Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged – Review

September 2021 Hoth Wheels: Unleashed arrived on Xbox, surprising many with a competent arcade racer that brought everyone’s favourite toy cars to life. Now, little more than a year later the franchise returns with Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged.

The original title was well commended for its arcade racing, but it has a few shortcomings, my own complaints were the blind-bag approach to unlocking cars (leading to many duplicates) and some unfair handling issues which could wreck your race in a second. It’s great to see most issues have been resolved, if not completely, but how does Turbocharged fare against the greatest arcade racers.

Firstly, the game feels similar but refined, cars are a little weightier but still have that toy feel, and thanks to a smooth and consistent framerate racing feels fluent and fast.

The overall physics seems to have been improved and there’s a greater level of control when airborne, meaning whether you’re hitting a bump in the track or flying off a jump, you’ve got much more chance of landing on all four wheels.

You’ll still find many occasions when you end up crashing out and I suffered a fair few collisions, which would send me off the track completely, forcing me to hit RB to reset the vehicle, often losing 2, 3, 5 or even more seconds.

Thankfully the arcade-racing rubber-band is at full stretch and for better or worse can save your race even if you do have a major crash, but unlike the original title, these instances only ever felt like my own fault and not the game being unfair.

One time, I was leading comfortably and completely forgot about a jump, as a result I hit the rim of the jump and ended up falling off the table with no way back to the track, another, in trying to side-swipe an opponent, I hit a jump at a funny angle and we both missed the track and crashed into a nearby obstacle, forcing me to reset (RB) and drop right to the back of the pack. Thankfully that rubber-banding made sure a return to pole position wasn’t more than half-a-lap away.

The same can be said for when you’re in the lead, after an entire lap of near perfect racing you’ll look back to find your opponent’s still hot on your heels, it’s the sort of rubber-band system I truly hate, but having played pretty much every arcade racer since the likes of Mario kart on the SNES, it’s an area I’ve become familiar with and learnt to accept, let’s face it, arcade racer’s wouldn’t be any more fun if you’d lost the race as soon as you took a corner a little wide, or were 5 seconds ahead as soon as you’d maintained your composure for half a lap.

You’ll get plenty of opportunities to race, with quick race for solo or 2-player split screen racing and multiplayer allowing up to 12 racers on track. Sadly, there’s no real longevity in these modes, and I would have loved to see a co-op campaign like Sonic Racers or an online Career like EA’s F1 franchise, but if all you’re after is a few quick races with friends Hot Wheels 2 will provide time and time again.

Like its predecessor, there’s also a single player career, which has a small narrative background about creatures accidentally being super-sized and now needing to be shrunk down to size so team Hot Wheels can defeat them, there’s some well-presented comic-like cut scenes, but they only really correspond to the five boss races, so they do feel a little out of place at times.

Working through the career is well worth your time as you’ll unlock plenty of coins which can be used in the shop to unlock new vehicles, which rather than blind-bags are now in a shop rotation that can be refreshed for a small fee, so you’ll have a much greater chance of finding a car you like to spend those hard-earned upgrade tokens on.

Working through the career will also unlock new tracks, vehicles and elements for creating your own courses, but the downside with the career is it does feel a little unbalanced at times. Some races are a breeze and can give you an easy win on normal difficulty, while others, especially some of the boss battles feel a little tough and cheap even on easy.

I have no issue with the style of the boss battles, racing around hitting targets across the course to damage the boss before it’s rage meter fills, but this often enforces a pretty strict time limit, which requires near perfect racing especially after the first two bosses.

The other downside is, the progression is linear, if you fail a race there’s bypassing it by no doing better on previous races or taking an alternative route, you’ll have to suffer along, perfecting every corner until you can overcome the hurdle, otherwise your progress will be stuck with the handbrake on.

Graphically Hot Wheels 2 looks great, exactly how you’d expect these small diecast metal cars to look, and the locations are all well detailed and realistic enough in a toy-like sense, without having to photo-perfect every fine detail.

The framerate seems stable at 60fps at 4k, and while I’m sure some outlets might digest every frame and tell you different, you can be sure to 99.9% of gamers our naked eyes will see nothing other than well presented, raw speed.

There’s also well over 100 cars, I don’t mind admitting, I doubt I’ve seen them all as well. Some fan favourites return, but there’s some newcomers too, such as ATV’s and bikes which join the usual cars and monster trucks. Each vehicle differs slightly and while the handling rating doesn’t seem to relate accurately, you’ll otherwise get a good impression of a cars performance dependent on its stats, you can of course upgrade cars making them more powerful, but the real joy is experimenting, I found some feel almost uncontrollable when fully upgraded, while a less powerful car found it’s sweet spot between speed and handling thanks to the same upgrades.

One downside is the expected DLC, the first game had quite a lot of DLC which soon added up in value, while I wish a handful of additional cars (which likely handle similar to something already in the game), was only a few pounds, you’re likely to be paying close to that for just one or two vehicles, making the real benefit of DLC the additions to the track editor, but without patient friends to join you for single races, experiencing your own tracks just isn’t as much fun as what making your own tournament with custom tracks might have been.

Audio is another strong area, there’s enough atmospheric sound to help make locations feel alive, and cars all sound distinct, even though a few do sound very similar that’s probably more down to the standard racing style cars I preferred to use.

While the storyline within the career might not be the strongest, the voice acting is all pretty good and suits the overall presentation incredibly well. It’s clearly aimed more towards younger players, but it’s not as unbearable as having to sit through a kids TV show, but anyone who’s “accidentally” left CBBC on in the background, will know what to expect.

The final area we always cover is value and coming in at £44.99 (less than a tank of petrol), It’s very good value, without being great. If career mode was a little more accessible and there was some form of long-game with co-op or online play (such as custom championships or seasons) it could have been near perfect.

One familiar feeling with Hoth Wheels 2, is presentation and performance, it’s a thrilling and fun game to play and feels like one of the best arcade racers I’ve played in many years, adding in the track designer, custom liveries (which are considerably better than before) and some great quick play options, Hot Wheels 2 deserves to be on the podium with some of the greatest arcade racers.

The downside is that there’s not the longevity some similar games offer, so while Hoth Wheels 2: Turbocharged is rightfully speeding to the front of the pack, there’s no spare tire in the boot if you need some extra distance.

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