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Jul 24, 2023

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Review

Turbochargers work by sucking in air from the atmosphere, compressing and cooling it, and subsequently blowing it into the cylinders to help your engine burn fuel at a faster rate. Unlike

Turbochargers work by sucking in air from the atmosphere, compressing and cooling it, and subsequently blowing it into the cylinders to help your engine burn fuel at a faster rate. Unlike turbochargers, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged doesn’t suck or blow, but it is pretty damn cool. This palm-sized sequel shines with graphics that range from excellent to outright remarkable, an inspired selection of life-sized environments where stools loom large like skyscrapers and skateboards are as big as sailboats, and accessible and drift-heavy handling with a couple of new twists. However, while it’s certainly a slight step forward from the excellent 2021 original, it has introduced a couple of annoying quirks – like creases in the cardboard of a Super Treasure Hunt blister pack.

Just like Milestone’s first Hot Wheels Unleashed two years ago, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is still the antithesis to the tossed-together, toy-licensed turds today’s parents toiled through during our own childhoods. Beneath the corporate branding, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 really does remain an indubitably groovy arcade racer with highly imaginative tracks and some of the most brilliant-looking vehicles in the genre.

The car models are still absolutely amazing renditions of real-life Hot Wheels, which appear essentially photorealistic on-screen. Rotating them around in the menus and photo mode they look like genuine toys placed under a microscope; seriously, it really cannot be stressed enough just how unflinchingly faithful Milestone’s models are to actual Hot Wheels miniatures. The texture differences between plastic and metal. The faint knit lines left on injection-moulded parts. The subtle accumulations of extra paint on tapered spoilers. The difference in finishes between a glossy hard plastic tyre and a rubber Real Riders wheel. The stamped text beneath each chassis featuring the model name and production year.

Better still, the way they carry their imperfections makes them look even more credible, from the child-sized fingerprints that reveal themselves on certain surfaces under the right light, to the scratches and gouges they get from both the gladiatorial racing and going end over end on gravel.

Of course, returning players will know Hot Wheels Unleashed already looked this good. More crucially, it still feels good, too. Like all its truly great high-speed peers, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2’s arcade-typical brake-to-drift handling is easy to pick up but tricky to totally master. This depth comes via the particularly nuanced layer of in-air controls that let you adjust direction and boost through the sky like a die-cast cruise missile, which has now been augmented with double-jump and lateral dash abilities. However, this time around it also comes from the distinctly different feel of the cars in each of the six different classes.

As you’d probably expect, these new classes – Rocket, Balanced, Swift, Drifter, Off-Road, and Heavy Duty – each carry certain advantages and disadvantages. The additional bulk of Heavy Duty vehicles makes them better to battle with, but they quickly straighten out of low-angle drifts when they lose too much momentum. Off-Road vehicles can ride over rough terrain like grass and dirt without hassle, but they aren’t going to be the best models to take to tight time trials. I will say the differences between Rocket and Balanced, Swift and Drifter, and Off-Road and Heavy Duty aren’t always especially pronounced – so it actually tended to feel a little more like three classes than six to me.

The new upgrade and perk system makes things a little malleable – so it’s possible to blur the lines between classes by, say, pumping up boost stats in a Drift car at the expense of some of its handling points. You can also now change the boost mode from single, uninterruptible shots to a bar that can be drained at any pace you want (which is essential if you want a car you can hold in a drift without constantly slamming into the side walls under uncontrollable acceleration).

Regardless, I did find myself giving greater consideration to what car I was bringing to each event than I did in the original. It’s a smart way to encourage us to engage with more of the cars in our virtual garage than previously (I have to admit that, while playing the original Hot Wheels Unleashed, I pretty much raced the Back to the Future DeLorean in virtually every event once I’d unlocked it). It mostly works, too – but only when Milestone adheres to it.

