PLATFORM: PC, PS5, SWITCH 2, XBOX SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: 10TH SEPTEMBER
Shifting focus from its usual grand prix-style races to an open world formula more akin to The Crew, Mario Kart World and the Forza series, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush fills four distinct islands with around half a dozen or so individual races and plenty of side content that can be tackled in whatever order you wish. Challenges and races are designed for four varieties of vehicle, each of which are available in countless different models that can be either collected by completing objectives or purchased in the in-game garage using currency that you’ll earn through playing (there are no microtransactions here, no sir!) and then further upgraded using points accumulated during races.
Each race and activity has a primary and secondary goal to beat, rewarding you with additional coins and experience points for better results. You’ll also earn Fame points which act as the game’s experience / levelling up system, as increasing your Fame unlocks extra activities and eventually gives access to races against Rush Masters, the fastest and most desirable vehicles that you can race against and, if you win, add to your collection. In a similar vein, unique Daredevil racers travel around the map and can be challenged to a race whenever you come across them, with victory making them available for use in your garage.
A huge amount of races and activities become available to play as you progress through the game, but there unfortunately isn’t a huge amount of variety. “Tourist” asks you to take a photo of a specific location, “Stuntman” wants you to break as many objects as possible, Boost, Speed and Drift stunts require you to boost and drift along a designated course, while you’ll need to find a huge flame in “Find the Flame” activities and “Delivery” missions task you with delivering a vehicle to the garage without damaging it too much. There are a lot of these to take part in, but with each activity taking place on the island’s streets and no specifically-built tracks to race on, deja vu may well set in quicker than you might want. The game’s actual races suffer in a similar way, as you’ll only ever complete three laps of a single course around the streets before returning to your starting point, and later unlockable variants on each race simply add the standard activities’ objectives onto the race track to give the track something extra to aim towards.
Elsewhere, a track builder allows you to build your own tracks using pre-set pieces that float above the ground, as well as liveries and stickers to decorate your vehicles with. Online functionality allows you to upload tracks and download those made by others, as well as race online against other human players, but unfortunately neither of those had been enabled pre-release. What’s here is all good fun, but the lack of a full grand prix mode makes Infinite Rush feel like a step back from 2021’s Hot Wheels Unleashed and its 2023 sequel. Like its Hot Wheels predecessor, Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem, Infinite Rush is more of an entry level racer that’s maybe more suited to younger players with shorter attention spans.
