First Hands-On With Hot Wheels Unleashed 2’s New Campaign Mode, New Maps

ign.com:

After surprising everybody with the outstanding Hot Wheels Unleashed in 2021, developer Milestone is poised to take us back to the toy box all over again. We’ve previously had some time with Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 - Turbocharged back in June, but fresh from another rummage around this souped-up sequel, here our updated impressions of Hot Wheels Unleashed 2’s new career mode and some of its extremely promising new track environments.

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2’s solo action appears set up in a pretty similar fashion to the 2021 original – with a top-down city map filled with races and challenges to conquer – but this time around Milestone has injected a kid-friendly story about saving the city from a series of monsters alongside it. This new story-driven campaign mode features a team of original characters, including two young adults with extravagant haircuts, a wacky professor, and – the most crucial ingredient of any kids cartoon – a talkative robot.

While I have to concede that previous Hot Wheels animated projects like Hot Wheels: World Race and Hot Wheels: AcceleRacers happened deep within the window where my own childhood Hot Wheels obsession had been paused – but before my own kids came along – I’m obviously aware that this new play mode has been put together with children very much in mind.

However, even though I know I probably won’t get much mileage out of this addition personally, what I can say is that I’ve been left properly impressed by some of the fresh tracks we didn’t get to race on in our first hands-on back in June – especially in the new arcade map. I had a suspicion based on the initial screenshots that I’d dig this new Hot Wheels environment and, at this point, I’m definitely a fan.

Arcade in Hot Wheels