Review: Ride The Nostalgia In HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED
Never did I imagine that a Hot Wheels game would bring huge levels of nostalgia while actually being a quality racing game. Hot Wheels Unleashed is a really good racing game under the coat of paint of comical cars and childhood fantasy. While there are some difficulty issues and an oddly small roster of cars, the game is surprisingly great.
A Hot Wheels car always has a sense of style and flair. The small size but thoughtful detail in each car is well shown here in the game. Style goes beyond the cars though, Hot Wheels has also been quite the track creator in real life too. So it is no surprise that there are a number of tracks that vary in style and shape and an in-game track editor. I do wish there were a bit more of those weird gimmicks of lifts or traps that you’d find in the real models. Going along with the amount of content, we can’t help but look at the number of models that are in the game. There are roughly 60 cars, with more being added. While this does seem like a lot, it is a tiny amount compared to the massive catalogue of real life Hot Wheels cars. Other racing games like Gran Turismo, Forza, and Need For Speed have hundreds of cars, even Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit had over 120 cars and that game is from 2010. Now I know that a lot more cars will probably arrive over time for Hot Wheels Unleashed, but the small roster is disappointing especially when they have over 800 cars models in real life.
As much fun as it is to customize and oodle over new and silly cars, Hot Wheels Unleashed still offers a great racing game experience. Cars feel tight and responsive and surprisingly unique. Not all of them have a bold personality, but there is a lot more flavor and differences between them than I expected. I found races felt fairly exhilarating for the most part, but other events can get a little stale after a dozen or so rounds. Because there wasn’t much of an actual campaign trail or growing story, playing progressively harder levels felt more tedious than enjoyable. Hopping on and playing a couple of rounds every day or two is where I see this game falling into people’s lives, not spending four or five hours perfecting turns while trying to beat certain time trial levels.
There are two major complaints to be had with the game. Number one is the smallish roster which we addressed above. Number two is the difficulty of the game in general. When I first played, the game was really easy. I was zooming past the finish line with the herd of cars long, long behind me. This was on Normal Mode. So, I moved up to the next difficulty and I was hitting in the last places race after race. I finally got myself up to 1st after an hour or two. I proceeded like that for the next couple of hours and then decided to go back to normal (there is an easy mode, surprisingly). But again, as soon as I went to normal mode, I was getting 1st place even when I would drive terribly or barely pay attention. I can’t imagine how easy the Easy Mode is, do the other cars just not move? Either way, I would love it if the difficulty options were better calibrated, because races are either a crushing grind or a breeze.
Good controls, highly detailed layers of nostalgia and a modest choice of cars culminates to an overall great experience. But the odd difficulty spikes and modest list of car options which felt fairly lackluster when compared to the large score of the Hot Wheels library. With a fairly good track editor and more cars on the way, there is strong life ahead of this game and could be worth checking out if it looks good to you.
