A fun, fast-paced arcade racing game, but not worth buying at full price.
Image credit: PlayStation / Sony Interactive Entertainment promotional art.
Source: PlayStation
Summary
- Name of the game: Hot Wheels Unleashed
- Launch date: September 30, 2021
- Developer: Milestone S.r.l.
- Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
- Available platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC.
- Game genre: Arcade Racing
- Context of the game: Inspired by the iconic Hot Wheels toy cars, this title offers high-speed racing on extravagant, stunt-filled tracks, with a wide variety of vehicles and customization options.
History and narrative
It has no linear story, but offers a “Hot Wheels City Rumble” mode, where players must win races and challenges to unlock new cars and rewards. It lacks deep narrative, but the Rumble mode adds a touch of progression. There really isn't much to mention in this regard with this part, the story mode is all about completing different types of races.
Gameplay
The most important thing for this type of game is its gameplay, which features high speed racing, drifting, nitro and jumping on tracks full of loops and traps. The game has responsive controls and well optimized for each platform. It is a very easy game to play, difficult to master in my opinion, but also because racing is not my best skill, although I enjoy it. Some of the tracks can be challenging.
The replayability I would say is high, thanks to the customization, unlocking cars and online mode, although I emphasize that its online mode is very dead at the time I played it, it was hard to find games. The game entertains because it also has obstacle courses with dangers such as giant spiders that throw webs to hinder players, that at least makes it more interactive with the environment and not just be aware of leaving a button stripped and move.
Graphics and visual design
Typical of Hot Wheels cars, they have detailed car models with realistic reflections. Some quite creative and fun to use, in my case I spent using one inspired by the Batmobile. The game looks better than other games of its kind, but nothing impressive, it is somewhat acceptable.
Sound and music
The soundtrack is electronic and dynamic, it is well set, however it is very repetitive, and with a few races you will hear the same thing every time. The sound effects of engines and collisions are well achieved.
Difficulty and accessibility
I think the difficulty is moderate, with challenging AI and increasing difficulty in advanced levels. If you play it on easy, it will be easy, but as in racing games, set the AI on hard and it will get complicated. It does not have many options for some players, which makes it less accessible.
Additional content
The duration depends on the game mode, but the base content offers many hours of fun. It features car packs and tracks from franchises such as Batman, Looney Tunes y Monster Trucks. To me at least, so many cars and so many packs to buy either with in-game coins or real money, it seems too much and the game is almost selling you Hot Wheels cars all the time.
Technical Aspects
Tiene un buen rendimiento, corre a 60 FPS en consolas de nueva generación y PC. No percibí ningún bug o glitch, quizás algunas pantallas de carga, pero nada excesivo. Tiene buena optimización, está bien adaptado a cada plataforma, aunque con caídas de FPS en Switch según he leído en otros medios.
Value for money
Its starting price was approximately $49.99 USD. My assessment of this price does not justify it, it really is a fun racing game, but it is for something very casual, I do not think you will spend too much time on it considering the competition it has so the most I would pay for this game is maximum about $15.00 USD, more than this I would say it is not worth it, in my case if it were not because they gave it as one of the ps plus games I would not have bought it.
Trophies / Achievements
- Platinum obtained: No.
- Percentage of trophies obtained: 45%.
- Estimated time: 30 hours.
- Platinum difficulty: 4/10. I rate the platinum with this difficulty mainly because it is really more to invest time than because it is really something complicated. I played it on the ps4 version and to give you an idea on ps4 only a 1.9% finish the campaign and the platinum has it a 0.2% but believe me it's not because of the difficult.
Conclusion
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an arcade racing game that captures the essence of Hot Wheels toys with exciting tracks, detailed cars and challenging gameplay. Its customization and multiplayer give it good replayability, although its price and lack of accessibility options could be negative points for some players. Ideal for Hot Wheels fans and arcade racing game lovers.
My final rating for Hot Wheels Unleashed is:
3.4/5
