straightforward racer, eventually becoming a total bore.

Slow to the finish

The more I played Hot Wheels Unleashed, the more issues with the game I ended up seeing. Aside from a clear inclination to push players towards specific cars instead of whichever one they wanted, the game’s main single-player mode quickly got old. Called Hot Wheels City Rumble, the mode has players go from race to race, which, in a game like Mario Kart, wouldn’t usually get tiring.

However, Hot Wheels Unleashed‘s races hardly have anything to set them apart. Yes, tracks are pretty varied, with only a handful being repeated during my time playing, but eventually, races start blending into one big mess of vinyl and neon. Thankfully, there’s a pretty solid reason to keep at these races. Winning a race rewards players with gears, cosmetics, and coins that can be used to buy more blind boxes.

The hot dogs car from Hot Wheels Unleashed
Driving a hot dog car is one of Hot Wheels Unleashed’s best novelties

Those cosmetics aren’t for your cars though; they’re for one of the game’s most superfluous pieces of content. Each player has a basement that can be customized to their heart’s desire, and it’s pretty much a man-cave for a Hot Wheels-obsessed millionaire. Players can customize this area to their liking with unlocked couches, chairs, computers, walls, floors, and more. The appeal, I suppose, is that this area can then be raced around in. However, it’s hard to see the trophies in cases or paintings hanging on walls when your camera is a solid two inches off the ground.

Instead of embracing this wackiness though, the game tries to be a straightforward racer, eventually becoming a total bore.

Hot Wheels Unleashed‘s one innovative trait is its track builder. From the get-go, players can use every single unique piece of track in the game to the fullest extent. It allows players to capitalize on the ideas that were abandoned by the game’s developers, which I can only hope ends up happening.

Our take

Outside of its stunning visuals, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a toothless kart racer, relying too heavily on nostalgia goggles and the Hot Wheels brand to carry it instead of the solid ideas that end up hardly being implemented. What players get with Hot Wheels Unleashed is the same experience I had with many of my Hot Wheels as a child; I was entertained for a few hours, then grew bored and tossed it in a box.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have fun with the game. Those few hours were full of spectacle, because it’s simply impossible to not get caught up in the game’s sights and sounds. Eventually, though, it’s going to take more than racing a hot dog car down a strip of vinyl track to keep me interested.

Is there a better alternative?

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the king of kart racers and likely will be until Nintendo decides to make another Mario Kart title.

How long will it last?

Beating all of Hot Wheels Unleashed‘s City Rumble mode will likely take players around 15-20 hours. Trying to collect every car in the game could ratchet that to upwards of 30 by my estimate.

Should you buy it?

No. Hot Wheels Unleashed is all glitz with no substance, becoming disinteresting far too quickly to justify its price tag.

Editors' Recommendations

Otto Kratky
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse features an incredible video game Easter egg
Miles Morales falls through a multiverse portal in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is out now and it contains a wealth of Easter eggs for video fans to obsess over. It's full of references to Spidey's history, from his comic books to cartoons and beyond. The animated sequel even includes some nods to the franchise's video game history, leading to one of its best (and most obscure) references: Spider-Man for the Atari 2600.

(A quick heads up if you're afraid of spoilers: This article contains some very light story details for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.)

Read more
Best gaming laptop deals: Portable gaming rigs from $600
The Alienware x17 R2 Gaming Laptop viewed from the back.

If you're keen to game while on the move, you need a sweet gaming laptop. Regular laptop deals won't cut it as you need something with a dedicated graphics card and maybe even something with some cool gamer looks too. Gaming laptops aren't cheap but that doesn't mean there aren't some great deals around. If you're looking to invest in a cool new gaming laptop, we've picked out the current best deals around right now. We've considered different budgets as well as different requirements so there's something for everyone below. Take a look and see what appeals to you.
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 -- $600, was $900

Known as one of the best laptop brands for both gaming and business purposes, Lenovo knows how to make a robust system. The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 packs a lot into its great price tag. It has an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H processor, 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage. More storage space would be nice but if you're fine just having a few games installed at once, this won't slow you down. It also has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card which is great for playing the latest games if you don't mind tweaking the detail level. As well as that, there's a 15.6-inch full HD screen, white backlit keyboard and a cool-looking style to the laptop.

Read more
Nintendo Switch’s weirdest launch game is getting a surprise sequel
Key art for Everybody 1-2-Switch!

Nintendo has quietly announced Everybody 1-2-Switch!, a sequel to one of the oddest launch titles for Nintendo Switch.
1-2-Switch! was a Nintendo Switch launch title that served as a tech demo of sorts for the Joy-Con controllers, with players completing minigames based on direction from actors in live-action clips. It's a very quirky and critically divisive Nintendo Switch game, so it's a bit surprising to see a follow-up. According to the eShop listing for Everybody 1-2-Switch!, this game lets players use their Joy-Cons or smartphones to complete a variety of team-based minigames. And that's about all we've seen or know about this $30 game ahead of its June 30 launch alongside some new pastel Joy-Cons.

Everybody 1-2-Switch!'s announcement was quite unorthodox for Nintendo. It simply tweeted about the game's existence and opened up preorders on the eShop. This all happened with no reveal trailer less than a month before the game's launch. It's unknown why Nintendo's taking this approach instead of including the game in a Nintendo Direct or other major showcase, but a 2022 report from Fanbyte may reveal the answer. According to that report, Everybody 1-2-Switch! tested horribly, and Nintendo worried that the game could "damage the company’s reputation as a great software developer." 
Almost a year after that report, it seems that the game has improved enough to release, or maybe Nintendo is just willing to take the hit after the impressive launch and critical reception of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Either way, this is a weird sequel to a weird Nintendo Switch launch game that's being mutedly marketed so it doesn't elicit much hype. We'll just have to wait and play it for ourselves if we want to know whether Everybody 1-2-Switch! is an enjoyable game or not.
Everybody 1-2-Switch! will be released physically and digitally for Nintendo Switch on June 30.

Read more