HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™ Reviews

Starting a race from the mouth of a T-Rex. That alone is reason enough for a thumbs up. Otherwise, I'm having a blast with this game.

I used to play with Hotwheels as a kid, does that give me "Unc Status"? Past that, is a solid game. Singleplayer is about +15hrs, maybe 20hrs for 100% of the base game. The tracks are alright, except for a few traps that are just trolls. Livery/Paintjob system is decent, though not many are getting made anymore since there's a 2nd game. If you're reading this deciding to buy the first or 2nd game, I'll just say that the 2nd has more systems to invest your time in, and the 1st let's you get to the action faster, and closer to a normal racing game than the 2nd.

This game's difficulty is extreme. I would bet that most people bought this game for their kids or intended it to unwind and enjoy a quick race but hell no, this game's difficulty makes you hate the game. The track design and the cars are really nice but who wants to play something this difficult? Not me!

I'm surprised how fun this game is. I bought it for my kids but I find myself playing it solo. Great graphics and sound, awesome tracks, fun driving physics, really cool cars. Definitely wait for the big sale, probably not worth the $80 price for all DLC.

Fun for the whole family! It's a fairly simple game but it's engaging, enough so that it doesn't feel repetitive, and it's easy to hop in and out as you please. I like how there is a variety of handling characteristics for each car, however I think the stats could better represent how each car feels - drift/grip/in-between, fast/faster/fastest (most don't feel slow), etc. I also like how different cars work better for different tracks. I haven't tried the track builder or livery editor, but they are both great inclusions, and I'm enjoying the Basement editor. Overall, I think Milestone did a great job with all aspects of this game, especially the driving physics. My one complaint is that this game had a limited-time live-service program called Racing Seasons. Once the seasons ended, this section of the game was essentially turned off, making all events and content completely inaccessible to newcomers. It wasn't even packaged into a separate paid DLC later, it's just gone. This is unethical and unacceptable, and I hope Milestone don't repeat this mistake with the sequel.

Hot Wheels Unleashed, is one of most fun racing games I've ever played. Gameplay and graphics make it feel like you're actually playing with toy cars, and I think the in-game physics are similar to Rocket League, which is great because it allows you to fly around freely in certain parts of tracks. I completed all the achievements, but some of them were really challenging, especially "What do I do with so many?", For that one, I kept farming gold in Quick Race and Multiplayer, opened blind boxes, and dismantling the cars I got until the achievement popped. In Time Attacks, some tracks have incredibly tough "Unleashed times", meaning you have to race absolutely flawlessly; even the smallest mistake can cost you the win by just a second. The Multiplayer wasn't stable at all. Even with a good internet connection, other players had lag, their cars kept teleporting, and they were ramming randomly. If you want to 100% the game's achievements, I recommend getting the GOTY version when it's on sale.

Very lazy design coupled with predatory in-game purchases in a game for small children. This game is the reason WHY we need legislation (at least for games aimed at this age group). And the icing on the cake ? The game is difficult for small kids even on Easy so they won`t even have fun. Avoid !

not amazing but it's fun, good control, enjoyable not too hard

Short and fun arcade racing. The tracks evolve the further you progress. You're either racing against other cars doing laps, or doing one long continuous run, or against yourself and the clock. Some of the time trials in the later stages are super strict with basically no room for error. One if not two races you'll definitely need to look up a shortcut because without it you'll be 5 seconds behind. I wish more races had cool shortcuts, but there are checkpoints all over the track you have to pass through otherwise you respawn. I felt my adrenaline spike multiple times. It's pretty fun drifting into a crowd and bumping cars over the edge and off the track. You'll definitely get turtled at some point, so don't even worry about when it's your turn. On some tracks you'll end up driving upside down and have to rotate mid air to right yourself when landing. Another track you'll need to pitch downwards while coming over an incline. Not too many course obstacles, but the spider traps got me almost every time and I didn't learn how to escape it consistently until the very end. I'd say about 80% of each track has walls on the sides so bumping into everything can be forgiving. Starting with all the DLC cars was nice and definitely felt like cheating. At the end I definitely favored a car with plenty of boost. If you're in a rush you can grind the rest of the coins and gears with 2 people boosting online, there's a track that's a straight line and you just have to wait 20 seconds before crossing the finish. After completing the campaign, it took me maybe 3 hours with a friend going back and forth, both first and second place gets plenty of dough. There are a ton of community maps, you can make your own, so if that hits your interest there's plenty to dig into. Beep beep! Out of the way, coming through with full boost!

I'd only recommend it tentatively. $40 is kind of steep. It's a solid arcade racer. The controls are great, and the graphics are kind of impressive. The community features like the track builder and livery editor are easy to use, though I was mostly interested in the livery editor. This game's been out for so long, it's kind of offline only. The servers are up at time of writing, but I couldn't find a match. So, I wouldn't expect to play much multiplayer if you buy this one unless you arrange it yourself. There are a bunch of vehicles in the game, but not many of them are viable, even for the offline modes. Unlike in a lot of other racing games with cars that have different levels of performance, there's no separating the bottom-tier cars and the top-tier cars, so the low- tiers have little value after you find something better. This is also a problem because the main way to obtain cars is via loot box. There is a rotating selection of cars you can buy outright, but there's no guarantee you'll find one of the few viable options, and the store takes a long time to refresh. This is pretty clearly intended to be a game for children, but the loot boxes make me think that kids shouldn't be playing it unattended. The track design is kind of hit or miss in the offline mode. A lot of time trial tracks have a bunch of obstacles that are meant to force you to restart. Some of them are 100% possible to avoid consistently, but other times there's enough randomness involved that you can just find yourself in a situation where it's borderline impossible to avoid ruining your run. There are also time trials where I don't actually think it's possible to finish by following the course as it's laid out. The game never tells you to find your own shortcuts (at least not that I remember) so I have no idea if you're intended to find shortcuts that involve skipping over large sections of track, but I don't really see how some of the expected times are possible otherwise. TL:DR - It's fine. It's not great, it's not terrible. If you're buying it for a child, then just make sure they don't have your credit card info stored in the game, and be wary of the loot boxes if you care about that kind of thing. Otherwise... maybe consider waiting for a sale before buying. I feel like $40 might have made more sense when the online still had a lot of active players, but now it feels like it's due for a price cut.