Or when you miscalculate your boost and putter out at the top of a loop-de-loop, clattering to the ground below, you will curse. When you are heading into the last turn, and you accidentally bank too sharply and go sliding off of an open edge, you will curse. Oh yes, Hot Wheels Unleashed will make you curse. Tracks become tighter, sharper, and more insidious, obstacles become more aggressive, and the later time trials in the game will test every ounce of your skill. But as Hot Wheels Unleashed progresses, the difficulty ramps up substantially, and by the end of the campaign it will be all you can do to keep your tiny rocket-on-wheels from careening off the track, tumbling across the basement and skittering to a halt off in a darkened corner. Early in the game, I scoffed at the idea of not winning a race, let alone not reaching the podium. Each race has two levels of reward – one for reaching the podium, and the other for winning. And, of course, don’t go sliding off the track. Rip through straightaways, drift around corners, deploy boost strategically to get ahead of the pack. Drifting builds up boost, which you fire off with the “X” button. Hold the left trigger to brake, tap it to drift. The racing mechanics are simple, pure, and intuitive. This is the quickest way to learn Unleashed’s racing mechanics, and as a bonus, you can unlock some new cars and start building out your collection. Played out on a sprawling city playmat, the “Hot Wheels City Rumble” mode has players moving from point to point on the map, engaging with single races and time trials.
There’s so much here that it can be a little overwhelming at first, so I would recommend just jumping into the single player campaign to get your feet wet. This is no barebones licensed game this is a game constructed to be a solid foundation to build upon, and indeed, there is an extremely robust post-release plan to keep the hits coming. Splitscreen races so you can whoop up on your kids. A customizable basement in which to build them. A track builder to make your own nightmare creations. Milestone went for broke with this game, delivering every feature a fan could ask for.
Yes, damn it, the game based on the collectable $0.99 toys you see at the grocery store checkout is not only good, it is fantastic. Teamed with Mattel, Milestone has taken a wild swing for the fences, delivering a AAA arcade racing title based on the Hot Wheels property that may very well be my favorite racing experience of the last decade. It seems that developer Milestone – the folks behind such franchises as MotoGP and Monster Energy Supercross – have heard my silent prayers. I greatly missed the days of arcade racing, when I could jam on the gas and just go, whipping around corners with little concern for such trivialities as “braking”. When racing mechanics became so realistic that I could adjust the air pressure in my tires, I “nope-d” my way right out of the genre entirely. I’ve gone on record many times over the last few years about the fact that I’m intimidated by modern racing games.
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