PLATFORM: PC, PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: 19TH OCTOBER
2021’s Hot Wheels Unlimited was a fun but slightly undercooked racer, offering stellar arcade racing that made for some exciting contests across an unfortunately disappointing minimal variety of game modes. Its follow-up, HWU2: Turbocharged, sticks with the same accomplished gameplay but ramps up the enjoyment with new tracks, locations, vehicles and game modes.
Even those of us who weren’t especially keen on cars will remember Hot Wheels from our youth – tiny die-cast cars racing along tracks that wind and sprawl across whichever room you’ve been allowed to play in. HWU2 emulates the experience perfectly, with lengthy tracks set in and around some eye-catching locations – where the previous game was restricted to places like offices and campus libraries, now we find ourselves tearing around much more interesting locales like a mini-golf course, dinosaur museum and roadside diner. Each location has 10 associated tracks, with each one offering a variety of twists, turns, loop the loops, jumps and more, and there’s also a track builder so you can design your dream course in your favourite venue. Each of the 130 or so cars can be customised and upgraded, with many vehicles and designs locked behind either objectives in the story campaign or buying them from the shop using in game currency, giving you plenty of things to work towards.
In terms of game modes, there’s a standard race between 12 competitors, an elimination race where the cars in last place are booted off the track every half a minute or so, and a really fun checkpoint race which gets rid of the track completely, challenging you to speed towards a series of checkpoints within a time limit. Whatever the other two are. Several of these are playable online against human opponents, along with a handful of additional modes like “Grab The Gears” where you try to take gears from other players by bumping into them, and “Crash Derby” which is pretty much what it sounds like it’s going to be, amongst others.
Along with improving the aesthetics and game modes, new driving mechanics have been added to make the actual racing even more fun than before. Cars are now able to jump to avoid hazards, and shunt themselves from side to side to knock other drivers off course. These make HWU2 feel more like an arcade kart racer than the previous iteration, and it’s much more enjoyable for it.
HWU1 only really came into its own after receiving multiple updates with some fancy new additions, such as vehicles taken from genre favourites like He-Man, TMNT, Looney Tunes and Batman. During this review, a few similar vehicles revealed themselves – a Peanuts-themed car featuring Snoopy riding on top of his kennel, KITT from Knight Rider, and a copyright-swerving “time machine” from Back To The Future (make no mistake, it’s a Delorean) – but even after finishing the campaign the collection screen was barely half full, so who knows what other delights might be in store. However, even without unlocking all of the vehicles, HWU2 already feels much more like a well-stacked package than its predecessor did upon release. It really is an excellent addition to the arcade racing genre, and definitely comes highly recommended!
