I had to tell a friend, "This is a little embarrassing but I'm playing Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 and it is pretty good."



I have now played both of the Hot Wheels Unleashed games and can genuinely say that they are a very solid racing game for old people and not just for children like you'd think they'd be. Actually, maybe they are aimed at old people since Hot Wheels have been around for a minute or two and I'm not sure they have as large of a market share as they did back in the days of my youth. Anyhow, HWU2T is a pretty standard racing game in that you press on the gas and try to go the fastest. It adds in some drifting and a turbo boost feature to spice things up a bit. However, the real business is the variety of environmental features in the truly wild tracks you race on. There are jumps, loops, boosts, obstacles, giant spiders and sharks, magnetic tracks, and so much more. Version 2 adds an off-road component I don't recall in the first one as well as a story with some kind-of animated cutscenes that are generally pretty funny as well as some other incremental changes.

Honestly, if you like racing games, this one is a great arcade-style racer that will entertain and even challenge you towards the end of the career mode. The online multiplayer is very decent, as well, although it does seem to suffer from players dropping out mid-race. There are many cars to collect and upgrade, which is nice, but collecting is a pain as the game has a bit of a loot box feel to the buying process that I would have liked to avoid. After I'd upgraded a few vehicles I settled on a standard upgrade plan for all of them as the trade-offs didn't seem to suit my chaotic driving style, so probably better to spend time elsewhere. Maybe you like designing liveries for the cars or building new tracks? These are definitely things you can do in this pretty detailed "kid's" game.

You may be embarrassed to tell your friends you like it but this is a very respectable racing game, folks.