Hot Wheels Unleashed

 Switch
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
Buy Now
Buy on
  1. App Trigger
    Oct 3, 2021
    80
    While it’s a bizarrely difficult racing game for one to be heavily marketed towards younger kids, Hot Wheels Unleashed somehow matches to capture everything we used to pretend Hot Wheels were when we played with them as children. The stages feel real and the sense of perspective is amazing. Fully customizable vehicles with one of the best track editors I’ve ever seen make this game a fun toy chest to play with.
  2. Nintenderos
    Sep 28, 2021
    80
    Hot Wheels Unleashed is a remarkable arcade driving game that will delight fans of toy cars and attract a good number of speed arcade players. It has content for dozens of hours and adds the component of collecting, although the way to get all the vehicles and some ways to discover its secrets can be a bit strange.
  3. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Nov 8, 2021
    75
    Hot Wheels Unleashed is hard. Like, unnecessarily so. I hope that the developers, after reading feedback about the too-tough difficulty level, will patch the game to be more accessible to Hot Wheels' biggest fans: small kids! [Issue #56 – November/December 2021, p. 72]
    All this publication's reviews
  5. Nintendo Enthusiast
    Sep 27, 2021
    75
    Hot Wheels Unleashed is the Hot Wheels racing game that we have been waiting on for a while. It delivers outside of a few hiccups. Players with concerns about performance will likely want to hold off until the upcoming patch releases on Switch. Players will also have to sit through some slow progression to really start unlocking cool cars, but they will have some very fun racing to keep them busy in between blind boxes and upgrades. If you are looking for a fun, methodical racer and you can appreciate toy cars and massive tracks, Hot Wheels Unleashed should be right up toward the top of your list.
  6. Starbit
    Oct 17, 2021
    70
    Hot Wheels Unleashed captures the spirit of the toy line in a very appealing way and fans will find here a marvelous experience between collecting cars, customizing them, and making changes to the areas around us. While the gameplay experience could use some tweaks when it comes to its controls, and the high difficulty level will prove tough for some players, it's easy to get completely absorbed by everything that Hot Wheels Unleashed does well.
  7. TouchArcade
    Oct 6, 2021
    70
    As an overall package, Hot Wheels Unleashed is better than you might have expected. It does its license justice, and the racing action is more than competent. I’m not really a fan of how much luck plays a role, in terms of what cars you get from the Blind Boxes, in how well you’re able to tackle the campaign. If you get bad pulls, grinding for more chances can take forever. I also feel like some of the longer courses are a little too long, running for several minutes in some cases. Again, there is a big update coming very soon and likely more to come in the future, so some or all of these points could eventually be fixed. I can only review what is in front of me, and that’s a game that is quite good but with its fair share of flaws.
  8. Jeuxvideo.com
    Sep 27, 2021
    70
    It remains an effective game, quite enjoyable and is without doubt the one that most faithfully respects the spirit of the famous brand, with that same nostalgic and passionate vision that we could have had ourselves, a few years earlier.
  9. Nintendo Life
    Sep 27, 2021
    70
    As it stands right now, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a fun racer whose fantastic selection of cars makes up for its relative lack of varied course environments. With updates and DLC it has the potential to become a brilliant mess of licensed properties in the way the best mash-up games are, but what’s here is a solid enough foundation to start from, even if it’s a little samey at launch.
This publication does not provide a score for their reviews.
This publication has not posted a final review score yet.
These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation.

