I feel like at this point its accepted that racing games became skewed towards reality. Not realism, reality.
Its kinda a given, expected and probably demanded that each new major release will have licenced cars by major car manufacturers.
Fantasy of owning and driving real cars became integral whatever game is about serious motorsport and grounded driving model or about cop chases in the urban enviorment and effortless drifting.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is also about fantasy of owning and driving cars by a hot manufacturer, however said fantasy is much closer to reality to an average person.
Hot Wheels toy car line up doesnt need no introduction obviously, chances are you may even own some without even being able to remember it.
Not only its cool looking car models, they can even drive, albeit in a straight line and to be able to turn you need to buy proprietary orange road that essentially railroads the the dar in a narrow "slide" or get creative and do some DIY stuff to achieve similiar effect.
In his video about Burnout Paradise (https://youtu.be/djGeem-QYow?si=rFMnaMQv9sp__GgP) Errant Signal compares the game mentality to treating cars like toys, Burnout Paradise indeed captures sense of whimsy of a child smashing toy cars into each other without any second thought about not damaging toys in state of the art 3d real time rendering and soft body simulations.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is this in a more literary sense.
The way game manages to create a fantastical premise while engaging with a sense of reality is trully compelling, while for example Lego games also being real physical toys licenced games generally try to create their own fantastical world with a liberal use of actual Lego bricks, Unleashed puts fantastical into your living room.. or your neon bathed basement... or highrise building thats in the process of being build...
Its comparable to likes of Toy Story, Chibi Robo or Army Man RTS, but can we call it "toys came to life" if toys dont have actual humanity? Are they sentient? Do they have qualia?
Basically Unleashed is exxagarated fantastical idea of playing with Hot Wheel cars, unshackled from reality. Build tracks impossible in real life in your virtual living room, or do so on the top of highrise building - there is some grounded sense of absurdity to it.
And its not just visual texture either, it inspires genuinely most inventive aproach to track design for an arcade racing game i've experienced on the 8th generation of console.
Linear orange orange roads with stage gimmicks and maybe some diverging points give way to driving outside of the track. Its still linear part of the track, but hard walls are replaced with traffic cones. It has certain vibes of breaking the rules despite you in fact obeying the rules still.
Well you can actually break the rules, in a way similiar to Quake famous bunny hopping, but likely intended by the developers and with a certain restrictions.
The game physics are weird and in general i feel they capture idea of a toy car very well with how it can fly off the track from collision with another car or a stage hazard, while also arcade racing grip for break to drift (altho i had Need for Speed: Most Wanted moments for car turning over from those), but it can be really weird on slops which tracks consists of cuz they are build like a rollercoasters with constant going up and down. If you have too much speed or go nitro at the wrong time you can fly off the track on the up climb which can feel unwieldy. However more advanced players can take adventage of that to take insane shortcuts thru the track, hence breaking the rules. If this was indeed intended mechanic by the devs, then obviously tracks build with some of those shortcuts in mind, however this new style of maneuvering in space makes them non obvious and makes you feel rewarded for breaking the game in the speedrunner way even if was actually intended.
Tracks have checkpoints you have to pass thru in order balance this out and prevent you from lets say somehow skipping to a finish line at the start.
A lot of racing games tend to build their single player progression around packing selection of all its track into repeated loop of playing them over and over again with difficulty naturaly going up via both player and opponent driving progressively faster cars. Sprinkle different gameplay modes that arent just generic racing on top and maybe also add racing same tracks in reverse. The way you pack this repetion in gameplay systems outside of the core racing, and how to contextualise unlocking new challenges and cars to drive - is in my eyes a core of single player progression for racing game. You can call it "content interfacing", because outside of open world context those systems tend to be menu based.
And i feel like this is pretty much weakest aspect of the game and it goes beyond single player experience and negatively impacts multiplayer.
Its not uncommon for racing games developed starting from 7th gen (when online infrastructure for games in general became closer to how we know it today and online on consoles became a more common "default" thing) to have shared progression between single and multiplayer - for example in both Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 and Wreckfest you earn same point and both and use cars from the same garage.
And yeah Hot Wheels Unleashed is also like that. I think what lets it down a lot (and its pretty much universally agreed) is that you get a new cars via loot box system. It pretty much destroys sense of progression, there will be high possibility that you will drive one and only car with high enough average between all stats for the whole game.
Cool toy cars freed from the restains of reality doing impossible things they could before are now ironicaly shackled by arbitatrary assigned videogame stats, arbitatrary assigned value. The game will tell you how this funny looking ice truck that you really like the looks of is actually worthless, and you have no choice but to put this new toy into your toy box and never play with it ever again.
