Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Review (Switch)

Hot Wheels, man. We remember those. In the '90s almost every Saturday morning ad break featured a Hot Wheels commercial braying out superlative adjectives over thrashy rock solos. Invariably, two pearly-toothed, spiky-haired kids would grin as their miniature cars jostled for pole position, giving each other a thumbs-up after a totally tubular crash. All we ever wanted was a simple orange loop — because the loop was the coolest gravity-defying thing ever — but we never got one because the Super Nintendo was a life priority. We did manage to try one once, though, and pinged that car down the straight at full speed, ripping up the lip, only for it to soar off and go clattering across the ground. While you can still spectacularly succumb to gravity in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, if you blast the accelerator for all its worth you’ll coast that loop through an elating 360 degrees.

Here, the world of collectible racing cars has been virtually recreated in a splendidly inventive fashion. What’s striking about Unleashed 2 is the creativity that’s been put into its various modes, featuring clever ideas that don't just lean on existing tropes, but dig into the fascinating meta of miniature racing within giant, real-world environments.

If you remember the Micro Machines games of the 16-Bit era, Hot Wheels’ similarity can’t be overstated. Where Micro Machines (also a line of collectible toy cars) utilised the abstract notion of racing between pool balls, coffee mugs, and across precariously placed rulers in top-down 2D, Hot Wheels traffics the idea into three glorious dimensions, its iconic plastic track winding through museums, arcade centres, and back yards.

Single player offers plenty of modes, with the main campaign pitting you against 12 opponents across a variety of courses littered with bouncy balls and other random impediments. Each car you choose has simple pros and cons and sports impressively varied handling physics. While the vehicle selection is initially limited, by earning points you can steadily unlock and acquire a whopping 130 different additions, now including motorbikes, ATVs, and muscly Bigfoot monster trucks.

New to Turbocharged is the skill system, offering simplified car tuning benefits, allowing you to get your favourites up to spec for online tussles. As in the previous entry, licensed cars are present and not locked behind DLC paywalls. We got Back to the Future’s DeLorean after only a short time finishing campaign races at a cost of just 5000 points. The Turtles van, though, seemingly sits further away. Certain vehicles have treasure and rarity statuses, and can only be purchased when they make a lucky virtual shop appearance.

The basics of the game are to win races by being first to the finish line or achieve goals around specified tasks. This sequel to 2021's Hot Wheels Unleashed features five all-new environments that employ clever makeshift physical junctures beyond the set track. The mini-golf course and its Wild West-themed wooden tributaries is particularly excellent. You navigate obstacles like giant, web-spitting spiders, while hitting speed pods and ramps, refilling a generous boost meter through driving and drifting, and then using that boost to gain a lead.

New to the mix is a jump mechanic that goes off with a burst of flame, enabling you to engage nifty shortcuts and cross massive do-or-die gaps in the road; and a new shunt feature known as the ‘lateral dash’, allowing you to aggressively barge opponents to your side and make last minute dodges. It works well, feels good, and the vehicle physics respond differently depending on weight, attributes, and nature of the terrain, be it hard plastic, dirt, or grass. When you get comfortable with the car of your choice and learn where to bite the corners, drifting comes easily and feels rewarding. Should you get knocked from the beaten track, you need to hit the shoulder button for a re-spawn, which takes a several penalising seconds. There was one sole occasion, however, when the game got confused and didn’t give us the re-spawn prompt for a prolonged period, killing the time trial. Hopefully this is patched out and doesn’t present too often.

Racing the AI on Normal difficulty provides a fun experience for one or two players locally, and the new story-driven campaign, Creature Rampage, features five boss battles hedged between a long series of racing trials on an over-world map. Threaded with cartoon interludes, it’s aimed at the younger crowd, but, while easy to complete, still offers a fun, lighthearted training experience that ensures learn the ropes.

It’s largely the other aspects and modes, however, that make Turbocharged really attractive. The course builder is an incredibly creative time sink, gifting you more tools, colour options, and obstacles than the previous game. You select an environment in which to build your track, and then get swallowed by experimentation. It definitely captures the childlike appeal of building a bedroom racecourse in an elaborate way, creating multi-loop chicanes and nigh-on impossible, plummeting leaps. And, while not entirely intuitive at first, it becomes grossly addictive once you’re familiar with the builder toolset. When your masterpiece is done, you can upload your track for others to enjoy in the online arena.

Developer Milestone really listened to the criticisms of the previous entry, and went to town, filling the tank to near-capacity with new events and challenges. There's the self-explanatory Quick Race, for jump-straight-in fun; Elimination, a furiously fun race where the last trailing car is detonated out of existence at set timer intervals; Drift Master, where drifting like a beast is required to avoid cruelly implemented obstacles; and Waypoints, which discards the track entirely to send you under cupboards and down escalators, chasing checkpoints for the best possible time. Only Time Attack has no online presence, simply allowing you to get your best track times up on the leaderboards; while Grab the Gears, involving liberal use of your lateral dash to ping race-extending crates, and Clash Derby, where crashing means points, are limited to online only.

There’s a lot crammed in, capitalising on the groundwork of its predecessor to improve what was already a fun premise. That said, while a well-equipped and smartly produced sequel that well serves arcade racing fans, there are a few disappointments. Graphically, the Switch just can’t roll with the more powerful consoles, and while it looks pretty good, still suffers from a prominent visual smudging. These texture cutbacks are more obvious in handheld, as you can see in our screenshots, but even docked there’s a gulf if you put it side-by-side with, say, the PS4 version.

Additionally, while there’s a graphical mode that supposedly increases visual clarity with no loss of performance, the game drops frames even in the earliest of races. It’s not a problem in a one-player Waypoint time-attack where it’s only you against the clock, but as soon as there are multiple vehicles in the immediate vicinity coupled with a turn that brings big environmental effects into view, you will spot the odd chug. It's no game-breaker, but it's there.

Regarding online, the Switch is the only one among seven online platforms excluded from Cross Play, which is kind of a bummer, especially when considering how many track builder creations will be unavailable to Nintendo players. This, coupled with the visual downgrade, makes this feel slightly less the experience that others will enjoy, like they got the Hot Wheels deluxe set and you got the one that was on sale. The Switch, relatively speaking, is old hardware now, but when we take into account the crispness of Mario Kart 8, we wonder if more optimisation wasn't possible.