Giving the modern Hot Wheels racing series a radical, Burnout Paradise-inspired overhaul sounds like a pretty fabulous idea, but Hot Wheels Infinite Rush has sacrificed far too much of what made developer Milestone's initial pair of Hot Wheels Unleashed games so eye-catching and special. Infinite Rush's four modestly sized maps weave familiar bits and pieces of plastic track through unmemorable landscapes and basic city blocks, lacking the scope and spectacle of the Unleashed series' life-sized skate parks and neon arcades. While the racing is functional, Infinite Rush is disappointingly basic and bland compared to its predecessors, making it difficult to recommend.
Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is instantly recognizable as a Milestone Hot Wheels game due to its photorealistic car models. The surfaces of every model gleam with authenticity, a detail that remains impressive. However, these cars no longer appear to accumulate wear and tear as they did in Milestone's earlier games. The scratches, scuffs, and kerb rash that built up on cars in the Unleashed games contributed significantly to their credibility, making them feel like play-worn toys. In contrast, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush feels glossy and consequence-free, a disappointing step back.
Sister from Another Blister
Approximately one-third of the roughly 150-car roster appears to be new, a welcome addition given the vast history of Hot Wheels castings. The garage, however, is heavily weighted towards new and recent models, with woefully underrepresented selections from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. While older players may not be the primary audience, the balance feels off, prioritizing cars currently in shops over a broader representation of the toy line's past. The game also omits the pop culture cars that were fixtures in the Unleashed games, a notable absence.
Infinite Rush uses a four-class system: Versatile, Speeder, Drifter, and Titan. Titans have long boost meters but suffer a speed penalty when the boost depletes. Versatile racers have a drift bar that cannot be stopped once initiated, making them ill-suited for urban, grid-like sections of the maps. Drifters are the easiest to handle for arcade racing, though other classes sometimes feel less satisfying to drift, with instances where driving straight is faster than sliding into a corner.
Toyz N the Hood
The most significant issue with Infinite Rush is how generic its open-world approach makes it feel. Instead of a single large map, there are four separate, modestly sized islands: Wheelswood (commercial downtown), Tentacle Bay (city with countryside), Gearville (desert industrial), and Drifty Temples (East Asian inspired). While there are moments of imagination, such as a Hot Wheels Mount Rushmore, the environments generally fail to capture attention. They lack the sense of scale found in the Unleashed games, where players raced through half-built skyscrapers or stared up at enormous arcade cabinets. These maps feel neither like believable dioramas nor real places.
The maps are bland, with players driving back and forth to complete a typical range of event types. The tracks are less interesting, unable to utilize their surroundings as effectively as in the Unleashed games, which featured races across furniture or through air vents. Many side activities, such as photograph challenges or checkpoint collections, feel like busywork, especially since traffic does not impede progress.
There was potential to transition to an open world without sacrificing the sense of scale. Had maps been built on beaches or within toy store foyers, or featured household objects as architecture, they might have had more impact. 2023's LEGO 2K Drive, which has since been delisted, approached this concept more effectively.
This shift in map design is particularly disappointing given improvements elsewhere. Infinite Rush now includes four-player splitscreen, which would have been excellent on the more imaginative Unleashed maps. The ability for AI to race on custom tracks is also a welcome addition, as is the new wheel customization option, appealing to fans of building dioramas and swapping car parts.
Verdict
Reinventing Milestone's Hot Wheels racing series in an open-world format sounded promising, and Hot Wheels Infinite Rush's racing remains robust and approachable with difficulty levels for beginners and experts. There is a generous amount of activities and a vast collection of photorealistic Hot Wheels models. Powerful customization tools for creating tracks and cars also add significant lasting value. However, Infinite Rush has lost much of its charm and character in the transition to an open world. With unmemorable pre-built tracks and bland maps that lack the sense of scale found in the life-sized, real-world environments of the Unleashed games, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush has sadly shed a ton of the series' special personality.