Its quite sad, but i also dont know how they could handled it otherwise with amount cars the game has. The game tries to remedy "same car every race" by having special points on the map you pick races from be locked and having unlock conditions of using car X in event Y, while also giving said car somewhere else on the map. But interfacing for this is super cumbersome, having to find event by name and then I basically just replay it in a worse car than i finished it before.
I found map system itself neat, but those locked points with special conditions really kill the sense of being able to aproach it non linearly. While there are basically only 2 modes (standart racing and lap time goal), it manages to feel like everytime you actually race on a new map, so that pretty impressive. Probably the way tracks are done by putting orange roads differently in the same 4 big rooms enables pretty convenient way to reitarate it and build tracks.
And players can do that themself too with the ingame level editor honestly i cant even remember when was the last time i played around in editor. Obviously this feature is reflective of how people play with Hot Wheels toys and once again enables people to engage with them in ways that reality cant allow.
Its honestly sad that the game has such issues, cuz core racing is really solid and Its most inventive arcade racing we saw this generation full of Forza Horizon 2 clones. Its original soundtrack is cool and while i think licenced OSTs have their place, its so fresh to have a racing game that doesnt need to rely on lets say music from the outside. Altho this music clashes with pretty uninspired presentation otherwise like pretty default looking hud and some bland text during map navigation.
P.S. I failed to include it anywhere above, but its pet peeve of mine that a lot of racing game reviews dont talk about nitro system, like its just a difference whatever game has one or doesnt. So i wanted to talk about it even if in such removed isolated way.
Well there isnt much to talk about, its pretty basic implementation. Its auto charges with time and drifting also charges it. I find it pretty lackluster, it doesnt encourage a play style like lets say Burnout making you put yourself in dangerously or Motorstom making you put yourself on edge and consider enviorment about heat/cooling. There are parts of the tracks that charge it faster making you try to drive on that line, but i think it speaks more to how nicely designed stage gimmicks are and not nitro system itself.
There was like one track with hazard that your nitro bar bleed, so there is also that.
There are some cars that actually have different nitro system, instead of bar you can depleet at any moment you have a bunch of circles that you give you a continues boost upon pressing a button kinda like Hotshot Racing. (reminds me that Hotshot Racing is really cool game).
But because of beforementioned issues with the game progression i didnt really use them much and didnt have much reason to the lower stats aside from that one time to clear a lock on the map.
Use case is more interesting i guess, like amount of air control you can have and how you use nitro boosting to fly over parts of the track
Its kinda a given, expected and probably demanded that each new major release will have licenced cars by major car manufacturers.
Fantasy of owning and driving real cars became integral whatever game is about serious motorsport and grounded driving model or about cop chases in the urban enviorment and effortless drifting.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is also about fantasy of owning and driving cars by a hot manufacturer, however said fantasy is much closer to reality to an average person.
Hot Wheels toy car line up doesnt need no introduction obviously, chances are you may even own some without even being able to remember it.
Not only its cool looking car models, they can even drive, albeit in a straight line and to be able to turn you need to buy proprietary orange road that essentially railroads the the dar in a narrow "slide" or get creative and do some DIY stuff to achieve similiar effect.
In his video about Burnout Paradise (https://youtu.be/djGeem-QYow?si=rFMnaMQv9sp__GgP) Errant Signal compares the game mentality to treating cars like toys, Burnout Paradise indeed captures sense of whimsy of a child smashing toy cars into each other without any second thought about not damaging toys in state of the art 3d real time rendering and soft body simulations.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is this in a more literary sense.
The way game manages to create a fantastical premise while engaging with a sense of reality is trully compelling, while for example Lego games also being real physical toys licenced games generally try to create their own fantastical world with a liberal use of actual Lego bricks, Unleashed puts fantastical into your living room.. or your neon bathed basement... or highrise building thats in the process of being build...
Its comparable to likes of Toy Story, Chibi Robo or Army Man RTS, but can we call it "toys came to life" if toys dont have actual humanity? Are they sentient? Do they have qualia?
Basically Unleashed is exxagarated fantastical idea of playing with Hot Wheel cars, unshackled from reality. Build tracks impossible in real life in your virtual living room, or do so on the top of highrise building - there is some grounded sense of absurdity to it.
And its not just visual texture either, it inspires genuinely most inventive aproach to track design for an arcade racing game i've experienced on the 8th generation of console.
Linear orange orange roads with stage gimmicks and maybe some diverging points give way to driving outside of the track. Its still linear part of the track, but hard walls are replaced with traffic cones. It has certain vibes of breaking the rules despite you in fact obeying the rules still.
Well you can actually break the rules, in a way similiar to Quake famous bunny hopping, but likely intended by the developers and with a certain restrictions.
