Drifting around an unnaturally bendy curve of plastic track feels good, because it's accompanied by a legitimate sense of speed, a clear formula for your specific car's handling to optimally drift, and the satisfying whoosh of tapping your boost button after a successful drift into a meaty straightaway. The result, on a sheer driving level, is mostly a blast. The more you drift, the more your boost meter grows, though racetracks include purple and green strips that you can steer across for instant, free boosts, as well. It's more Forza Horizon than Ridge Racer or Mario Kart. Tap the brakes in the middle of a high-speed turn, and you'll go into a drift that feels arcade-y but not entirely unrealistic.
Instead of picking up weapons, bananas, or random items, drivers are expected to accumulate and spend a nitro-boost meter-which grows primarily when you drift. The devs at Milestone, longtime makers of the MotoGP series, have stripped pretty much all Mario Kart-ness out of this colorful affair. Imagine going into someone's garage, then routing a nearly infinite budget of plastic straightaways, curves, loop-the-loops, and more throughout the space-while also occasionally using that world's geometry (a table, a countertop) as part of a given racing line. Boost through meaty, plastic straightawaysĮvery racetrack in Unleashed combines a prebuilt room and a series of recognizable, plastic Hot Wheels tracks, usually bright orange or blue. That's not a bad thing-and I had a good-enough time with Unleashed to write about it at Ars, as I think some people will really enjoy what's going on here.īut you'll have a better time with HWU going into it fully aware of its weird and tricky design decisions-along with quibbles about its in-game economy of cars and tracks. In my week of testing the game ahead of its launch this week, I found that Hot Wheels Unleashed feels like a Micro Machines skin on top of the modern, hardcore-leaning Trackmania series.
Yet while handsomely modeled toy cars and cute environments might look like a basis for newbie-friendly racing, it's not the case here. To be fair, that specific concept isn't necessarily common in gaming, but Codemasters' legendary Micro Machines series holds a lot of water for a certain type of arcade-racing fan. This week's Hot Wheels Unleashed is one of the best video games ever made using licensed toy cars. Links: Amazon | PlayStation Store | Xbox | Nintendo eShop | Steam | Official site
Platform: PC (tested), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Switch
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