In Progress & Unscored

?
  1. NintendoWorldReport
    Sep 27, 2021
    Hot Wheels Unleashed is a decent arcade racer with a whole bunch of additional content that helps pull it out of mediocrity. The single player campaign is set up for greatness but ultimately fails to amount to anything beyond basic races and time trials. The customization is incredible, if a little hard to come to grip with. Hopefully, the upcoming post-launch update will clear these issues up. For now, there is a lot of potential. Check back around the time that patch hits for my final scored thoughts on the game. In the meantime, if building tracks and customizing cars can make up for some rough edges in other departments, Hot Wheels Unleashed may be worth checking out.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 14 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 14
  3. Negative: 2 out of 14
  1. SuperkenGaming
    Oct 2, 2021
    8
    Hot wheels unleashed
    great for the creative
    Hot wheels unleashed is an arcade racing game with an equal amount of good as bad… firs the    Hot wheels unleashed
    great for the creative
    Hot wheels unleashed is an arcade racing game with an equal amount of good as bad… firs the good.. the amount of customization and attention to detail in this game is insane.. as you play youll earn coin and blind boxes, giving you random hot wheels cars all with their own stas and are upgradable with different rarities, and yes I did pull legendaries… you can also earn these cars in the story mode.. and each of these cars you can customize all th way down to the wheel.. really making this feel lik your toybox wich brings me to the track creator.. im not one to care about these type of things anymore.. but the early teen in me loves the fact you can build a track around your room like the good ole days, having sleepovers with your friends.. coming up with the most ridiculous jump and loops possible.. and yu can play these tracks locally as well as online, though I don’t see the option to download other created tracks which is a bummer, you can however download other players customized cars.. up to 100… when it comes to racing, hot wheels unleashed is best locally or online.. its fast and fun drifting around corners trying to outdo everyone around you.. its hwen you play solo that hot wheels unleashes problems start to show… theres an adventure mode here where youre going through races and time trials basically back and forth, clearing these hllenges to unlock new track bulding items, earn coins, and cars.. and imemdietly I relized, oh no.. theres rubber banding.. unfortuntaly there is no sweet spot difficulty to make racing through this game solo thrilling… easy is essentially free roam mode cause the AI cant keep up, and the rubber banding in medium and hard ruins races.. turning this basically into nothing but time trials essentially.. one wrong move and youre in last place.. that’s how bad the rubber banding is… might as well restart.. much like again.. a time trial.. when I sit down to race.. iwant to race.. don’t pretend theres added difficulty by making the ai slingshot to catch up with me… jst make the ai better the harder it gets.. so unfortunately playing solo turned this into a map cleaner more than anything else.. made worse by how uncreative the tracks are.. The game focused so heavily on detail they forgot to focus on zany fun… sure there are obstacles thrown in there like a spider that shoots a web,but no childlike imagination.. making forts out of pillows, throwing bouncy balls here and there, making me drive over a bowl of water.. a cat swiping at you while you drive around… an insanine incline down a flight of stairs to fly across the room… nothing really to remind me im dirving a hotwheels car.. other than the ocassional vent or couch to drive across, but its so in the background hat I stopped paying attention.. really making getting through the campaign a drag at times, as it is just recycled the same 8 tracks over and over and over…
    That being said if you plan to race online or locally with friends.. hot wheels unleashed has potential to be a staple in your collection.. creating tracks to challenge eachother, designing a staple hotwheel..
    This is a must have for racing fans..
    I give Hot wheels unleashed
    a 7.5/10    … Full Review »
  2. craftsle
    Oct 1, 2021
    9
    Watching the trailers, I wasn't sure if it was a good buy as it seemed like I would quickly get bored.
    But I was wrong, I consider it to be    Watching the trailers, I wasn't sure if it was a good buy as it seemed like I would quickly get bored.
    But I was wrong, I consider it to be the definitive Hot Wheels video game. The gameplay is quite dynamic and the circuits created by default are not simple circuits with curves, each of these are very well designed, and you realize this as you go through each curve.
    Although this version is quite graphically reduced due to the limitations of the console, it is still a pass when running.    … Full Review »
  3. DKRedDragon
    May 30, 2022
    0
    At first look this game Graphicly is well put together and has a decent list of vehicles to choose from when they are acquired and the LengthAt first look this game Graphicly is well put together and has a decent list of vehicles to choose from when they are acquired and the Length of Regular Career/Story Mode was decent. At first I wasn't happy with how the Handling/Steering Mechanics operated But I had figured that would come with time playing the game and it's result would improve, But I was wrong and that's just how the game plays. Also before I had purchased this Title, I saw that it was advertised as "No Micro Transactions" and that certainly does not seam to be the case. And the Game Play Is Smooth for the exception of the 2-3 software crashes I experienced.
    I'll try and keep this short, ....... Over the past 2 weeks I have logged about/around 75 hours of dedicated game play, and have found this Game to basically be over Hyped based on Visual Graphics. As I mentioned before, the Steering Mechanics are poor, meaning that the game has "Scripting" programmed in and it constantly and consistently is Sliding and Banging the Player into the walls, off track, and semi spinning out the vehicles when the player is Kicking the Snot Out of the Games Ai ( in short, Benefiting the Ai/Software for success and ultimately working against the player and actively trying to make them lose, meaning not actual fair game play). The Irritating way they have handled "extending" game play by Extremely Restricting Experience points, upgrade points, and in game currency by making players "Grind" through the Unreason Amount they would have to, to gain all the content really just starts to ruin the game all together with losing the moral while playing the game. Along with that, The absolute fact that a player has to quite literally Cheat in order to "beat' or completely pass a good amount of the Time Trails is Concerning and Disheartening.

    (Update)- With further playing this title I have also found with the "Daily Challenges", the issue of "Scripting" becomes much much worse, all the forced wall riding, spin outs, intermittent turning off of throttle and drifting, pushed off track while in the air or on track, into wall edges and objects, refusal of being able to use boost, exploding off track, dead stop when land on the middle of the track, steering latency, refusal of rewards for perfect starts=latency.
    As of now I've also made it to rank 41, which has been a nightmare as far as "Grinding goes, and players should expect to have to do 50 to 60 races to move 1 ranking position without the help of the Daily Challenge.

    My only other gripe with this Game/Title is the pricing, Based on my experience, this game isn't worth $49.99 at the base price let alone the $89.99 for the Extreme Stunt Edition and what is speculated to come to the game. With that being said there is a "Season Pass" that Only includes "Vol 1" at the price of $29.99 without a path to the other unreleased "Volumes 2 and 3?" .........wth, anyone that can do basic math can put together that doesn't add up, let me brake it down for you:
    $49.99 + $29.99 = $79.99
    This would have me to believe that Milestone video game developer is expecting to charge well over $100 dollars for their complete game because Game Players wanted a Physical Copy of their game because they don't trust the people that own the Coding Rights to just take the game away whenever they please.
    In Conclusion, .... I think that there are a lot of Unethical Practices going on here just like with EA, Sony, and Microsoft, BUT that doesn't mean that it's right and I think that it takes the Wholesomeness away from the game that it should have and ultimately shouldn't be tampered with. But if you can deal with those things the game play is ok and would definitely purchase it the game at the $19.99 price mark if it ever lowers to that price.

    (Update) 12-16-2021
    Ironically just got left a threating voice mail from Italy, Claiming to be the Fed's, interesting........

    (Update) 5-30-2022
    After several months , i went to try this game again, And certainly didn't think that this game could get worse , a lot worse, but its probably just Milestone singling my account out, so that it plays like garbage, every car now sways around the track like a boat and the latency is atrocious, the drifting doesnt work, and the game is constantly taking control and throwing my vehicle off the track or into walls. Milestone must be Communist Supporters.
    AND There still ISN'T a reasonable way to upgrade without starting over and buying the whole game all over again. Worst purchase ever.    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »