Hot Wheels Unleashed review: A robust, uneven drive through die-cast nostalgia

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  Take your favorite shout of “yeeeee-haw! ” and then miniaturize it. Welcome to Very hot Wheels Unleashed . [credit: Milestone S.r.l / Mattel ]

This week’s Hot Wheels Unleashed is one of the best video games ever made using licensed toy cars. To be fair, that specific concept isn’t necessarily common in gaming, but Codemasters’ legendary Micro Machines series holds a lot of water for a certain type of arcade-racing fan. That’s decent company to land in.

Yet while handsomely modeled toy cars and cute environments might look like the basis for newbie-friendly racing, it’s not the case here. In my week of testing the game ahead of its launch this week, I found that Warm Wheels Unleashed feels like a Micro Machines skin on top of the modern, hardcore-leaning Trackmania series. That’s not a bad thing—and I had a good-enough time with Let loose to write about it at Ars, as I think some people will really enjoy what’s going on here.

But you’ll have a better time with HWU going into this fully aware of its weird and tricky design decisions—along with quibbles about its in-game economy of cars and tracks.