After two successful and highly regarded arcade racing games in the Hot Wheels Unleashed series, developer Milestone has taken that same formula and applied it across an open world structure in Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush — an addition that feels unnecessary.
I really enjoyed the simpler, circuit-based approach of the earlier games; it felt in tune with the licence, which is all about these toy cars and the iconic orange tracks you build for them to race around.
In this newest entry, everything revolves around four islands you’re free to explore, each with a different theme. They’re fine, but not particularly memorable or interesting to drive around.
You make progress by completing campaign events dotted around each map until you’re able to challenge a member of that island’s racing gang. As you prove yourself to be the better driver, you’ll unlock the later maps and more events.
Collecting more Hot Wheels is a big part of the game, too, and while many of them are purchasable at dealerships using earned in-game money, some are unlocked by other means.
A handful will be zipping around the open world, and you must challenge them to a short race. If you win, you unlock the vehicle. Others are earned by beating specific open world events and challenges.
It’s a simple setup, and the various event types are good fun, but the islands themselves aren’t particularly inspired places in which to roam around.
They’re just a bit flat; it feels like they’re implemented just to have something to put on the back of the box rather than what best serves the game.
There are activities scattered around, as well as a few collectibles to track down, but I found it hard to get excited about exploring when the maps feel sort of repetitive and uninspired.
It also feels like a missed opportunity to lean harder into the toy-sized nature of the game.
The maps are scaled realistically to the Hot Wheels, which sort of makes it feel like you’re just playing a “normal” racing game, instead of one with dinky toy cars. It’s missing that sense of driving Hot Wheels through living rooms, or gardens, or toy stores.
Visually, it gets across you’re in toy land with really nicely rendered plastics and other materials, but I’m not sold on the idea of the Hot Wheels feeling life size.
The good news is that Infinite Rush inherits the fun driving mechanics from the Unleashed games, so flying around with your choice of Hot Wheels feels great. The handling does a lot of the heavy lifting here.
Despite the open world islands feeling superfluous and underwhelming in some ways, it is good fun just zooming around, pulling off crazy drifts, and smacking into traffic and obstacles with abandon.
The appeal of doing so with a gradually growing garage of recognisable toy cars just about outweighs what holds the overall game back.
I mentioned the visual style earlier, and it is generally a good-looking game — especially the car models — but there are some inconsistent textures here and there.
To be fair, you probably won’t notice them most of the time while you’re blasting around at hundreds of kilometres an hour. What would be worse is if the frame rate ever wavered from its 60fps target, and I’m pleased to say I never experienced that.
There are some load times that take a bit longer than you might hope, but by and large, Infinite Rush is technically sufficient.
Conclusion
Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush is a decent arcade racing game, but only because it features the same great handling from the Unleashed titles. Moving to an open world structure does little to add to the experience; if anything, I think it detracts from it. Having said that, there’s absolutely still fun to be had here. Collecting all the cars and blasting through races is very enjoyable, and controlling these die-cast toys retains its appeal despite the game’s faults.
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