Here’s the thing about Hot Wheels Unleashed, when it comes to driving; race and track and car content, this is a pearler of an experience. A game befitting the Aussie exclusive adjective, which is one we don’t just bust out willy-nilly.

Nah, Bruh.

The racing content in Hot Wheels Unleashed is almost worth the price of admission alone; it's that tight and fun.

Almost.



See the problem is, Milestone’s spin on the IP is a mixed bag of loose ideas spun together to try and flesh out what might have felt otherwise empty in development. The racing stuff is the game’s heart and soul; its meat and potatoes. But the ‘campaign’ it’s all tied to just feels vacuous and, to a degree, superfluous. Does this break the overall experience? Its fun? Not really, but it definitely convolutes proceedings.

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"Milestone has been clever not to lock anyone out of the ability to earn in-game money to spend on them, but offers the requisite shortcut (read: no, money down!)...”

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I went silly in the intro there because the game is silly, up front. Visually the whole package is tied to together in a ‘toys-to-life’ kind of way -- your collection of Hot Wheels is gathered from playing through the game’s City Rumble mode where you earn new cars for winning races, or where you earn gold which you can use to purchase cars. A lot will be said about the economy of the game, which is heavily geared towards lootboxes (“Blind boxes” here) and the Rare finds within them, alongside the more regular Commons you’ll invariably gather. Milestone has been clever not to lock anyone out of the ability to earn in-game money to spend on them, but offers the requisite shortcut (read: no, money down!) for faster purchases. So parents and diehard collectors beware.



City Rumble is an adventure mode, of sorts. Think Forza Horizon’s numerous race modes that are tied to festival expansion and personal growth, and you’re kind of on the right track (heh). On the whole, delivery of City Rumble isn’t all that bad, though it doesn’t *really* make tangible sense. Milestone’s toys-to-life aesthetic mentioned earlier isn’t remotely reflected in the gridded city you expand and unlock more of here. This is done through successful completion of modes, node to node. Quick Races and Time Attacks make up the bulk of exercise in City Rumble, though there are Secrets to uncover once you’ve fulfilled a number of parameters (X-amount of Quick Races, Y-amount of Time Attacks for example) and there are also Boss races.

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"The long and short of it is City Rumble’s presentation and makeup just doesn’t marry with decking out your Basement...”

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And while my misgivings here in regards to how it all ties together might sound trivial to readers who haven’t played it, the long and short of it is City Rumble’s presentation and makeup just doesn’t marry with decking out your Basement (more on this shortly) or racing through the mish-mash of backdrops initially on offer -- Skate Park, College, Garage and Skyscraper (under construction) and the aforementioned Basement. All of this impacts the game’s overall hook, or lack thereof.

And thus proof of Unleashed’s whiteboard ideation process, without an eraser, comes to the fore. Nothing, it seems, was off limits in what to offer the player as far as a reason to play is concerned.



So what about that Basement then? Well, this is where it all kind of gets weird, or maybe cool to some. The Basement is your upgradeable space you can customise to your heart's content. It contains a kitchen, a lounge and a trophy area. It’s what some would refer to in antiquated terms as a ‘Man Cave’, which is to say it’s a gaming room. But how the studio landed on this as the game’s ‘sink your teeth into’ reward system is beyond me. I mean, I can see the concept: “hey, our game is about collectible toys, let’s assume our collector-player is rich enough to have a large space for all of their collection and also a pool table and arcade cabinets and marble benchtops and... “, but it’s hugely out of touch.

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"So not-at-all-at-a-stretch we’re to assume the collector-player is pretty well-to-do...”

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And the thing is, a handful of tracks are played on Hot Wheels tracks inside the Basement, which is actually cool -- those two things marry up nicely: you live and collect from within your Basement, so that’s where you make your race tracks and play with your toys. But then you inexplicably move from there to the earlier-mentioned Skate Park, College, Garage and under-construction Skyscraper. All spaces that don’t combine easily and aren’t at all part of the above reward system. So, not-at-all-at-a-stretch we’re to assume the collector-player is pretty well-to-do with the swank that is their games Basement (and potential swank). They also study at a prestigious college, skate in their time off after working their two jobs as a mechanic in a Garage, and are also a construction worker at the Skyscraper. Or, if we needed to contextualise it more, they’re actually an architect, which accounts for all the money and study, and let’s assume they either own the Garage or work there as a hobby.



Again, this level of complaint might come across as trivial, but most racing game’s of this nature have a tangible hook. In Forza Horizon you’re building up the festival, earning cars as part of hard-fought racing and massive wagers (presumably). In The Crew, you have a massive open-world to explore with events tied to progression and bragging rights rewards. Mario Kart is strictly a racing game set within the Mushroom Kingdom. Tracks reflect that, as does challenge, AI and overall reward. Hot Wheels Unleashed just doesn’t nail down what it is, what it wants to be, nor what it should be.

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"Focusing strictly on a collection of tracks split between differently-themed grand prixs would have made way more sense...”

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And that’s a game in line with the latter example. Mario Kart would have been a much better benchmark to set the game’s markers by. Doing away with the City Rumble, the customisable Basement and focusing strictly on a collection of tracks split between differently-themed grand prixs would have made way more sense. Because racing in Hot Wheels is awesome. It can be rubber-bandy at times, and frustrating before you manage your first upgrades, but the skill ceiling here is high if you’re that type of player (though some tracks are essentially one big Blue Shell when it comes to derailment on a home-stretch). And track knowledge is super-important in the long game.



Oh, and speaking of long, Hot Wheels Unleashed’s tracks and track lengths are not for the faint of heart, especially in Boss Races. This also isn’t a bad thing in this reviewer’s opinion, and it actually helps combat some of the perceived rubber-banding I mentioned a moment ago (it’s more a point of git gud), but it should be noted up front that you’re in for an investment when racing in this game. That said, the Track Editor is a great addition, and being able to share designs should see Hot Wheels Unleashed following in the footsteps of the likes of Trials’s map editor or the CAP mode in THPS 1+2, all of which are heavily community-lead and means through which those games found, or continue to find, long life.

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"The deeper you go into the game as it’s meant to be played, with fully upgraded cars, the more a hidden level of depth emerges...”

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Of course there’s multiplayer, which was only turned on properly today, so how it pans out in terms of matchmaking and stability remains to be seen, though in Split Screen mode at home I had a stack of fun playing with my son and partner. And that’s because that meat and potatoes stuff; the pearler aspect of Hot Wheels Unleashed I’ve mentioned, is its racing mechanic and the design of tracks throughout. Gravity-defying loops and curves sit alongside integration with real-world sections and plenty of room for breaking race lines, if you’re the overzealous type. And the deeper you go into the game as it’s meant to be played, with fully upgraded cars, the more a hidden level of depth emerges and a truly challenging racing game materialises.

It’s just a shame it’s largely hidden from the outset.