Honestly milestone should just make an acceleracers game at this point

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 - Turbocharged is definitely an improvement over the original. It adds a few unique elements and fixes some of the things the previous game had problems in. This looks like it could be a pretty fun and enjoyable game for the future and I'm looking forward to what this game has for it's upcoming DLC.

While a lot of people say that this game is 'too similar' to the first, it's not exactly the same. If you think that way, then... apparently you guys don't understand how much of a big improvement this game is over the first. Do your research before writing it off, please. The first game's coding wasn't made with the Jump and Lateral Dash mechanics in mind.

-There are now vehicle classes. Drifters are vehicles that specialize in Handling, Balanced cars which are what it says on the tin can, Rocket cars are great for straight line speeds, Heavy Duty cars can blow through obstacles, Off-Road vehicles can handle rougher surfaces, and Swift vehicles specialize in acceleration.

-You're now able to jump over stuff and dash into other racers, likely pushing them off the track when the opportunity arises which is always fun to do.

-The Rarity system now only affects the chances of cars appearing in the Shop. It no longer has any impact on vehicle performance. You can also apply Skills (or Perks, if you will) on vehicles to either make them function better at the cost of boost (Handling), make their boost better at the cost of functionality (Boost), and give them immunities to obstacles and modules (Obstacles).

-While the livery system is the same, you can now alter the sound your car makes when boosting as well as changing the boost flame color. You can also make your own stickers and download others to use for your own liveries.

-The Shop system is much better. You now are able to force a Shop refresh at the cost of a small Coin fee. This means you no longer have to simply wait around for the next assortment. This also adds a bit of a selection on what you want: do you want to go ahead and refresh the shop, or you wanna wait until you have some more Coins first?

-Gears are gone, but now there's three more currencies in the game: Skill Points, Upgrade Kits, and Spin Tokens. Skill Points are used to purchase Skills for your currently selected car. Upgrade Kits are a much more convenient way to upgrade the performance of your cars to Powered and Ultimate, and Spin Tokens which can only be used for the Hot Wheels Spin. Coins are self-explanatory.

-Speaking of the Hot Wheels Spin, Blind Boxes are gone for good in this game. The Hot Wheels Spin will not only have cars that you could win, but now there's currency to be won. Microtransactions don't exist in this game, too.

-There's more game modes. You got the usual Quick Race, Time Attack, and Split-Screen like before. But now, you have Elimination which is a take on Burnout Revenge's Eliminator events - don't get caught in last place when the timer hits 0. Drift Master where you need to score as much as possible while drifting in corners, and Waypoints which is just you driving around the different environments from Point A to Point B as fast as possible.

-Monster Trucks are now more stable. Before, they were a nightmare and had very twitchy reactions to collisions and landings which made them very risky to use. Now in this game, they're much more stable and are actually driveable!

-There's now a leveling system for players, as well as Unleashed Missions. Every time you level up and complete those missions, you mostly gain currency and a few customization items, respectively. This gives more replay value for completionists like me, so expect me to come back to this game a lot for those!

-Cross-platform support is now a thing for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC players! You can also party up with players on other consoles as well, so that's a very welcome addition! The game does run on Epic Games services, so you're gonna have to make an account on Epic for cross-platform parties, or connect your current account to Epic Games.

-No Racing Seasons this time around. Just DLC released periodically and no fear of missing out on content. There's now only two Season Passes instead of three, and the Legendary Edition includes all the content, with the exception of the pre-order bonuses (those were included for free so that people who pre-ordered the game prior to release would have them early).


-Most of the vehicle lineup are returning cars from the first game. Why is Tricera-Truck still here? That car was terrible back then! While I know for a fact that Character Cars aren't in the game anymore, there's still some questionable choices here, as well as cuts that would've been nice like the Skull Crusher for instance. We could've had one or both of the McLarens from the first game! I mean, did Mattel really need to remind us that Bone Shaker is the star vehicle of Hot Wheels? I think we all know that by now. Gee, thanks guys...

-To be as honest as I can here, the story isn't the most enticing aspect of the game's Creature Rampage mode. In all seriousness, it is fun to shrink actual human beings to drive toy cars, but the characters themselves are just 'bleh' to me.

-As much as I don't care about the Track Builder mode, the amount you can put in each environment is a big disappointment. You can't put as much as you can anymore, so everyone's creations are likely going to be not as entertaining nor exciting as the first game.

-While public online multiplayer lobbies are still 12 players, private lobbies now only support up to 10 players. Milestone, I know you've said that it was because of engine limitations, but how hard is it really to get a lobby of 12 people for those who don't want to race with randoms? Start upgrading to a better engine that has more flexibility.

-Nintendo Switch players STILL get the boot on cross-platform multiplayer due to hardware limitations. It's a fair bit disappointing too, since Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered even had cross-platform support. I wonder how EA did this better than Milestone...

-Grab the Gears is like a scavenger game mode while Clash Derby is like a demolition derby. The reason why this is a negative is the fact that they're ONLINE-ONLY game modes. Did they seriously have to take that route for these two modes? I want to experience these on my own offline, but I can't because randoms will likely be part of both, and I don't really like playing with randoms online.

