#HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED TIPS AND TRICKS TRIAL#

Hot Wheels is pretty vanilla and while they lean heavily into the toy-inspired nature of the game with some cool track set pieces once you’ve seen them once they just aren’t all that exciting. Look at Sonic & All Stars Racing: Transformed and you have switching from cars, to planes to boats across a dizzying array of environments which aren’t just backdrops but are the level. More of this, please! /fb0Bhie7UmĬompare and contrast Micro Machines, which has everything from tanks with firing cannons, speed boats, helicopters, sand dunes and high speed races, and Hot Wheels feels dull and lifeless. The occasional “wow” set piece breaks up the monotony. This is compounded by the many, many slower novelty Hot Wheels cars which are just utterly useless in any race conditions but are begging to be driven. The long and short of this true-to-brand design choice is that the tracks are quite monotonous and eventually the game stops being exciting and starts being something of a drag. It’s not far removed from Trackmania and I could absolutely see a speedrunning scene erupting around this, but let’s not digress from whining! The environments serve only as backdrops, and the “realistic” Hot Wheels-Brand plastic track forms the actual racing surface. It’s approximately the six of Sonic & All Stars Racing: Transformed but unlike Sonic’s Racer (probably my favourite arcade racing game of all time) the tracks lack any real feeling of variety. There are five main “Environments” in which levels are constructed from Hot Wheels track: Basement, College, Skate Park, Garage and Skyscraper. Do I wish there was more variety to the levels? Also yes. Is there enough depth/variety to the gameplay to justify this price tag? Well, actually, in retrospect yes. While I’ve extracted 20 hours of gameplay from Hot Wheels I’m weary of boiling down the value to a price/hours formula. The game feels somewhat monotonous as a consequence There are two things that specifically make the day 1 DLC hurt in Hot Wheels: It feels like the publisher is reaching into my pocket before I’ve even decided I like the game enough to commit more funds to it. I don’t want my game purchase to be undermined by a roadmap of all the stuff I can’t have yet. Just like loot boxes, Day 1 DLC seems to be an industry mainstay. This maintains the element of surprise without sacrificing the feeling of a fair and proportioned reward. A “Rare” blind box – rewarded for completing some difficult races – could simply guarantee not to give you a common or duplicate.

#HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED TIPS AND TRICKS TRIAL#

Different tiers of blind box could form better/worse rewards given for placing 1st, 2nd or 3rd, or for beating the slow/fast times in a Time Trial race. This is… unsatisfying, disappointing and frustrating.Ĭould this be solved? Yes. The crux of this issue is that you’ll eventually complete a chain of difficult races only to get two blind boxes that give you common cars you already have. A blind box you’ve bought with in-game currency (ugh) is just as good as a blind box you’ve put 3 hours into earning. The problem? The rewards contained therein do not scale with the effort you’ve put in to earn them. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! These are such a frustrating reward system because they don’t scale with effort. The juicy part of the reward is always a new car and while you do sometimes get actual cars (I relish these moments) you’ll usually find yourself with a blind box. In Hot Wheels nomenclature these are “blind boxes” but the concept isn’t all that different: they undermine the reward structure of the game.Īfter you progress through a chain of levels, you’ll reach a “reward” stop. “Everything has loot boxes these days” you mutter, as if everyone doing it somehow makes it okay.

It’s clear I cared enough about this game to play the hell out of it- and I also care enough to make these criticisms: Loot Boxes The problem… everything around the impeccably presented cars and levels is somewhere between lacking polish and outright deliberately sabotaged for profit.Īt time of writing I’ve sunk around 20 hours into Hot Wheels and achieved somewhere north of 60% completion, finishing most races in 1st and netting myself a good number of the more difficult Time Trial times. Dang the race ending visuals are just ? /fjyktuJznD

Hot wheels unleashed tips and tricks