Hot Wheels games from the ’90s and noughties weren’t up to much, simply being casual racers with a handful of recognisable vehicles to justify use of the licence, and a forgiving difficulty level to keep the younger audience content. Then, in 2021, along came Milestone with Hot Wheels Unleashed, a racer that made good on the concept of outlandish track layouts and supercharged, physics-defying vehicles. By raising the bar, it appealed to a far wider audience.
Milestone is seemingly looking to cast its net even further with Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, which takes the open-world approach while retaining the course designer from Unleashed, along with a catalogue of Hot Wheels cars to populate. By being open-world, it not only invites comparisons with the Forza Horizon series, but also with 2008’s Burnout Paradise, seeing you roam around while taking on bite-sized challenges and gathering various collectables before a rival makes themselves known, ready for a higher-stakes one-on-one race.
The term ‘open world’ is a little disingenuous, mind. Infinite Rush is set over four gradually unlocking islands, each requiring a trip to an airfield to revisit, preventing spontaneous island hopping. They’re modest in size and toyetic in design, each with a large set-piece taking centre stage, be it a colossal gorilla astride a skyscraper or an octopus with thrashing tentacles. Each is also plastered with plastic tracks to navigate, some of which have magnetic undersides, allowing for racecourses with upside-down sections. Once you’ve gained enough XP by clearing challenges, with special attention going into the tougher one-on-one daredevil races, the next island unlocks – with each offering around 2–3 hours of busywork, along with a car showroom filled with region-exclusive vehicles to purchase using in-game currency.
Vehicles are split into four types (Versatile, Drifter, Speeder, and Titan) with one of each available from the outset, ensuring everything is accessible. On that note, Infinite Rush is very easy to get into, luring you in with its bright and inviting visuals and generally lax difficulty. Vehicle handling is forgiving, making landing airborne tricks a breeze, and the boost gauge swiftly refills. Even during tight circuit races, going out of bounds isn’t an issue – it’s surprisingly lenient about that, in fact.
As there’s a wide range of cars – from sleek sporty types to more fantastical creations, dragon wings and all – you’re bound to find a favourite. They can be customised with liveries, special boost effects, engine modifiers, and stickers – with the sticker editor from Unleashed 2 making the jump. Unleashed 2’s simplified track designer returns here too, adding a welcome sense of familiarity. Tracks can be placed on unlocked islands and shared after verification, with a vast number of set-pieces and unique track components to place. Hop online, and you’ll find the community island where you can peruse tracks other players have created.
There’s a respectable amount of variety within the challenge types, helping to fend off tedium. In addition to the usual assortment of elimination, checkpoint, and drift-based races, there are also destruction, stunt, and delivery challenges. Not all of these feel substantial, sadly. Destruction challenges are set in small circular areas, merely involving boosting around recklessly while toppling chunky toy-like bushes, trees, and lampposts. It’s difficult not to gain a gold medal on your first try. Photo challenges are a breeze too, as whatever you need to snap will always be close to the mission starting point. Activate photo mode, spin the camera around for a clear view, select the correct vehicle type, and you’re done. Finding stickers is likewise effortless, as they are usually plastered on the sides of buildings – complete with an indicator on the HUD to inform you if you’re nearby. Arguably, the biggest challenge comes not from racing, but rather from finding all 300 gear icons scattered around each island.
There is another layer to Infinite Rush; one that isn’t immediately obvious. A secondary hub menu allows access to quick races of varying difficulty – including waypoint, time attack, and elimination modes – with some offering four-player local split-screen. All of these instantly accessible modes help flesh out the package, justifying its £44.99 price point, even if some of them are very similar to what we saw in Unleashed 1 and 2. It’s worth noting, however, that the Switch 2 version lacks cross-play and limits the number of competitors per race to six.
Milestone’s expertise and familiarity with the Hot Wheels licence lend Infinite Rush an air of confidence and gusto. While it doesn’t take long to unlock all four islands, there’s quite a bit to see and do in each. The only major issue is that most of the challenges fall into the ‘bite-sized’ category, feeling a bit underwhelming and throwaway as a result. Indeed, if you’ve put hours into the more recent Forza Horizon games, you will likely see this as an inefficient substitute due to being far smaller in scale overall. Taken as a follow-up to the Unleashed series, though, it’s a pretty smart evolution and easily the best use of the licence to date.
Milestone’s Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is out 10th Sept on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC.