HOT
WHEELS Infinite Rush
by developer and
publisher Milestone—Sony
PlayStation 5
review
written by Jim
with
a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes.
Who
hasn't played with Hot Wheels as a child? I know I did a lot. I may
not have gotten many new ones. Still, I have fond memories of going
over to my grandmother's house and playing with all the cars she had
on the rug, which I set up as a racetrack, or actually setting up the
orange tracks you could buy and racing two cars down them to see
which car was fastest! I never really got into the Hot Wheels video
games, even as they came out on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 and so
on. It wasn't until the PlayStation 4 game Hot Wheels Unleashed came
out that I played and really enjoyed both the first and second games.
Then I got the chance to review Hot
Wheels Let's Race: Ultimate Speed, and I wasn't a fan,
though it was by a new developer. Now Milestone, the original
developer of the two Hot Wheels Unleashed games, is back, and I was
hoping it would be as fun as the last two Hot Wheels games they made.
Infinite
Rush is more of an open-world game with four islands to explore once
you unlock them. You unlock them pretty quickly, and once you have
them all unlocked, you can play them in any order you want. Sadly,
the game doesn't really have a story. You are just dropped onto the
first island, given a tutorial, and away you go. The only info you
get is that you're trying to be the best racer, and to do that you
will have to do races and events to unlock a race with a rusher, a
leader of the island. Each island has four rushers. Once you beat a
rusher, you will win the car and unlock more races and events. The
objective of the game is to beat all rushers and become the best
racer! The gameplay can become repetitive, which might affect
long-term engagement for dedicated players.
What
makes this game unique is that there are four types of cars, each
with its own weaknesses and strengths, that you can switch to at any
time while driving around the map. The car types are versatile,
drifter, speeder, and titan. Versatile cars are good all-around cars
with average stats; drifters have good handling and make drifting
easier, hence the name; speeders have good speed but not as good
handling; and titans are slow but can have good acceleration and
handling, depending on the car. Every car in the game can boost; how
much boost depends on the car's stats, and each type of car gains
boost in different ways.
Versatile cars gain it by speed and
drifting; drifters gain it by drifting; speeders gain it by speed;
and titans gain it automatically, but if you deplete the boost, you
will overheat the car, and it will slow you down for a few seconds.
You can also gain a boost in races, as each race has a 3-second
countdown to the start. If you hit the gas as the number 2 shows, you
will gain some boost at the start of the race, depending on how close
to the 2 you press the gas, which will determine how much of the
boost gauge you will fill.
Aside from boosting, the cars can also
dash left or right. You can do tricks in the air when you go off
ramps by using the analog sticks to turn and flip the car. It can be
fun to do a big jump and see how many flips you can pull off. I
hardly used this, as it didn't really seem to do much, even when I
used it to try to smash my opponents. There is a good mix of
real-life cars, like my all-time favorite car, the Dodge Viper, and,
of course, there are lots of fun and funny Hot Wheels cars, like the
Duck n' Roll car that looks like a rubber duck with wheels!
Each
of the four islands has hidden things to find—10 stickers, 10 Hot
Wheels logos to jump through, and 300 small blue gears to find.
Finding the stickers and taking a photo of them in-game lets you
collect the sticker you can use in the livery editor; finding the
logos and gears unlocks new cars. Honestly, I didn't like looking for
the 300 gears. I did find them all, but once you get down to the last
few, it becomes very time-consuming, and I wasn't a huge fan of it
just to unlock a car. Aside from these hidden objects, there are also
activities you can compete in; each island has a handful of these,
like Tourist, where you need to take a photo of a landmark, like in
the first level of a giant gorilla on a skyscraper, and a lot of
times you will need to have a certain type of car in the view at the
same time. These honestly felt boring to me. Next is Stuntman, where
you get points for driving through destructible objects like trees
and fences. It's fun, but the scores it wants you to beat are easy to
achieve. There are drift stunts where you need to drift a certain
number of times before crossing the finish line in a time-trial-type
race. There are others too, but overall, it still felt lacking given
how few there are.
There
are different race types in the game, also, from normal races called
a quick race to time attack, and even some unique ones like Smashing
Wheels. This is where you have to drive wheels through to get points and make
it to the finish line with so many points to win; you race alone in
these. There are Drift Master races where you race alone like in
Smashing Wheels, but you get points for drifting, and you need to
finish the race with enough points to win. There are elimination
races where you need to stay out of last place so you aren't
eliminated. Lastly is waypoint, where you race alone again, but you
have to reach waypoints, go through them, and try to make it through
them all in time. You have to go through them in order, but you can
go any route you want. Each race has a type of car it wants you to
use, so you can't switch cars while racing.
