Unfortunately, they no longer appear to accumulate wear and tear like they did in the Milestone\u2019s earlier games. Upon reaching the end of a race, my cars now look just as factory fresh as they did when I started. The scratches, rubs, scuffed plastic, and kerb rash that builds up on cars in the Unleashed games is a big part of what pumps up their credibility; that is, making the cars look and feel like they\u2019ve just tumbled down the driveway a dozen times really seats them into the maps and makes them look like actual play-worn toys. In contrast, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush feels glossy and consequence-free. Am I missing something here? A hidden setting? Was this an intentional change for Infinite Rush for some unknown reason, or a licensor change-of-heart? Whatever it was, it\u2019s a really weird step back and I\u2019m not a fan.<\/p>\n
Sister from Another Blister<\/strong><\/h2>\nIt appears about one-third of the options that make up the roughly 150-car roster are new, rather than recycled. This is welcome, as it certainly doesn\u2019t make much sense to keep wheeling out the same cars when there are almost 60 years of Hot Wheels castings to choose from. That said, the garage is still weighted very heavily towards new and recent models. There\u2019s a decent smattering of early to mid-2000s castings, including AcceleRacers, but there\u2019s really nothing here for Gen X parents or grandparents to share with younger players. The \u201970s, \u201980s, and \u201990s remain woefully underrepresented. I get that older players aren\u2019t really the primary audience of a licensed Hot Wheels game, but I know that my sons\u2019 Hot Wheels collection is like a core sample of Hot Wheels history. It\u2019s got recent cars, my childhood cars, and old cars from their uncles \u2013 and even great uncle. I get the feeling that\u2019s probably a pretty common occurrence. The balance in Infinite Rush is just\u2026 off. There are definitely times it feels like it was more important for this to be a catalogue of cars kids can still see at the shops rather than a rummage through the toyline\u2019s past.<\/p>\n
Infinite Rush is also missing the pop culture cars that were fixtures in the Unleashed games. The fact that it features Ferrari is neat enough, considering the Prancing Horse\u2019s decade-long absence from the real-life Hot Wheels line-up from 2015 to 2025, but the lack of any movie or TV cars feels a bit cheap.<\/p>\n
Infinite Rush uses a similar class system for the cars as Unleashed 2, although it dials it back to four distinct classes rather than six: Versatile, Speeder, Drifter, and Titan. Each has nuances you need to cater for as you drive. For instance, Titans are strong but bulky \u2013 and they have extra long boost meters to compensate. However, run your boost all the way down to zero and your default speed will be strangled momentarily as your engine coughs back to life. Versatile racers have a drift bar that\u2019s consumed in chunks, meaning you can\u2019t stop a boost once you\u2019ve started. It means they\u2019re not a great fit for navigating the urban, grid-like portions of the maps, because it can be hard to force them into the right direction when in the middle of a briefly unstoppable boost. <\/p>\n
Drifters are my preferred class, since they\u2019re the easiest to sling sideways and therefore the best fit for an arcade racing game. The other classes are less satisfying to drift, and there sometimes seems as if there\u2019s even a bit of a speed penalty for doing so. There were definitely occasions it was overtly faster to Hail Melon around a corner, Ross Chastain-style, than it was to slide into it properly. This shouldn\u2019t really be the case in any arcade racer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n![\"Tier](\"https:\/\/kraken.ignimgs.com\/_next\/static\/media\/TierList.c19f1c86.svg?cors=0\")
<\/p>\nRank these open-world racing and driving games<\/h3>\nRank these open-world racing and driving games<\/h3>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
Toyz N the Hood<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe biggest problem with Infinite Rush is how surprisingly generic the open-world approach makes it feel. It doesn\u2019t have a single, large open map to explore like, say, Burnout Paradise or Forza Horizon 6. Instead, there are four separate, modestly sized islands \u2013 each themed in slightly different ways. There\u2019s Wheelswood, a commercial-style, downtown-inspired map; Tentacle Bay, another city-oriented environment, only with a little more open countryside; Gearville, a desert-themed, industrial zone; and Drifty Temples, an East Asian-inspired island. I just find myself blazing through them, smashing through bushes and benches. There\u2019s some decent imagination on display \u2013 and I do think the huge Hot Wheels Mount Rushmore on Gearville is pretty cute \u2013 but broadly speaking there\u2019s just not much that grabs my attention. Not even the big, plastic animals.<\/p>\n
In the Unleashed games, you find yourself racing through half-built skyscrapers above the clouds \u2013 or staring up at enormous arcade cabinets, which might as well be skyscrapers themselves with the way they loom over your tiny toy cars, from down on the sticky carpet. Infinite Rush has absolutely none of this scale, and it\u2019s all the worse for it. They\u2019re not quite believable dioramas, even if they\u2019re filled with moulded plastic props. But they\u2019re not quite real places either \u2013 even if the default measure of distance to my next waypoint is metres. 800 metres away, in a car that\u2019s ostensibly three inches long? Something\u2019s not adding up.<\/p>\nHot Wheels Unleashed review<\/section>\nIn a word, these maps are bland. You just drive back and forth across them, competing in a genre-typical range of event types. The racing is still fine, although the tracks are nowhere near as interesting anymore because they simply can\u2019t use their surroundings in the same way as the Unleashed games can. There you can race on the floors, across the furniture, up in the air vents \u2013 you name it. Infinite Rush has none of that. Worse, a lot of the side activities that appear to be here to justify these open-world maps are just busywork \u2013 like photograph challenges that tell you exactly where to take them, or checkpoint collections that\u2019d be a lot less trivial to complete if you actually had to dodge traffic (which you don\u2019t; smashing through them doesn\u2019t even really slow you down).<\/p>\n
