Rating
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Collect the best vehicles in the Hot Wheels universe, build spectacular tracks and dive into breathtaking races. The most iconic and sought after Hot Wheels vehicles are waiting for you. Get ready to make them race at full speed!
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Hot Wheels Unleashed Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a surprisingly good racing game that brings your childhood imagination to life while offering you endless creative options for customising your toy racers and designing your own tracks. No matter your age there is tons to love here!
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 takes everything that worked about the original and expands upon it. The core racing action is improved across the board with more kinds of races to partake in and a more in-depth story mode to keep things moving forward. There's always a goal to attain with XP gaining new vehicles and parts and every race feels like it serves a greater purpose. It controls like a dream, looks gorgeous and offers a satisfying, fast-paced racing experience for all who seek one. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is among the best licensed racers of the past decade and a must-play for racing fans.
There’s a lot to love with Hot Wheels Unleashed, with just a few minor nitpicks here and there, but there’s one issue with the game that might upset some folk and that’s the severe difficulty spike when going from Easy to Medium. There’s an unusually wide skill gap between the two difficulty settings, with Easy having the AI racing at an almost braindead level as you swiftly outpace them within the first few seconds of a race. Medium however sees the AI coming at you with a vengeance, as they’ll refuse to let up and really make you work not only for that first-place finish, but a spot at the p...
You could be forgiven if you were ready to dismiss Hot Wheels Unleashed as another shameless licensed release vying for younger gamers’ attention, but that would be a mistake. While the game is undoubtedly entertaining to share with the family, this racer is more than it first appears. Thanks to the rewarding speed, clever course design, and a bevy of customization options, these tiny cars pack a big punch, delivering many hours of racing thrills through single-player, multiplayer, and creation tools.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a competent enough racer, but lacks anything to make it unique compared to previous games. It’s generally very bland, relies on loot boxes, and the AI rubber bands constantly.
Republished on Wednesday 28th September 2022: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of October's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an excellent arcade racing game that doesn't fully embrace some of the wackier parts of the toy brand.
As a bear who grew up in the '90s, I loves me some Hot Wheels but does this latest racer hold up? I wish it did but it's not that fun.
As a dude in his mid-40s, if there was one 2021 game I was truly looking forward to on the PS5, it was Hot Wheels Unleashed. Like many of my age group, I grew
“Hot Wheels Unleashed starts off blazing fast but ends up as a shallow kart racer.”
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an action-packed arcade-style racing experience featuring Hot Wheels cars and sky-high tracks.
The game is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The attention to detail is astounding: cars with movable pieces bounce around realistically, tint on windows shows scratches at the end of a race, and the light reflecting off of cars and tracks might be the best I’ve seen yet this generation. There’s a sense of love and appreciation for the Hot Wheels brand on display here that should be looked at for any licensed product going forward. If anything, I would have loved a museum of sorts with blurbs or historical information about each car for me to learn more about them.