What started as a model-car toy line has grown into a massive multimedia franchise in Hot Wheels. I went through a Hot Wheels phase myself, but besides the toys, games are another constant in the franchise. To this day, the game output is strong, from full-fledged racing games to collaborations with Forza Horizon. While the toys don’t appeal to me as much, the games have always held my interest, even from afar. It’s why I was interested in the latest game, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush.
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush comes from the developers from Milestone, and in it, you explore up to four islands full of races and other challenges. There are also four distinct vehicle classes that you’ll have to master if you want to win each race. Plus, you can collect over 150 vehicles. There is a good amount to do in this game, but how is it overall? Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is fun enough, especially when you finally get your favorite car and start driving around. Sadly, repetitive content and technical issues keep it from being great.
Playing With Hot Wheels Again
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is an open-world racing game, and right off the bat, you can start driving and learn the basic controls. You have buttons for accelerating, braking, reversing, boosting, and dashing. These are the basics for most racing games, but here they lean more toward an arcade feel. While they are standard, the controls work well and can be pretty fun. I’m not the best at racing games, but I enjoy them, and this game was quick to grasp and easy to play. The gameplay really shines in how different the cars can be.
You can choose from four vehicle classes: Versatile, Speeder, Drifter, and Titan. Versatile is what it sounds like—a car that balances speed, power, and handling. Speeders prioritize speed and charge their boost at high speeds. Drifters prioritize handling and maintain their speed while drifting, which is also how they charge their boost. Titans focus on raw power and constantly charge their boost, but they’re also the slowest when they run out. Each vehicle class has strengths and weaknesses, and each race you do focuses on one, so be prepared to learn them all.
So what are you doing with these cars? Well, racing, of course. You can race across all the islands, and there are different kinds of races too. There are standard races where the goal is to finish first. You can also play time attack races, along with ones centered around checkpoints and obstacles. Some races also prioritize a high score, either by playing well or crashing into objects. There are also last stand races, where you race against a timer that eliminates the lowest-placed racer when it runs out. On paper, this variety sounds nice and pretty fun, but sadly it’s also where one of my criticisms starts to form.
Despite the high number of races and race types, they all start to feel very repetitive. Once you’ve done a few races, you’ve practically seen them all, and it starts to get boring when the new race you unlock has no real difference from the previous one. This is also how I feel about the different race types; none feel particularly fleshed out and just feel like a way to try and get another use out of the same track. Last stand races suffer the most here; they are just drawn-out regular races that have me begging for the clock to show up. The core game is pretty fun, but I wish there was more variety in the races.
When you aren’t racing, you’re exploring the islands. There are four islands, and in order to unlock them all, you’ll have to do races and build fame. You unlock more races by finishing races that offer fame. When your fame gets high enough, you’ll be able to challenge a rusher. Each island has a rush squad full of three rushers and a rush master. They offer a nice challenge and can even give you their car when you beat them. When you beat the first rusher on an island, you’ll unlock the next one. It won’t take you long to get all the islands, but getting to the rush master will definitely take up your afternoon.
What’s more, each island has different activities. When exploring the island, you’ll find different challenges that can vary from maintaining a high speed across checkpoints, taking no damage while driving, and taking photos, to name a few. Different collectibles are also spread across each island, and I had fun tracking them down. I was impressed by the variety of challenges across the islands and went out of my way to fully explore them to track more down. My favorite collectibles were the cars themselves.
There are over 150 Hot Wheels to collect, and they are a delight to get. You can get them from different races and challenges or you can simply buy them. There are even special cars on each island called Daredevils, and you can only get these by tracking them down and beating them in a race. The highest praise I can give this game is how invested I got in getting more cars. I remember starting a race, seeing an Audi Sport Quattro 1984, and immediately saying, “Man, I want that car right now.” When I got back to the island, I found it, realized it was a Daredevil car, and stopped everything to track it down and beat it in a race. Nothing was more satisfying than finally getting that car, and I went on to do that a couple more times. With so many cars, you’re bound to find a favorite, and probably do the same thing I did.
Some Problems Under the Hood
While I have been having fun with it, a few things are holding Hot Wheels Infinite Rush back. While there is a lot to do, the islands are pretty small in scope. It won’t take long to drive around them, and visually they aren’t that impressive. While I like the ideas behind the locations, since they’re all Hot Wheels playsets, they don’t do much with them. These locations don’t feel like toys; they feel empty even with all the cars driving around. It doesn’t help that the visuals and music aren’t impressive either, which really brings all the worlds down.
The game also has technical issues that really hurt it. I played on the Nintendo Switch 2, and while a majority of my playthrough was fine, it still had some hiccups. One issue I have right now is with the load times. When you launch the game, it can take a while before you can actually start playing. On top of that, each race requires loading to start it and to get back to the overworld. Each load screen averaged around 30 seconds, which isn’t bad, but when you are trying to do a lot of races, it adds up. It gets a bit tedious to launch the race, wait, finish it fairly quickly, wait again, then launch another race and repeat.
I also ran into some odd bugs and crashes. At one point, my game froze, and after a couple of minutes, I had to restart it. The game also crashed twice when I started a race. While these didn’t happen often, they were starting to hurt my time in the game, especially when you combine that with the load times. I had to restart the game twice in one night, and I was ready to give up for the night if it happened once more. On their own, these issues aren’t a big deal. However, when combining these issues into a single play session, it hurts the game a little, which is a shame because it can be pretty fun.
Putting the Toys Away
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is a fun game, but a couple of issues hold it back. The core racing gameplay is fun even if it’s fairly standard. Races can still be a good time, especially with the different vehicle classes. While the races offer little variety, the island activities are pretty fun. My highest praise has to go to the cars themselves, with so many you’ll have a favorite.
Sadly, there are some issues I just can’t look past. From the lackluster worlds and visuals to some odd bugs and tedious load times. Still, some of these issues can be fixed, and the game is fun. For those who want a simple racing game to hold you over, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush will easily fill that. Just know you’ll probably run into a couple of issues before patches fix it up.
Disclaimer: Milestone and Mattel provided a Nintendo Switch 2 key of Hot Wheels Infinite Rush for review purposes.
