I’m sure a younger audience will love this game. Or people who go to Target to take massive amounts of newly stocked toys off the shelf to sell on eBay.
HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush from developer Milestone S.r.l releases this week. It’s an open-world racer with plenty of ways to compete, while also charming players with a massive number of HOT WHEELS cars to earn. Taking a page out of Ubisoft’s The Crew series, minus any sort of narrative, players will drive around multiple maps, compete against each other (or CPU players), and go wild picking up collectibles and achieving goals. While the game is designed for a ‘come and go’ experience, it still has enough ‘umph’ to make it fun.
So, let me recount my experience with the title over the last few weeks and hopefully give you some good perspective on this ridiculously amusing racing sim.
Starting with the story, there is none. HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush lacks a narrative. It’s odd to jump into a game and not be amused by some driving storytelling. Even The Crew and F1 feature a narrative mode, which is at times tough to fit into the mold of those gameplay experiences. One would figure that HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush could have been the same way, if not even easier to fit into a wacky storyline. The devs at Milestone apparently didn’t consider that an important element, and I can’t say I don’t understand their point of view.
The purpose of narratives is pretty simple. Stories are great motivators that hook a player’s attention and drive them from point A to point B. All good games have some semblance of a story to them, even if they’re remedially built at best.
Now, as good and as important as stories might be, players should never see a wedged-in storyline that provides context to a world that doesn’t need it. For example, F1 has a story mode that mainly props up single-player competition and gives the driver purpose when going from track to track. It also gives the player a buffer to stop and go with the game, which makes it feel longer than it might be.
HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush doesn’t even attempt to do that, as it lets its open-world experience and the familiarity of the Hot Wheels brand do the storytelling. There is so much to do in HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush that having a storyline actually might be disruptive to the experience. The game clearly wants the player to go fast right out of the gate, and pushing a narrative into it all might just hinder that fun. So, and you won’t see me type this too often, a story isn’t necessary with this game. The experience doesn’t lose anything without a narrative.
So what do you gain in the experience? Well, the game prides itself on variety, creativity, and a bit of ridiculousness in the process. The variety of gameplay in HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush starts with the varying races that the player can take on. Using the familiarity of plastic tracks and the freedom to go as fast as a player wants, the game throws large races, big track races, and 1v1 experiences into the mix. It’s a hodgepodge of fun that offers just enough difference between races to avoid feeling like there is a heavy amount of repetition. There’s still a lot of repetition, but it’s fun.
The game’s fun is also packed full of goals for the player to achieve. Those goals, such as winning races and wacky competitions, culminate in a final race where the player goes up against a Rusher, which will ultimately help unlock another map. Is this path difficult? Not really. This game was built for a younger audience, so older, more seasoned gamers who prefer more intense racing titles will blow through these goals quickly and easily open more of the world to explore. Of course, even older gamers will probably get hooked on improving their time and placement with the race results, which will likely bring them back repeatedly. Personal achievements might be more of a driving point for those hardcore racing fans out there, and HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush allows for that to be cultivated during the gameplay. Maybe that will be enough for an older audience to stick with the game long-term. Regardless, the game offers enough motivation to keep a player going.
Beyond those achievements and set goals, the open-world game provides a secondary source of fun. The maps in HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush are enormous, multi-tiered, and always popping up with new ways to play the game. I think I spent more time exploring maps, finding hidden treasures, and speeding around haphazardly like I was a Marylander on I-95 than pursuing any competitive goals. Maybe that’s enough for some people, as it was enough for me. The only reason I wanted to get involved with goals was to unlock more maps, which unlocked more exploration, since each map was vastly different from the previous one. Anyway, the open-world exploration is enough to enjoy the experience, and the additional hidden goodies and collectibles help to push that enjoyment even further.
On the collectible side of the tracks, for lack of a better word, the game relies on gear, Hot Wheels logos, and car collection to keep bringing players back to the gameplay. Gears and Hot Wheels logos are scattered throughout every map in the game. These collectibles are finite and rely on the player to drive around and find them. All maps have a set number of each, and finding them all rewards the player with goodies. The only uphill battle for this seek-and-collect part of the game is that its goals for both gears and logos are large. For example, the first two maps require the player to collect at least 300 gears. In about three hours of gameplay, I collected maybe 60+ gears. It’s not a lot, as they trickle out on different tracks, roads, and everything in between. It’s a chore at times, but not an impossible chore. It mainly relies on patience and dedication, which a good chunk of gamers typically don’t have.
Pairing logos with those gears helps, as it adds variety to the process, especially since logos mainly float in hard-to-reach areas. The purpose of logo placement is to encourage more exploration and gently nudge the player into fantastically fast jumps off high areas. That plays into the open-world wackiness and reinforces the Hot Wheels theme.
Now, the main reason to travel the open world, enter competitions, win races, and earn enough coin or goodies to spend is the vehicles featured in the game. HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush features a wide range of Hot Wheels vehicles, from classic to new. I used to play with Hot Wheels as a kid, and I was tickled to death seeing some of the familiar vehicles I had as a youth inside the game. They were replicated perfectly and were the main reason I kept improving and returning to the game. I wanted to see those vehicles in action, such as a giant random brown van from the 70s. Seeing that perfectly replicated, even down to the shimmering paint, was so cool. Being able to get those types of vehicles and keep striving to unlock more was the real motivation to keep coming back to this gameplay experience. Having a history with Hot Wheels makes the game more enjoyable for me as an older adult, but even the newest fans out there, maybe even those who haven’t touched a Hot Wheels car, will still appreciate the vehicle types.
Ultimately, HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush delivers solid entertainment without going beyond its familiar capabilities. It may not have a story, and it might be driven more by its open-world aspect and cool cars than by any race design or goal variety, but it’s a fun experience to play now and then. It brings more fun and entertainment than expected, and does a great job of emulating a racing experience without all the technical hardcore-ness driving it.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush from developer Milestone S.r.l is a fun game that relies on large open-world maps with a variety of collectibles and cars to drive the experience.