[In the Unleashed games] you can race on the floors, across the furniture, up in the air vents \u2013 you name it. Infinite Rush has none of that. \u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThere was probably a way to experiment and take the series to an open world without sacrificing the sense of scale Unleashed got so right. Could the desert map have been built on a beach, or one of the other maps laid out in the foyer of a toy store? Anything like this would\u2019ve given the backdrops the scale Infinite Rush lacks. Could more of the architecture have been household objects, with cereal box buildings standing side by side with Hot Wheels garage playsets, and painted roads filling the gaps between the iconic orange track pieces? I just feel like there was a more imaginative way to tackle this shift. 2023\u2019s LEGO 2K Drive did this approach better overall, but unfortunately that game is already completely delisted in digital stores.<\/p>\n
The profound shift in map philosophy is doubly disappointing considering the improvements Infinite Rush makes elsewhere. For instance, it now comes with four-player splitscreen, which would\u2019ve been amazing fun in the massively more imaginative Unleashed maps. It also now features the ability for AI to race on your custom tracks, which would\u2019ve been another huge boost to longevity for the older games. I would\u2019ve loved to have seen how the AI handled the wild leaps of the crazy routes I\u2019ve created in the past (especially since Infinite Rush is way, way more restrictive in terms of the height limit than the Unleashed games \u2013 which feature multi-level maps with a ton of vertical space). Infinite Rush also features the new ability to change out wheels as part of the customisation suite, which speaks to me as a 40-odd-year-old diorama-building dork who loves swapping out wheels on his Hot Wheels cars. Okay, they\u2019re not always mine, but my boys aren\u2019t using them anymore; just don\u2019t tell them I\u2019ve been attacking their collection with a power drill.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nRank these open-world racing and driving games<\/h3>\nRank these open-world racing and driving games<\/h3>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The biggest problem with Infinite Rush is how surprisingly generic the open-world approach makes it feel. It doesn\u2019t have a single, large open map to explore like, say, Burnout Paradise or Forza Horizon 6. Instead, there are four separate, modestly sized islands \u2013 each themed in slightly different ways. There\u2019s Wheelswood, a commercial-style, downtown-inspired map; Tentacle Bay, another city-oriented environment, only with a little more open countryside; Gearville, a desert-themed, industrial zone; and Drifty Temples, an East Asian-inspired island. I just find myself blazing through them, smashing through bushes and benches. There\u2019s some decent imagination on display \u2013 and I do think the huge Hot Wheels Mount Rushmore on Gearville is pretty cute \u2013 but broadly speaking there\u2019s just not much that grabs my attention. Not even the big, plastic animals.<\/p>\n In the Unleashed games, you find yourself racing through half-built skyscrapers above the clouds \u2013 or staring up at enormous arcade cabinets, which might as well be skyscrapers themselves with the way they loom over your tiny toy cars, from down on the sticky carpet. Infinite Rush has absolutely none of this scale, and it\u2019s all the worse for it. They\u2019re not quite believable dioramas, even if they\u2019re filled with moulded plastic props. But they\u2019re not quite real places either \u2013 even if the default measure of distance to my next waypoint is metres. 800 metres away, in a car that\u2019s ostensibly three inches long? Something\u2019s not adding up.<\/p>\n In a word, these maps are bland. You just drive back and forth across them, competing in a genre-typical range of event types. The racing is still fine, although the tracks are nowhere near as interesting anymore because they simply can\u2019t use their surroundings in the same way as the Unleashed games can. There you can race on the floors, across the furniture, up in the air vents \u2013 you name it. Infinite Rush has none of that. Worse, a lot of the side activities that appear to be here to justify these open-world maps are just busywork \u2013 like photograph challenges that tell you exactly where to take them, or checkpoint collections that\u2019d be a lot less trivial to complete if you actually had to dodge traffic (which you don\u2019t; smashing through them doesn\u2019t even really slow you down).<\/p>\n There was probably a way to experiment and take the series to an open world without sacrificing the sense of scale Unleashed got so right. Could the desert map have been built on a beach, or one of the other maps laid out in the foyer of a toy store? Anything like this would\u2019ve given the backdrops the scale Infinite Rush lacks. Could more of the architecture have been household objects, with cereal box buildings standing side by side with Hot Wheels garage playsets, and painted roads filling the gaps between the iconic orange track pieces? I just feel like there was a more imaginative way to tackle this shift. 2023\u2019s LEGO 2K Drive did this approach better overall, but unfortunately that game is already completely delisted in digital stores.<\/p>\n The profound shift in map philosophy is doubly disappointing considering the improvements Infinite Rush makes elsewhere. For instance, it now comes with four-player splitscreen, which would\u2019ve been amazing fun in the massively more imaginative Unleashed maps. It also now features the ability for AI to race on your custom tracks, which would\u2019ve been another huge boost to longevity for the older games. I would\u2019ve loved to have seen how the AI handled the wild leaps of the crazy routes I\u2019ve created in the past (especially since Infinite Rush is way, way more restrictive in terms of the height limit than the Unleashed games \u2013 which feature multi-level maps with a ton of vertical space). Infinite Rush also features the new ability to change out wheels as part of the customisation suite, which speaks to me as a 40-odd-year-old diorama-building dork who loves swapping out wheels on his Hot Wheels cars. Okay, they\u2019re not always mine, but my boys aren\u2019t using them anymore; just don\u2019t tell them I\u2019ve been attacking their collection with a power drill.<\/p>\nToyz N the Hood<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/hot-wheels-infinite-rush-review.jpg\")
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