Review — Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed

Complete Racing Camp and become the ultimate champion in Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed.

Anyone with young children at home will probably have come across a Hot Wheels car at some point. These metal toy cars remain hugely popular with young children and older collectors, whether for nostalgic reasons or not. In 2021, Milestone released Hot Wheels Unleashed, a fantastic digital interpretation of the toy cars, followed by a sequel. However, the gameplay was clearly less focused on younger gamers. GameMill Entertainment is now changing this with Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed.

Like Outright Games, this publisher focuses on a younger audience, often presenting us with child-friendly games based on popular franchises. Last year, they released Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem, and for their latest Hot Wheels game, they drew inspiration from the popular Netflix series Hot Wheels: Let’s Race, now in its third season. From a marketing point of view, this is a smart move as it allows them to capitalise on the series’ success. And kids will love going on adventures with Coop, Axle, Spark, Mac, Brights and Cruise. However, if you’re expecting a game like Hot Wheels Unleashed, you’ll be disappointed. Read on to find out if Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed is worth it for your kids.

Familiar Formula

The game offers young racers a number of modes to explore, with Racing Camp probably being the main attraction. In this mode, you complete twelve races as one of the six main characters, occasionally encountering narrative elements and boss battles against enemies such as the dragon from the Ultimate Garage or the shark from the Car Wash. During these battles, you must collect power-ups to fire at the boss while dodging their attacks. These attacks pose no greater danger than losing a little speed, of course. Completing this mode with different characters unlocks different rewards each time, so it’s worth playing with each of the heroes. The other modes are fairly classic. One of these is a Cup mode, which lets you complete a number of shorter championships at different speeds of your choosing. Each championship consists of four races, followed by a boss battle. Initially, you have access to three championships, with three more to unlock.

There is also a Free Race mode, which is essentially a time trial. These are short interludes, but both Cup Champ and Free Race can be played in split-screen mode with up to four players. I personally enjoyed racing with my seven-year-old son, and it was great to see him completely immersed in a setting he recognises from the animated series and the toys he has at home. Although he has played Hot Wheels Unleashed before, he found this new game much more accessible thanks to the various assists that can be found in similar games. These include steering assistance and automatic acceleration, as well as a very low difficulty level. This accessibility also extends to the Track Builder, which is, of course, present here too. Although there are a lot of modules to work with and you can build upwards, for example, it is quite easy to create a track. You are given a large square on which to work and mainly place the different modules, with the game completing the track with normal track pieces. So you never have to worry about whether your track can be completed.

A missed opportunity

Other than that, the game’s fundamentals are well executed. The six characters and cars have different stats based on handling, speed and stunts. You can also stick certain stickers on your car to activate bonuses such as faster slipstreaming, better jumps, improved speed boosts and a longer drift boost. Each car also has its own power that you can activate once it is charged. Finally, for each race, you have to select a special track section and choose which power-ups and/or obstacles you want on the track. This adds a little more variety and makes each race feel unique. This is a good thing, because unfortunately, there are only twelve tracks in the game itself. There are also eight slots to save your own creations. The only tricky part is that you have to complete eight tutorials before you can start building your own tracks.

However, the handling of the cars completely ruins the experience. The controls lack finesse and don’t feel good at all. Turning feels sluggish, and drifting is too sharp. Sometimes, for example, I would try to drift left but the car would veer right, which is obviously very frustrating. Furthermore, the controls themselves seem a little too complex for the game’s target audience. Drifting is not intuitive, and the same trigger button is used for stunts. On top of that, you can give each other a push using an action button, which seems excessive here. With these elements, the game seems to be overshooting its target audience.

Adults won’t get much out of this game either. Even at the highest difficulty levels and speeds, the races are fairly easy to win. The biggest challenge is avoiding crashing into the edges of the tracks. Additionally, the game was clearly developed on a small budget, so the graphics are not the most impressive. The environments, characters and cars look fairly basic, although the lighting on the night tracks is impressive. Children ultimately care less about fancy graphics with lots of post-processing effects and ray tracing, and they will certainly be satisfied by the game’s vibrant colors. The game’s presentation is also very similar to the animated series, and fortunately, it is also available to play in quite a few languages, although not all will feature audio as well.

3/5

Reviewed on PlayStation 5.
This review originally appeared on BeyondGaming.