Hot Wheels Unleashed Reviews
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an excellent arcade racing games with some truly inventive and crazy tracks, wonderfully recreated Hot Wheels toys that drive beautifully and the visuals to back it all up. Unfortunately an in-balance of reasonably long to extremely long tracks and their many hazard risks make it too easy to get frustrated when struggling to reach top spot, and the track builder while very well detailed fails to make the user experience anything but pleasant.
Toy cars, delightfully crunchy tracks and high speeds are what await in Hot Wheels Unleashed. Although the variety is different in terms of both race types and the feeling in the vehicles, there is nothing to stop the race from being terribly fun. In its best moments, Hot Wheels Unleashed can even measure up to timeless classics like Ridge Racer 7, Micro Machines V3 and F-Zero GX.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a game that tugs at my nostalgia for collecting these cars. I just wish the aggressive DLC plans and grinding for new cars didn’t sour that experience so much. When I was playing I was having a blast. The track design and handling are superb and when I got a new rare car I was super excited. Hopefully they tweak some of the requirements for unlocking cars and I hope the season passes are not overly priced for their own good. I would love to see this game flourish and become a staple of arcade racers. It feels like a renaissance of the genre, and I want Unleashed to be there for a long time coming.
Fans of the toy line will likely find stunning digital recreations of the cars they love here, whether now or in one of many content updates already on the cards, along with a generally competent racer to use them in. Still, said fans may find that the dedication to the brand here elevates the experience to a degree, although those with less love for Hot Wheels in general might just see this passable racer as more of a slightly cynical vessel through which to peddle pretend toy cars for the next few years. Shiny and on-brand, but nothing particularly special, honestly.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a fast-paced racer that captures the frantic action of the miniature, diecast toys. The momentum-based gameplay helps to create intense races where anyone can win or lose. Even though the tracks are exciting and varied, the lack of environments is disappointing. Vehicles look incredible, making you want to collect each of them, however, the grindy blind box system may halt your progress. Overall, this is a solid racer that will knock you over with a nitro-boost of nostalgia. With a roadmap packed with content, I’m excited to see what’s on the horizon.
Hot Wheels Unleashed has a lot of good concepts and ideas that are sullied by awkward execution and weird design choices. Its physics could use some more fine-tuning, and its AI needs to be rebalanced, along with a revamped track builder. Yet, there's still some glimmer to its toy car shine.
Although driving is super fun, the design of the career mode feels boring and samey after the first hour. Hopefully the multiplayer will be able to lend the game some more longevity.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Hot Wheels Unleashed is a rock solid arcade racing game that gets a lot of things right, but doesn't quite measure up in some areas.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an instant classic, a licensed game with AAA production values that never stops delivering thrills. With enough content and features to satisfy the most demanding audience, Hot Wheels focus on razor sharp arcade racing delivers exactly what fans want – tons of cool cars, wild tracks, and collectable, customizable fun. Our highest recommendation.
For Hot Wheels fans a must, for friends of arcade racers also a recommendation with compromises.
Review in German | Read full review
For a first draft from Milestone on this license, this Hot Wheels Unleashed is doing with a positive result. This is mainly due to a well-studied drive and rather well-designed circuits that respect the spirit of small friction cars. Once the driving is mastered, it is fun to go from boost to boost, studying the best way to use nitro and optimize trajectories. We can hope that this constitutes an encouraging basis to make it a real must-have on a future version. There are unfortunately too many flaws that reveal an imperfect finish.
Review in French | Read full review
Hot wheels Unleashed is, in some ways, a brilliant arcade driving video game. Simple, immediate, fun and adrenaline just enough, supported by an excellent technical sector and which offers one of the best circuit editors that have been seen in recent years.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Hot Wheels Unleashed is one of the most entertaining racing games of the year and a love letter to fans of this franchise. Without a doubt, an unmissable entry.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Hot Wheels Unleashed is an experience that manages to combine the mystique of collecting so pure and innocent of miniature cars with the most daring races. It offers variety and quality wherever you look at it and the talent of Milestone makes the franchise shine that is synonymous with a market so loved by all collectors.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Hot Wheels Unleashed feels less like a cohesive racing experience and more like a framework where more and more Hot Wheels branded content can live as the months go on. This comes through not only in the lackluster presentation but in the currency system that robs players of any sense of urgency to complete missions. It doesn't feel satisfying to go through an hour of races and grind up currency to get a single box that contains a duplicate of an already-unlocked car.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is the Hot Wheels racing game that we have been waiting on for a while. It delivers outside of a few hiccups.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is one of the best arcade racers to release on modern consoles in years.
Hot Wheels Unleashed isn't perfect, but it still has the potential of fun.
Hot Wheels Unleashed delivers on what it promises, high octane toy car thrills, drifting and boosting around gravity-defying tracks set in high definition great looking environments. It just lets itself down when it comes to the structure of the solo campaign and there aren’t enough unique hazards or variations in the tracks to keep you coming back for more. It would have been nice if they went a step further and thought outside of the box with the designs of the tracks themselves, but at least it delivers a boost of nostalgia for the kid inside all of us.
'Hot Wheels Unleashed' handles like a dream for toy cars.