Unfortunately, one of my biggest frustrations with Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 has been the instances when it forces us to take on events in vehicle classes that are ill-equipped for the job. This happens throughout the main story mode, where it was only really a minor annoyance, but it became a severe irritation trying to clear the salvo of bonus events that unlocked after I’d hit 100% completion. Hitting huge drift totals in Off-Road or Heavy Duty vehicles is just a pain. They’re simply just not as fun to drift in as the other classes, because they’re a lot worse at it. I’m guessing the argument here is that it’s a challenge, but something being challenging doesn’t automatically make it fun. Certainly not when it’s like having a drawer full of steak knives but being forced to cut your meat with the edge of a spoon.

It also didn’t really help that reaching the end of the story mode left me mostly confused, anyhow. It’s just odd being told I’ve reached 100% completion, finished both objectives in every event, and unlocking nothing but… more events. I don’t have a problem with more events, but how about some cars at that point? Six billion cars built since 1968 and we can’t get a couple of curios for finishing? Hot Wheels Unleashed seems surprisingly stingy with unlockable cars considering how many decades of them there are to choose from, though I did appreciate the time it takes for the car sales showroom to refresh its random line-up dropping from four hours of play to 45 minutes. You can even refresh it immediately for a nominal amount of in-game credits; you can get several refreshes with the credits earned from a single event. The default range still leans extremely heavily towards mostly recent models, though – or, at best, recent re-issues of older castings. It really feels like there ought to be more relics from the ’80s and ’90s in here, especially considering this is something designed for generations of Hot Wheels fans to enjoy together.

Fun, fast, and damn near photorealistic at times, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a surprising and brilliant arcade racer. Carefully detailed, highly customisable, and buoyantly uncynical, this toy racer defies all expectations with remarkable attention to detail, excellent track design, and an accessible handling model that still rewards high skill. The racing may be tiny but make no mistake: this game is enormous fun. – Luke Reilly, September 28, 2021

Read the full Hot Wheels Unleashed review.

This huge spike in difficulty after the career mode is ostensibly done makes me wonder whether Milestone has slightly lost track of the spectrum of its audience here. For instance, the cutscenes in the story mode itself are pitched super young, but my nine-year-old bounced off these punishing “Extreme” endgame events faster than he does from the trampoline when his older brother starts doing backflips. I’m largely fed up with them, too.

Fortunately, even if the core single player mode eventually becomes a chore, there’s still plenty to love about the fantastic selection of new environments. My son digs everything about the new dinosaur museum, which is a multi-level map filled with enormous prehistoric displays. I’m a huge fan of both the Arcade and Gas Station locations, which have the best lighting and reflections. There’s also Mini Golf Course and Backyard, which is actually a bit of a misnomer considering how much great racing space there is inside the home as well. Unfortunately, shortcut hunting has been a bit unsatisfying this time around, and I haven’t yet found any as creatively cheesy as I did in the original. My suspicion is that since the new double jump has made it easy to leave the track, it may have seen Milestone pump up the amount of checkpoints to counteract its potential abuse? It’s a bit of a cursed monkey paw situation, as the jump mechanic has introduced deliberate gaps in tracks – which is a concept I like – but they seem to have come at a cost.

Some of that shortcut magic may be able to reappear via the phenomenal track builder. However, as much as I still love the freedom of the track builder to warp and position track at will (and not just rely on pre-set pieces), it’s disappointing the old environments weren’t also included. I’m not sure why they couldn’t have been left in for a super-sized library of locations. Sure, the new jump ability has complicated short cuts, but it adds a fresh new perspective on track building we could’ve taken to the original levels.

Two-player split-screen returns, and with more event types this time it’s been even more fun in our household than before. Waypoint has been a particular hit, especially when dad gets caught short sandbagging and accidentally missing the final checkpoint, meaning I need to publically bear the humiliation of losing to somebody less than a quarter of my age.

An impeccably detailed and blisteringly fast racer with incredible graphics and rock-solid arcade underpinnings, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 picks up where the surprisingly excellent 2021 original left off. That is, it’s not just the best thing on the breakfast bench since Micro Machines – it’s one of the strongest and most imaginative arcade racers available today. It’s definitely guilty of forgetting to suitably cater to its wide audience at times, it’s stingy on older cars, and it would’ve been a much bigger and better package if it didn’t completely shed its previous track locations, but the last time Mattel had wheels this worthy of a whirl they were welded beneath Ryan Gosling’s rollerblades.