The original Hot Wheels Unleashed was a breath of fresh air when it was released in 2021. Upon initially playing it in a preview build, it was jaw-dropping due to how great it was as a pure arcade-style racing game experience and it was by far the greatest game that not only Milestone had ever made, but the greatest Hot Wheels racer ever. With a quick pace and a ton of cars, it offered up a lot of content and was a blast to play either in short bursts or in longer play sessions. It was hurt by a lack of vehicle types, mode selection and especially track variety – which is something the sequel aims to remedy with the addition of a track creation suite alongside having more vehicle types.
The lineup of cars was massive before, but was diminished by having cars, trucks and vans available with things like motorcycles and ATVs absent. Now, those kinds of vehicles are available alongside more categories for vehicle types to better fine-tune the style of vehicle you want to race in. Those wanting to tackle a time trial may want to go with a rocket-style vehicle as long as they don’t have too many turns to deal with. If a track is turn-heavy, then a drifter is better while a track prone to off-road segments would be better-served by an off-road or heavy duty-style vehicle. Those wanting to bully rivals on the track will also love a heavy duty vehicle as that makes knocking folks for a loop with the left and right face buttons a breeze.
Theoriginal gamewas also held back by a lack of overall mode selection, with standard races being the main course and not a lot of appetizers available. Now, you have more incentive-based modes like elimination races, drift challenges and the increase in variety helps to keep everything fresh. You can go from a few races right into a more challenging eliminator race to see if your skills are as sharp as you think or just mix things up with other challenges. The career mode does a nice job at keeping variety at the forefront by always blending different racing types.
It’s common to go from a race to a challenge, then a time trial, an eliminator and then a boss battle. Boss battles consist of trickier tracks to navigate and have targets to hit that act as weak points for the boss – so the more hits you land and the more efficient you are by hitting more of them and not missing any, the faster the boss battle will go. The story mode features a pair of characters collecting more Hot Wheels and uses a nice comic book art style. It’s nothing revolutionary, but a lot of care was put into the artwork because they do things like combine what would be single pages together for more striking images and it’s a nice jump up from things like Team Sonic Racing using static images with word balloons for its story.
The racing action is similar to the original game – to the point where one could easily just look at screenshots and feel this is a glorified DLC pack for the first game, but the addition of so many types of vehicles and refinements to the controls help it out a lot in that regard. One thing that Milestone has nailed with this series is drifting and the drifting mechanics are nearly as good here as they are in all-time classics like the Ridge Racer series or Outrun 2/2006 with drifts being easy to fire off and intuitive to execute. The boss battles are a ton of fun as well and something that work far better in execution than I expected going in – especially with things like the boss introducing hazards on the track to impede you and keep you on your toes.
The new locations help freshen things up a lot and areas like a backyard, a wild west desert and a mini-golf course alongside the first game’s regular room full of Hot Wheels tracks and a giant arcade keeps things more interesting visually. The first game was a riot, but hurt by feeling old quickly because of the lack of mode variety and then having a small array of stages to race in. Now, players have more variety across the board and the addition of an intuitive track editor helps in that regard too. There’s also an in-depth livery editor that’s carried over from the original, but given a bit more explanation to make it easier to learn the steps needed to get the results you want.
Visually, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 looks pretty much identical to the original game without much of a visible improvement. This is both a pro and a con because it’s impossible to see a big difference in visuals over the years, but it’s a testament to how well-crafted the original game was because it looked great on all hardware it was released on and that holds true with the sequel. In hectic races, there isn’t a bit of slowdown and all of the menus load quickly and effectively. In trying the game on a dedicated gaming laptop, a mini PC and the ASUS ROG Ally, it looked gorgeous on all devices – with things like the car and track details shining brightly and different paint types making the vehicles pop more.
The soundtrack is solid as well, with a mix of exciting tunes that get the blood pumping for all kinds of racing action. There’s also a good amount of voice work in the story mode’s comic book cutscenes, which was somewhat surprising. In a genre full of iffy attempts at storytelling, it’s clear that work went into ghat part of the game and it paid off nicely with solid voice work that wouldn’t be out of place in something like a modern-day Hot Wheels animated show. The sound effect work for things like car collisions are solid. While the crashes aren’t crushing, they shouldn’t be for a car list made of die-cast cars and do sound more like metal clanking violently.
Closing Comments:
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.
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged
Milestone’s Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is an arcade racing game based on the popular scale model cars franchise. Building on the ideas of 2021’s Hot Wheels Unleashed, the sequel introduces two new vehicle types and will feature over 100 cars or bikes.
