As a father of two young boys, my exposure to the Hot Wheels brand has been vast and consistent over the years. From the little metal cars to television shows and even monster truck rallies in London, I’ve spent my fair share watching miniaturised cars go fast in one way or another. So, as you can imagine, that intoxication with the brand extends to the world of video games with the surprisingly great Hot Wheels Unleashed and its sequel, making regular appearances on our television during family game afternoons.
Where the Unleashed games offered a no-nonsense menu to circuit experience, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush takes things in a different direction, doing away with tightly designed, larger-than-life circuits and instead focusing on a series of open-world islands crammed with a laundry list of races and tasks to beat. With other racing franchises moving into the open-world structure, it only makes sense that Hot Wheels would look to do so too, and the end result is a pretty fun time, albeit one that isn’t perfect.
When ranking the list of components essential to making a good racer, how it actually feels to race a car likely sits near the top of that list, and it’s here Infinite Rush delivers confidently. While cars may feel light and toy-like, manoeuvring them throughout the city checks every box you could want from an arcade racer; from its sense of speed to the effortless drifting mechanics on display to the lineup of varied cars you’ll be experimenting with and upgrading.
Cars are split into four groups: versatile, drifter, speeder and titan, with each best suited for different driving styles and events. The titan, for example, is a weightier beast, slow to get going but like a charging bull at speed. The drifter, rather unsurprisingly, relies on its strong drifting ability to gain boost, while the speeder does so by maintaining speed. Versatile, meanwhile, acts as your all-rounder, the Mario of the game, if you will. You will notice a discernible difference between the way each handles, especially with races forcing you into one of the four categories, so you can bet you’ll get rather well acquainted with each. With well over 100 cars to unlock, completionists will definitely get a kick out of collecting them all. Though I will say, I was slightly disappointed at the lack of outlandish cars available. For every rubber ducky car, for instance, you’ll have five or six pretty standard-looking vehicles. The game does seem to have leaned more toward actual licensed cars compared with Unleashed, which was more than happy to include plenty of wacky brands from DC to Ninja Turtles.
You’ll visit four fully explorable islands, each having its own unique theme including a modern metropolis, dusty canyon, tropical paradise and East Asian inspired isle. Scattered about these islands are events and challenges aplenty, activated by simply pulling up to their respective spot. These will range from simple races and time trials to drifting challenges and using the in-game camera to capture scenic moments. To say there is a lot to do in the game would be an understatement, and it can be a little confusing at first knowing where to focus and how to push progression forward. It’s only the main events, for instance, that actually gain you the points needed to take on each island’s Rushers (essentially boss races), while challenges only reward a handful of coins. While I appreciate the variety of things to do, some tasks are definitely more fun than others, with the scenery-smashing stuntman challenges one I dreaded every time it popped up. More often than not, though, you’ll be racing, be it against other competitors or for the fastest time.
Hopping into the four islands and simply speeding around is a fun time, casually picking up collectables along the way, bumping into a rival for a quick race, or just leaping off cliffs and other ramp-shaped structures to pass the time. This is where the open world aspect of the game shines, the freedom to stretch your wheel-shaped legs and go anywhere you really want, perhaps offering the strongest feeling that you’re a big kid playing with your toy cars. However, that sense of freedom comes with a rather notable cost attached to it. Where the previous two games built their structured racetracks around real-life environments like the garden and a construction site, it allowed for some exciting and notable set-piece moments, for example, having the orange racetrack suspended high above the city streets below or disappearing entirely as you sped around the wooden floor for a few tense seconds. With Infinite Rush, though, since races will direct you through familiar junctions and city streets over and over, some of that sense of awe and surprise is lost. The first two Unleashed titles made you feel like a tiny toy car racing through a giant world, while here, you simply feel like a car racing through a normal-sized world. It’s still enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but it drifts the series away from its miniaturised roots and more toward other arcade racers.
Alongside collecting all the Hot Wheels cars, you’ll also have the ability to alter their look and stats through a surprisingly detailed livery editor and perk system. While I’m not one to get too creative with my car’s look, I certainly enjoyed altering a few colours and adding a few stickers here and there.
Outside the game’s main campaign, you can also hop in for a few quick standalone races and events, online or with three others in the room via split-screen. For competitive rivalries, this is great. However, I was disappointed that my kids and I couldn’t simply free roam around the four islands, especially coming off of Mario Kart World. They’re at an age where the races proved too tough, but aimless crashing and driving around each island together would have been a blast.
From a technical standpoint, the Switch 2 version looks and runs fine (even when playing in split-screen), with the game rarely running into any slowdown and visuals clean, albeit slightly fuzzy in places. What I was perhaps most disappointed in was the excessively long load times, not just when starting the game or switching between islands but hopping in and out of race events too and since you’ll be doing a fair number of these, the sometimes 30-second waits really do grind the pace down.
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush takes the excellent racing of Unleashed and… well, unleashes it on a free-roam environment. While I much prefer the larger-than-life circuits of the previous two games, exploring Infinite Rush’s four islands is still a good time even if the painful loading times try to impact that.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Milestone
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