Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged adds more freedom, as well as frustrations

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SHOULD I PLAY HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2: TURBOCHARGED?

This is a great choice if you’re looking for some low-stakes, pick-up-and-play racing action, very much the way playing with Hot Wheels toys felt as a kid. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged addresses many of the issues with the first game, and while it introduces some new frustrations of its own, it’s generally a ton of fun whether you’re playing solo, in split-screen, or in online multiplayer.

TIME PLAYED

I played three hours of Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, most of which I spent in the lighthearted story mode. The city is under attack by several giant toy monsters the professor may be responsible for unleashing, and so it’s up to the Hot Wheels gang to get on the road with an experimental shrink ray and...beat them all in miniature races. Yeah, I wasn’t sure about the underlying logic here either, but as long as my job was to drive little toy cars very, very fast, I wasn’t going to complain too much.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2: TURBOCHARGED?

• Ludicrous, high-speed tracks. The circuits and courses in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged are spectacular, with plastic track twisting and loop-de-looping through arcades, backyards, diners, and more. Periodically I ran into courses that had annoying jumps or transitions that I felt were borderline unfair—in some cases, there was no way for me to anticipate the trajectory I needed ahead of time, and so I just had to fail it and start over. Overall, though, I had a blast with them, particularly on the courses in which I could take alternate routes by hitting a repulsor pad and magnetizing to a track floating overhead, or splitting off at a Y-junction.

• The Hot Wheels models look fantastic. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged brings to life another lovingly detailed set of Hot Wheels miniatures. I used my Magic Eight-ball “Roger Dodger” hot rod for courses that demanded a lot of drift control, while I favored the Power Pro model with the huge plastic spoiler in straight-up races thanks to its balance of braking, handling, and acceleration. Each car I bought or earned could be upgraded through several tiers that each added new unlockable buffs. More importantly, in my book anyway, is the fact that they looked so spot-on accurate to the die-cast toy cars I remember from childhood. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged isn’t limited to cars either: I could always choose from monster trucks and motorcycles each time I started a quick event or campaign race.

• Nice variety of event types. Everything I did in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged involved racing, naturally, but there were some fun variations on this. In Elimination, the goal is to stay out of last place or be eliminated one by one. In Landmark, I’d drive around in free-roam mode on one of the large maps to find the next checkpoint. There were the standard races and time-attack modes, plus “boss battle” courses in which I had to hit boss life tokens on the track in order to damage a giant octopus or ape mech.

• Powerful track editor and community sharing tools. I wasn’t in danger of running out of track in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, since it comes with a fully-featured track editor. I only experimented with this a bit, but I found that I could twist and bend track segments to my heart’s content, adding camber to turns or sending the course swooping straight down over a countertop or through a set of chair legs. If I didn’t feel like designing my own circuit, I could always just download one someone else made, and the player community has already been busy creating new courses, so there’s plenty to choose from.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2: TURBOCHARGED?

• Tracks can sometimes feel too chaotic. As I mentioned above, there were times when I felt there was no way to prepare for a gap or obstacle; I just had to run into it and then know it was there on my next lap or attempt at the course. This made a few levels more frustrating than they should have been, but none of the races take more than a couple of minutes to complete, so I never felt like it was wasting a lot of my time.

• The boost feels a bit wooden. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged was primarily about managing my car’s boost meter: I’d build it up by drifting around corners and then use it up on straightaways to blast by my opponents. Braking and drifting is delightfully sensitive and nuanced; I found I had to do a lot of feathering the brake with the left trigger to get corners right. The boost itself, on the other hand, felt a bit too much like a toggle switch—on or off.

• Not as casual a racing experience as you might expect. This might actually be a positive for many players, but I think a lot of people will look at Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged and think it’s a good game for younger kids. This is a surprisingly challenging game, it turns out! I had to restart quite a few events, often over minor mistakes I made toward the very end of a race. I play racing games pretty frequently, so this was a bit of a shock—just be warned if you’re considering buying this for a child or someone who doesn’t usually play racing games.

💬 Are you going to be revving your engines at the starting line in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, or are you planning on letting this one go whizzing by? Did you have a favorite Hot Wheels car as a kid? Let me know in the comments!