Whilst it doesn’t quite reach the level of Hot Wheels Unleashed, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is still a fun racer that’s easily accessible for a younger audience.
Recent Hot Wheels games have been pretty solid, and whilst the likes of Hot Wheels Unleashed and Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem aren’t the greatest racers ever made, they’re certainly fun and mechanically very solid. Hot Wheels Infinite Rush takes the Unleashed racing system and adds an open world for additional fun. I feel like the open world is a bit of filler rather than adding anything genuinely valuable, but the racing is as fun as ever.
After a brief tutorial, you’re dropped into a city with a few activities to complete with an aim to beat the area’s “Rusher” before moving onto the next region. You’ve got the usual array of racing events, from time trials and traditional lapped courses, to elimination races and straight up sprints. After you’ve completed enough, you’ll take on the Rusher and move on.
You only need to complete five events in a region to face the boss and move on, so you can get to see the vast majority of what the game has to offer very quickly. Thankfully there are a few other activities around an area to complete. You’ve got photo opportunities, maximum speed dashes, and destruction events available that will earn you coins for unlocking cars and cosmetics. Occasionally you’ll come across drivers that you can directly challenge to a race to win their vehicle too which is neat.
Cars are split into four categories, those being versatile, drifter, speedster, and titan. You can probably work out what each type specialises in, but much like in Hot Wheels Unleashed and its sequel, each type has its own method of boosting and recharging that boost. Versatile cars get a quick burst that charges by drifting, whilst titans get a powerful boost that can overheat if overused. It’s nice to have the variety to choose from as you explore, but you’ll be railroaded into using specific types for most races.
Something that’s neat with this system is that you can set up four vehicles, one of each type, that you can quick swap to without having to go into the menus. Holding right on the d-pad and using the right stick lets you pick one of your presets and you’ll get a fun little transformation as it switches car. It’s a good thing you get to do this as the load times are shockingly long for a game on Xbox Series X that isn’t exactly incredible in the visuals department. You’ll still have to go through that when you start or end a race though, which isn’t ideal.
The open world itself has a lot of collectibles which will unlock new cars, perks, and cosmetics. The areas themselves aren’t enormous, so you’ll find a lot of collectible gears, logos, and stickers fairly easily, as well as opportunities to earn coins for the in-game shop to get even more cars. There are a lot of cars to find — over 150 from Hot Wheels’ history in fact — so you’re encouraged to find the collectibles. This is fine and fun enough, but the racing is a lot more enjoyable than driving around a visually interesting but actually fairly empty world.
And the racing is still fun. Very high speed races, with lots of drifts and boosts around interesting tracks making good use of Hot Wheels iconic tracks and features. You’ll be racing around those famous orange roads and loop-de-looping through an alligator’s mouth, much like in previous games in the series. It’s fun and easy to get into, and on the lower difficulties the youngsters will be able to have a lot of fun with it too.
With all that said, other than a somewhat needless open world, this isn’t that different to the Hot Wheels Unleashed games. It’s nice to have new tracks though, so if you just want more of the same with a little extra, then you can’t go too far wrong. The load times are annoying, especially having to load back into the open world after every race, and a lot of the cosmetics are very similar to each other, meaning unlocking them isn’t really all that worthwhile.
Still, there’s the really rather robust tack building system back from previous games, so if you’re inclined to make your own races, then there’s plenty to mess about with. It’s not something for me as I like an experience curated by the developers, but I know a lot of people would miss it if it was gone.
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is as solid as its predecessors, with a good racing system and the addition of an open world if doing the whole exploration thing is your jam. For a relatively budget priced title, you could do a lot worse if you’re after a fun racer for the kids, or even the big kids!
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is available now on Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
