Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged review: a die-cast deli…

When I raced in the dinosaur exhibit at a museum as a Hot Wheels monster truck, I realized that racing games were made for my five-year-old. As a kid, I had a lot of Hot Wheels; Looking back, this was one way my dad tried to share his love of cars with me. I played Milestone’s 2021 sleeper hit Hot Wheels Release And thought it brought back some old childhood memories. This realization didn’t fully hit me until I played this better sequel, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged,

Hot Wheels Unveiled 2 Not the most complex or challenging racer. It has a redundant story mode and somewhat gambling-like presentation when unlocking cars which I don’t like in a game made for kids. Still, a few key additions go a long way toward creating a faster, more fun racing game for kids (and kids at heart).

sophisticated racing

Milestone’s Hot Wheels Racing games are fairly simple arcade racers where the main goal is to boost, drift, and outwit opponents to get first place. It has been repurposed into various modes, ranging from a standard three-lap race to an elimination mode, which pits players from the last two spots in a time interval. promote and go in Hot Wheels Unveiled 2 is the key to success and is just as exciting as its predecessor.

it will be hard to go back to square one Hot Wheels Release After playing this follow-up. The sequel improves on the boost-based, arcade-like racing by giving players more ways to spend that boost meter. Now I can spend some of it jumping or turning my car sideways quickly. While jumps got me across larger gaps, and side dashes let me knock some other racers out of the way, they also added more movement utility to the game.

Now it’s easier to correct this and get back on track without having to completely reset my car’s position, as the vehicles are still quite vulnerable and can deviate from the path. Now I could jump off the edge of the track or use the lateral dash to adjust my position in the air. I always needed some boost meter to complete these tricks, so it made me drift a lot and pay more attention to the type of boost meter my Hot Wheels had and how much boost energy they had left. Encouraged.

Boost-based racer will be much more entertaining for kids than any simulator forza motorsport, but even I felt that inner, childlike joy that one can get from “The Car Goes Faster”. Thankfully, Milestone also created an entire sandbox to enjoy this sophisticated racing. More outdoor maps have been added, and more races or portions of the races take place off-road. Locations were cleverly chosen in keeping with the child-like theme, like the backyard or the aforementioned dinosaur museum, adding to the wonder of running through vast spaces in the form of a tiny toy.

Meanwhile, the new Waypoint mode also lets me race completely off-road from one point to another on these maps. If I were playing this game at five years old, this would be my favorite mode because I could not care about the timer and play the game without interruptions thanks to the new movement mechanics. It also looks great, capturing the plastic look of the track and car and combining them with a more realistic environment. This sequel isn’t just reliving old memories; It’s introducing new places to explore and ways to get around them.

lots of progress

The track and car editors also return, giving players extensive tools to create and customize their own Hot Wheels experience. I doubt most kids will have the time or patience to create cool tracks of their own, but the ability to browse community-created cars and courses and play with them should give an almost endless amount of content to enjoy. Even if a person chooses not to engage with the online features, the single-player experience Hot Wheels Unveiled 2 The provision is comprehensive.

It is possible to access Quick Play Race, Time Attack, Drift Master, Elimination, and Waypoint modes individually, but these race types are used in the Hot Wheels Creature Rampage campaign mode. Developer Milestone tells a story about Hot Wheels racers working with a scientist and a robot to kill escaped monsters. This is absolutely not for adults. Most of its comic-book cutscenes are painfully written; The characters will change their characterization from line to line, and each scenario always ends with everyone laughing.

Thankfully, I was able to mostly ignore these cutscenes aimed at kids and enjoy Creature Rampage as a series of challenges with primary and bonus objectives. Completing these and various smaller Unleashed missions rewarded me with things like customization items, experience, skill points, Hot Wheels Spin tokens, and currency. Skill points let me refine specific abilities, like being immune to certain track obstacles; The game was satisfying and I got the reward of using my favorite Hot Wheels.

Meanwhile, the currency is used to purchase new Hot Wheels, which now includes motorcycles, ATVs, and monster trucks. I’m less fond of Hot Wheels Spin, because I don’t like that its rewards are distributed through a slot machine-like mechanic in a game designed for children. Thank God, Hot Wheels Unveiled 2 Only features paid DLC and unlike this year, it lacks currency microtransactions at the time of release lego 2k drive,

Even after stripping back all those layers of progression, there’s still a racing game experience that feels inherently fun, feeling like I loved my Hot Wheels when I played with them as a kid. Had imagined. Whereas all those Hot Wheels are nowadays given away to play or put in a tote box somewhere in my parents’ attic Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged It felt like I was playing with them again.

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Tested on PS5.