Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Review – A Respectable Lap

As a speed-focused arcade racer, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a joy thanks to the emphasis on going fast, collecting Hot Wheels cars spanning decades, and crafting your own tracks. However, it doesn’t quite have the variety of tracks to keep it fresh throughout, and the story mode is an innocuous affair, leading to middle-of-the-pack results instead of the checkered flag it was chasing.

While it may not be as technical as most racing sims or as silly as the Mario Kart series, Turbocharged doesn’t lack charm. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 drops you onto tracks in a backyard, on a golf course, and in other real-world locations that recreate the memories of a kid who could dream up their masterpiece track and then put it together wherever they’d like. The loop-de-loops and golf balls are accompanied by giant spiders and tight turns.

Speed is the focus, and races are fast, so you can do them just one more time. It is important to learn how to use your boost for standard races, obstacles races, bosses races, and my personal favorite, eliminations. You need the ability keep your lead as the cars get eliminated one by one until you are the last survivor.

You use your boost bar to do jumps and perform lateral dashes. Both are new in this sequel. The lateral dash can be used to smash into another car, and the jump can be performed mid-flight in order to bring your car back to the track. This adds to the chaos of racing. Drifting gives you a boost, but the mechanic for it is pretty simple and easy to master. The boost of each car can affect how you race. A car might only have three bars, which gives you three boosts. Another may give you an entire bar, allowing you to save and burn however much you want. 

Figuring out how much and often you can boost around tracks is essential; you may run into a situation where you can’t jump over an obstacle. It was fun to have a limited boost because I needed to be a bit more strategic with it. In more than one case, I was unable to get over a wall or boost right onto a track because I had overdone it. It was never a cheat, but it made me laugh. I also learned from the overexcitement. Holding a button will respawn you in those situations with just enough power to give you a second chance, but you’ll lose a few seconds. 

The game includes a story mode, Creature Rampage, but it’s mostly a throwaway Saturday morning cartoon affair. Creature Rampage’s premise is simple: Giant monsters are on the loose, and your job is to shrink them down and subdue them by racing, all while listening to jokes from a wisecracking robot, a professor who seems to do more harm than good with his gadgets, and a fellow racer. It’s like watching a fast-paced motion comic. The panels move around in a frantic manner. It’s all a bit forgettable, and I honestly couldn’t wait for the cutscenes to be over, but it doesn’t linger long enough to get in the way of the races and earning more coins, upgrades, and pieces to customize tracks. 

Story mode, which lasts about eight hours, encourages players to drive a wide variety of vehicles. The Hot Wheels aren’t just there to look cool; a Rip Rod in the drifter category takes corners like a dream, whereas a swift Mini Cooper is better suited for handling specific track terrain. It was fun to be pushed into using different cars for various scenarios. Types are important. I used a car unsuited for off-roading and couldn’t navigate dirt corners, encouraging me to explore new cars. As a result of that little nudge I started upgrading my vehicles to get different handling and boost benefits through the rewards system. And before I knew, I had completely redesigned my cars. 

The track locations for CreatureRampage, as well as other modes, could have used more variation. I find myself racing in the same places, with the same sounds, while looking at graphics sometimes that are reminiscent of a console from a previous generation. It isn’t enough to detract from the fun, but you see a lot of the dinosaur museum and golf course before the game is over. 

The fact that this is basically a play station on top of an actual racing game adds a lot to the experience. While the racing game is fast and exciting, it’s also very addictive to try to get more coins so you can buy more cars in your virtual garage. Hot Wheels cars have different rarity levels, and you can play to see them rotate out of a store on a set timer. If you happen to see the van that has toast coming out, it might be worth buying on impulse. You can also refresh what’s for sale with some coins. I couldn’t stop adding vehicles to my collection; the weirder, the better.

Track editor allows for even more customization. The track editor was easy to use and I only needed a few moments before creating brutal tracks. It’s definitely a feature that takes some time to fully grasp, but it’s so much fun to select, say, the museum track and start laying down obstacle after obstacle in a winding track of doom and despair. You can save community tracks that you’d like to return to. If you’re even a little bit creative or just like throwing stuff together like me, the track editor and car customization offer plenty of fun ways to get more mileage out of the game. 

Players can also take on others online in pretty standard fare like a quick race, rounding out the game’s features. Given the creativity present in other portions of the game, the online offerings feel downright vanilla, but it’s still a good time showing off your custom car. 

I can’t knock Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged for too much; it’s an enjoyable, arcade-like racer that feels like something you might find in the arcade. It captures what it’s like to be a kid imagining race courses for your toys and offers an almost overwhelming customizable playbox. The quick races and variety in modes never let anything become too dull before you’re on to the next objective, boosting your way to victory. I’m not a Hot Wheels diehard, but the sheer creativity, speed, and customization hooked me.