The game physics are weird and in general i feel they capture idea of a toy car very well with how it can fly off the track from collision with another car or a stage hazard, while also arcade racing grip for break to drift (altho i had Need for Speed: Most Wanted moments for car turning over from those), but it can be really weird on slops which tracks consists of cuz they are build like a rollercoasters with constant going up and down. If you have too much speed or go nitro at the wrong time you can fly off the track on the up climb which can feel unwieldy. However more advanced players can take adventage of that to take insane shortcuts thru the track, hence breaking the rules. If this was indeed intended mechanic by the devs, then obviously tracks build with some of those shortcuts in mind, however this new style of maneuvering in space makes them non obvious and makes you feel rewarded for breaking the game in the speedrunner way even if was actually intended.
Tracks have checkpoints you have to pass thru in order balance this out and prevent you from lets say somehow skipping to a finish line at the start.
A lot of racing games tend to build their single player progression around packing selection of all its track into repeated loop of playing them over and over again with difficulty naturaly going up via both player and opponent driving progressively faster cars. Sprinkle different gameplay modes that arent just generic racing on top and maybe also add racing same tracks in reverse. The way you pack this repetion in gameplay systems outside of the core racing, and how to contextualise unlocking new challenges and cars to drive - is in my eyes a core of single player progression for racing game. You can call it "content interfacing", because outside of open world context those systems tend to be menu based.
And i feel like this is pretty much weakest aspect of the game and it goes beyond single player experience and negatively impacts multiplayer.
Its not uncommon for racing games developed starting from 7th gen (when online infrastructure for games in general became closer to how we know it today and online on consoles became a more common "default" thing) to have shared progression between single and multiplayer - for example in both Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 and Wreckfest you earn same point and both and use cars from the same garage.
And yeah Hot Wheels Unleashed is also like that. I think what lets it down a lot (and its pretty much universally agreed) is that you get a new cars via loot box system. It pretty much destroys sense of progression, there will be high possibility that you will drive one and only car with high enough average between all stats for the whole game.
Cool toy cars freed from the restains of reality doing impossible things they could before are now ironicaly shackled by arbitatrary assigned videogame stats, arbitatrary assigned value. The game will tell you how this funny looking ice truck that you really like the looks of is actually worthless, and you have no choice but to put this new toy into your toy box and never play with it ever again.
Its quite sad, but i also dont know how they could handled it otherwise with amount cars the game has. The game tries to remedy "same car every race" by having special points on the map you pick races from be locked and having unlock conditions of using car X in event Y, while also giving said car somewhere else on the map. But interfacing for this is super cumbersome, having to find event by name and then I basically just replay it in a worse car than i finished it before.
I found map system itself neat, but those locked points with special conditions really kill the sense of being able to aproach it non linearly. While there are basically only 2 modes (standart racing and lap time goal), it manages to feel like everytime you actually race on a new map, so that pretty impressive. Probably the way tracks are done by putting orange roads differently in the same 4 big rooms enables pretty convenient way to reitarate it and build tracks.
And players can do that themself too with the ingame level editor honestly i cant even remember when was the last time i played around in editor. Obviously this feature is reflective of how people play with Hot Wheels toys and once again enables people to engage with them in ways that reality cant allow.
Its honestly sad that the game has such issues, cuz core racing is really solid and Its most inventive arcade racing we saw this generation full of Forza Horizon 2 clones. Its original soundtrack is cool and while i think licenced OSTs have their place, its so fresh to have a racing game that doesnt need to rely on lets say music from the outside. Altho this music clashes with pretty uninspired presentation otherwise like pretty default looking hud and some bland text during map navigation.
P.S. I failed to include it anywhere above, but its pet peeve of mine that a lot of racing game reviews dont talk about nitro system, like its just a difference whatever game has one or doesnt. So i wanted to talk about it even if in such removed isolated way.
Well there isnt much to talk about, its pretty basic implementation. Its auto charges with time and drifting also charges it. I find it pretty lackluster, it doesnt encourage a play style like lets say Burnout making you put yourself in dangerously or Motorstom making you put yourself on edge and consider enviorment about heat/cooling. There are parts of the tracks that charge it faster making you try to drive on that line, but i think it speaks more to how nicely designed stage gimmicks are and not nitro system itself.
There was like one track with hazard that your nitro bar bleed, so there is also that.
There are some cars that actually have different nitro system, instead of bar you can depleet at any moment you have a bunch of circles that you give you a continues boost upon pressing a button kinda like Hotshot Racing. (reminds me that Hotshot Racing is really cool game).
But because of beforementioned issues with the game progression i didnt really use them much and didnt have much reason to the lower stats aside from that one time to clear a lock on the map.
Use case is more interesting i guess, like amount of air control you can have and how you use nitro boosting to fly over parts of the track