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Hot Wheels Infinite Rush from developer Milestone aims to strike a balance between faithfully recreating the beloved toy line in all its glory while also competing with the best arcade racers on the market.
The follow-up to Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged from 2023, Infinite Rush expands in big ways, smoothly pushing a staggering number of vehicles into specific types and letting them loose over sprawling open-world environments with an almost intimidating number of things to do.
Quietly a powerhouse series that boasts great arcade-racing bones, Infinite Rush might just be the entry that breaks it out of the niche and into something much bigger.
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Infinite Rush is a, well, rush for anyone who enjoyed the toy vehicles since the late ’60s.
Granted, everything looks good with the modern graphical horsepower driving the experience. It wouldn’t be a quality racing game without the stars of the show looking great. It’s almost a little eyebrow-raising at how much these on-screen toys look like the real thing, be it the attention to detail, the way they move, the decals, etc.
But the game goes beyond that, making sure that, over the course of four islands, it matches the heavyweight names of the genre in scope while also managing to feel like, frankly, a cared-for playset in a kid’s room.
Wheelswood is the expected cityscape with huge skyscrapers, floating blimps and the like. Tentacle Bay is a more nature-based romp that lives up to its name. Gearville is all about heavy machinery out in the desert. Drifty Temples goes a little cyberpunk with neon lights, cherry trees and temples, to name a few of the landmarks.
In all, it’s a brilliant backdrop with a rather stunning attention to detail, too. It’s loads of fun when the world plays with perspective, too, flipping players up into the sky on a track that has them looking below at the vast lands sweeping by at high speeds.
One important thing: It’s all fun.
At launch, there are four vehicle types:
- Versatile
- Speeder
- Drifeter
- Titan
Even younger audiences won’t need much help with the types. Versatile is balanced. Titan, all power. Speeder gets bonus boost charge. Drifter can breeze through corners at high speed.
It’s all in the name of earning that boost, of course. Each type earns boost in different ways, and those who can navigate the courses and the game-within-a-game that is boost management will win the races or top the challenges chart.
Players will take these through different game modes, including waypoint races, time attacks, elimination sprints and even a drift mode.
After Mario Kart mastered it, a free roam feels like a must for these types of games. It makes the cut here and offers a variety of different things to do such as seeking out stunts and collectibles, checkpoint races, photo snapping and quite a bit more.
It’s all-ages fun, really. A kid of almost any age can pick up a controller and let the imagination go wild. But there’s some notable skill-gap stuff and even depth in the creation department for the big (adult) kids who grew up with this stuff, too.
For those who want to seek out solo glory, there’s a small campaign here worth a look.
Players advance the campaign through certain portals that hold specific events. These loop in the different vehicle types and game modes and beating them progresses things.
The end goal won’t shock: Players will advance through each island by defeating “rush squads” and eventually the “rush master” at their own game.
Granted, there isn’t some must-see story here or a deep dive on a create-a-character thing that Lego brands could probably explore better. But there’s so much going on in these four maps and things are so consistently varied that it’s hard to complain. Same story for the expected perk system that lets players sprinkle a little of their own preferences onto the rides.
There’s a pretty solid, modern-feeling bit of online love going on here too. There are ranked lobbies and chill playlist modes with voting enabled for what comes next.
This online idea extends to customization, a must for a Hot Wheels game. Players can tweak fun things about their ride like boost sounds, a livery editor and even a track builder.
This is where a big bit of replayability comes from, as players can then engage with other players’ track creations in the world. It’s going to be a treat to see what some of the more creative elements in the scene come up with, keeping things fresh.
There’s already post-launch support mapped out, too, which will keep flushing new rides into the experience. And as a whole the game runs well and comes with the expected options in the menus, too.
Like Lego 2K Drive before it, Infinite Rush is not just a lazy IP effort content to do the usual stuff and call it a day.
Rather, Infinite Rush is a love letter to the toys themselves that will appeal to all ages, really. Perhaps most impressively, it’s quietly and simply one of the better arcade racers on the market outright.
While some series are bogged down in sliders and assists and dedicated parts analysis in million-dollar garage simulations, Infinite Rush hammers nostalgia and sheer fun buttons on repeat, impressively leaning into depth and online replayability that will keep it around with happy players for a long, long time.
