Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, a Playground for the Iconic Toy Cars - Review

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is just the latest title to bring the automotive models to the forefront (the third, to be more precise), born from Milestone's collaboration with Mattel. A gamble that, let us say, was largely won already with the Unleashed series: video games capable of making us "feel like kids again" and speed along exquisitely plastic tracks.

After all, the guys at Milestone have shown us they can also create purely arcade racers, where physics are considered optional, where anyone can have fun without being (for obvious reasons) driving prodigies. And Hot Wheels Infinite Rush hits the accelerator, propelling us into four magnificent open-world scenarios where we can dart, drift, and perform stunts (almost) worthy of a Tony Hawk Skateboarding.

After spending many, many hours (and perhaps breaking a sweat or two given the summer season), we can confirm that Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is a fun and challenging arcade racer, with plenty of side activities and cars to collect (complete with blister packs, of course).

However, the risk with an open-world title (which in some respects might resemble Forza Horizon) is repetitiveness, which, alas, is clearly noticeable in Hot Wheels Infinite Rush. It's not a flaw, let's be clear, but we believe the title was a bit too overstuffed, and a more contained longevity (as far as the "story mode" is concerned) certainly wouldn't have hurt.

Exploration is Just the Beginning

Before starting to race right and left through the streets of Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, we'll need to get familiar with the essential controls, which are similar to those of the Unleashed series: controller triggers for accelerating and braking (and the adaptive triggers of PS5 are a treat), the right analog stick for steering, and a button to activate NOS, although older players like this writer would say "turbo." Of course, how could we forget, at any moment we can drift to tackle corners without losing speed and recharge our boost.

Clearly, using boost will give us a strategic advantage and allow us to overtake opponents, but it will also help us extend our lead on straightaways. And it doesn't end there: being toy car drivers, and thus inherently lighter than authentic vehicles, we can perform a side dash that allows us to quickly move left and right. The utility is clear: we can dodge obstacles at the last moment without losing speed or, to be as mean or cunning as possible, push opponents off the track (what won't you do to win?).

At this point, we are truly ready to hit the track, a circuit that is nothing more than a vast, fully explorable map, with ramps, straightaways, "loop-the-loops," and buildings all to admire. At first glance, you'll be captivated by the "toy-like" realization of the game world, characterized by plastic trees and billboards. Imagine it as if our "inner child" had created four enormous dioramas all to discover: and then, what's more? The cars will never be damaged, even when performing various pirouettes by launching themselves from a specially designed height.

In any case, in our garage, we'll showcase a car collection that would make the greatest collectors envious, each divided by class: versatile (balanced and suitable for any situation), drifter (specialized for corners), speeder (for heart-pounding speed), and titan (colossal cars with powerful boost). As you can imagine, each category has its strengths and weaknesses: for example, speeders recharge turbo by going faster and faster but are more "clumsy" when drifting, while titans provide decent stability on the track but overheat too much if you overuse boost, leaving you stranded for a few moments.

The class division is a strong point of any arcade racer; think of the most recent Kart Games where vehicle class dominates the entire experience. Well, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush was designed for dynamic type switching during explorations: with a simple button press, you can open a dynamic menu and quickly choose the most suitable car for a given challenge or activity. This trick keeps the pace high and, needless to say, lets us drive the cars we've set as default in the garage.

Become a True Rush Master!

Once exploration begins, you come face to face with the first challenges, those that bring you closer to the dream of becoming a Rush Master, the strongest racers on the four islands of Hot Wheels Infinite Rush. The actual challenges involve reaching the podium (preferably first place) in a quick race or being the "last one on the track" in a timed elimination challenge. Not only that, fame points can also be earned in collateral competitions such as achieving a certain score with drifts or hitting all targets for an incredible score.

Once you've reached a certain score, an indicator will tell you when you can challenge one of the local Rush Masters, a unique race on an incredibly detailed circuit with a few extra obstacles and involving almost the entire island. The challenges with the Masters are really long to unlock, as the required prerequisites (apart from the first set at 5) will demand a good deal of commitment from the player, who will have to move from one part of the map to another to earn fame points.

Let's not forget that the various islands of Hot Wheels Infinite Rush delight us with different activities, primarily the Rush Counter. This is an indicator that will keep track of all the stunts and spectacular actions we perform, rewarding us with hard cash to use for purchasing new vehicles at the dealership and cosmetic modifications. And while performing a breathtaking pirouette, we might also snatch a Hot Wheels logo (10 per island) and a good 300 gears. And, for the romantics, there are also checkpoints where you can take stunning photos.

The places we visit have been crafted with love, let's admit it, ranging from New York-style skyscrapers (complete with a "King Kong" ready to throw some boulders at us) to Japanese streets full of torii and exotic dragons. Let's be frank: the time spent steering and racing through the various locations was enlightening and enjoyable.

And don't think it's over yet: every now and then, a car will appear to challenge, leading to what's called a Daredevil. Once we've outclassed the unsuspecting car in a checkpoint race, the car will rightfully enter our garage. And as it should be, each car can be upgraded with appropriate enhancements that will gradually unlock after beating the Rush Masters. These abilities (up to a maximum of four) will grant us various advantages, although the most impactful ones come with an extreme drawback: "you'll be faster but the boost will recharge more slowly," just to give you an example. This is essentially a trick that makes the arcade formula as close as possible to an RPG, allowing the player to choose whether or not to use the abilities with complete autonomy.

Last but not least are the map activities, races where you have to beat records to get medals, rewards, and compete with the whole world (and the most competitive players will be happy). We could mention Stunt Drift, where you'll be called to steer as much as possible to reach the finish line faster, or a mission where you'll have to deliver a vehicle to the dealership as quickly as possible. In short, as you may have guessed, variety is certainly not lacking in Hot Wheels Infinite Rush.

Between Tradition and a Hint of Repetitiveness

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is a delightful title that incredibly well implements all the functionalities of the PlayStation 5's DualSense (just like Screamer did). Even in terms of console optimization, there's little to complain about, apart from a few too many loading screens, especially during transitions between a race and returning to the map.

The activities offered by the game are interesting and conservative in some ways, but after about 10 hours, a slight repetitiveness in the activities will start to be felt. Reaching the maximum fame points indicator requires a lot of dedication, and the races (or activities) to compete in are far too many, making the title less immediate to enjoy. And if you multiply this by four maps (since each zone has a separate indicator), it's as if you had to play four standalone story campaigns on circuits that will inevitably be redundant, however fascinating.

In this case, a more contained campaign duration would have benefited the title, also considering the online modes and the interesting livery editors for the cars (and this time you can also modify the wheels) and the track builder. The latter will, once again, allow us to create our own tracks to share with the community. Imagine how many tracks we can try out and discover the genius of each individual player, truly in the spirit of Hot Wheels models.

For the rest, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is an experience not to be missed, a fun and immediate arcade suitable for all ages thanks to its various difficulty levels. We jumped into "difficult" and can tell you without hesitation that the challenge was there, even if sometimes we found the CPU a bit unbalanced on some tracks even at lower difficulties.