Small Scale, Big Fun: Hands-on with Hot Wheels Unleashed 2

ign.com:

For a team whose bread-and-butter is stern and serious motorcycle simulations, Milestone’s 2021 toy-based racer Hot Wheels Unleashed certainly seemed like a quirky fit at the time. However, buried amongst 30-or-so iterations of the Supercross, MXGP, MotoGP, SBK, and Ride series, Hot Wheels Unleashed shone like a die cast diamond. Combining the impeccable speed brandished by the likes of arcade racing icon Burnout with the twisted madness of Trackmania, Hot Wheels Unleashed boasts toy-sized racing that’s small on scale and massive on fun. After the positive reception for the original, a sequel is no real surprise – but how does Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged improve on the 1:64 formula? At least, other than just adding motorcycles, that is? Classic Milestone.

We’ve had a brief hands-on with Hot Wheels Unleashed 2, and it definitely seems largely in-line with the original at first blush. That is, tiny and impeccably detailed toy cars taking on wild and wacky plastic tracks draped across life-size environments.

The garage this time, however, is bolstered by a few extra vehicle types – including motorcycles and ATVs. They honestly look a little odd without riders and they’re too big compared to the cars, but both of those things are essentially out of Milestone’s control. Milestone is just emulating the actual Hot Wheels models, and in real-life the die cast bikes do skew quite large compared to the regular cars they’re ranged alongside of. About 10 years ago Hot Wheels debuted a range of bikes with little plastic riders that might’ve been a better aesthetic fit for the game, but the fact they’ve been out of circulation for some time now wouldn’t have helped their case. The bikes handle much like everything else in the