As you
explore the island, sometimes a daredevil will pop up. If you get
close enough to them, you can start a race, and if you win the race,
you can win the car you just raced. I kind of like this; it reminds
me of older street racing games where you could race others for pink
slips. But there are only so many of these per island, and once you
beat them all, they keep showing up, but beating them again gets you
nothing. However, you can use any car you want to race them, and if
you lose, they will show up again later, so there is no worry.
After
beating enough races on an island, you will be able to race a rusher
who is a boss of the island. Winning these races gets you the car and
unlocks even more races and sometimes activities. Having to do this
four times on each of the four islands started to feel really
repetitive, since there didn't seem to be enough tracks or race
types, and I swear I played the same race on the same track multiple
times with only a slightly harder time to beat. Aside from the
difficulty setting, the main game has three different levels (1-3),
and you start by doing level 1 races. As you progress on the island,
you will unlock harder races, but even when I turned the difficulty
level to hard, even the level 3 races were not that hard, with only a
few of them where I needed to redo a race.
Every
island has its own shop where you can use rush coins you get by
winning races, doing enough tricks like flips, drifting, boosting,
getting near misses, or even destroying things. Shops offer new cars,
boost effects like the color of the flame coming out of your car, and
dashes that seem to change only the dash sound effect. I didn't see
any difference beyond that.
As you
play, you will be able to unlock upgrades for your cars. Upgrades can
add stats like boosts, handling, and more, or do other things like
make your dash stronger. Upgrade levels range from the lowest C to
the highest S. Once unlocked, you can equip one boost per level, and
you can swap them out since they aren't permanent.
A
handful of creative tools let you customize things. You can make your
own stickers to add to your cars, use a livery editor to change the
livery of any car you have, and, lastly, a track builder that lets
you build your own track. I didn't really understand how to use it,
even though the game tried to tell me what to do, but after some
tinkering around, I was able to build my own track. I was never a fan
of these types of things, but I do like seeing what other people
create, and I can see some really cool tracks being made with this
track builder once the game releases.
Hot
Wheels has both split-screen up to four players and online play
races. I wasn't able to play online as of this writing; the game
hasn't been released so that I couldn't find any other racers. I do
like that they added split-screen, though it's getting rare to see
this in games today.
Graphically,
the game has a lot going on, like traffic when driving around the
maps and giant set pieces, like a giant scorpion that spits green
stuff onto the ground that will slow you down. The world, and a lot
of the buildings and foliage, look like plastic; even the trees you
can run into and destroy almost look like Legos or something. These cars are Hot Wheels, I think it fits very well. The
graphics aren't groundbreaking, but they aren't bad either. I have no
complaints about how the game looks.
The
sound design is also very well done; each car seems to have its own
engine sound. I even had a futuristic car with a really cool,
sci-fi-sounding engine. Hitting trees, rocks, and other things sounds
like hitting plastic and Legos, which is cool, almost like the whole
game might be in the imagination of a child. I did run into a few
sound glitches, though: one time the engine sound never stopped, and
another time it sounded like I was still driving over a puddle of
water when I wasn't. These only happened a few times, so it seemed
rare. Music in the game is hit and miss. I didn't really care for the
music in most of the levels, except for the island called Gearville,
where the tracks were more rock-type music. There was one other song
from one of the other islands that sounded a little like Daft Punk,
but honestly, you could turn off the music and play Spotify, and it
would be just as good, if not better. I did run into a glitch on the
last island only, where the music would stop and not start playing
again unless I changed islands and came back.
Overall,
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is fun at first, but after you play it for a
while, it gets very repetitive. I could see this game appealing to
younger kids around 10-13 years old, as it's good, clean fun, but for
adults or older teens, I don't see enough new content after you beat
each of the first rushers. It's a rather easy game even on the
highest difficulty. It's not a bad game; I did enjoy it at first. It
just gets boring after a few hours, and don't get me started on
finding the 300 gears on each island! 1200 gears is way too many! I
can't wait to see what players make with the track builder, though.
Hopefully, there will be some cool new tracks to try out in the
future.
Score:
6.5 / 10