-The new public lobby system is what's driving players away. Nowadays as of the time of this review's update, there's so little people playing this online, almost like it's abandoned... those guys are missing out.

-No story cutscenes in the expansions, so don't expect unique stories in each one of them. Though this will vary if you're like immersed into the story.


Even with all that, I still am pretty proud of this game. Aside from the high cost that people will likely complain about for what it's worth, this is definitely a much needed improvement over the original. Definitely get this on sale whenever possible, you'll like this better than the first game.

TL;DR: A quaint game that's a liiiiiiiiiiiiiitle too pricey to justify buying full price but on a slight discount will likely be worth your while.

Very intuitive physics once you figure out the basic controls. Tapping your brake key causes a strong turn-in response on the car, therefore making it much easier to initiate a drift, jump over gaps, obstacles, or even the edges of the track (there are some pretty large shortcuts if you look hard enough!) If nothing else, Unleashed 2 really nails arcade driving physics well, having a system that's pretty approachable yet also has enough depth to make true mastery a long journey indeed.

A slight critique, and this is something I mostly discovered when running into the sudden difficulty spike that are drift master events. There is nothing to teach you how boosting and drifting interact with each other and quite often it's disincentivized outside of drift master events. While the technique is inherently a more advanced one it's a necessary one to learn for doing drift master on harder difficulties. I also found the interactions with tapping brake or throttle while drifting rather finicky and quite twitchy at times which contradicts the generally smooth handling present elsewhere.

Lots. A decent selection between Hot Wheels and manufacturer designs (with a few licensed ones thrown in too.) Can't comment on how desirable the cars in the game are as I've been pretty out of the loop when it comes to Hot Wheels for years now but you got your Twin Mill(s) and Bone Shaker(s,) got some Acceleracers and Highway 35 cars, even a couple oldies.

The five vehicle classes feel quite distinct and at the very least I couldn't immediately seeing any particular class being far superior to all the others, though I suspect that certain cars in the Balanced class might be better than most of the others.

Oh yeah you also have some other vehicle types too, mainly in the form of ATV's, monster trucks, and motorcycles. ATV's didn't feel particularly special, but I suppose they are four-wheeled vehicles that aren't on gigantic wheels. Monster trucks are surprisingly intriguing thanks to their innate resistances to certain obstacles, very fast-recharging boost, extreme weight, and just in general large size. Motorcycles however... well, you know, one of the great things about four-wheeled vehicles is that they are usually pretty stable, two-wheeled ones are rather prone to falling over and just in general far more at the whims of the laws of physics (or physics jank...)

A nice feature is that cars can be upgraded, with three main upgrade groups, handling, boost, and obstacles (resistances.) The upgrades have tradeoffs and certain ones can actually have a notable impact on your car. One of the biggest things however is that you can change the boost type of your car. At least from what I've observed charged boost is stronger in races while free boost is borderline mandatory in drift master and highly desirable in waypoint. This upgrade allows you to freely swap between 'race' and 'stunt' modes as I like to call them which is a blessing if you really like a particular car.

Car collecting is pretty straightforward, often as you go through the campaign or log in, you'll get a shop refresh and can peruse what new cars are present (or buy duplicates of your favorites.) The shop is pretty nice, allowing you to preview the statistics of the vehicle and for a very cheap fee, be rerolled for new stock. If the cheap shop reset wasn't there trying to collect the Super Treasure Hunt cars would be quite the painful process.

Wheelspins serve as an additional method, while it's not bad in terms of how rewards work, I do find it kind of painful that there is no way to skip over the animation and get the reward immediately. At one point I had over 30 spins hoarded and it took far longer than desired to go through all of them. Maybe I'm spoiled by Forza Horizon's system where if you don't want to bother, you can just skip to the final results.

The campaign is... serviceable, I can appreciate that it's an actual campaign. The story is... perhaps a bit too childish for my liking but it's nice to have. I can also appreciate that all but extreme events have scaling difficulty with your difficulty setting. Are you really struggling with an event? Lower the difficulty.

For the most part, the campaign can be done at will with many events being optional should you just wish to skip straight to the boss races. Said boss races aren't... bad, essentially a time attack mode, the intensity of the music changing as you come closer to defeating the boss or running out of time are nice.

Ultimately I found myself enjoying the extreme events over the regular campaign as they enforce car and upgrade restrictions, while also presenting some rather severe challenges. Sans the race/elimination events that are still affected by your difficulty level, very "extreme" event doing a race against easy AI.

The livery editor is... alright. I found it a be intuitive but a bit limited. Haven't dabbled with making stickers but it seems like it's an ordeal if you want to make anything seriously detailed, not that that's stopped some people. Something that utterly baffles me however, is that in order to use the liveries you created, you must upload the livery first and then download your livery. My initial reaction to learning this was not very child-friendly. It's beyond me why files that are on your own save data must first be uploaded then downloaded separately to be usable, is there no way to access local livery files within a save?

Meanwhile the track editor is quite impressive. From what I've heard from some friends who owned Unleashed 1, the track editor was good in that game, and it seems like it's even better here. I initially found the track-making process arcane, and there are some quirks about it that are frustrating (though I'm not sure if the lack of an undo feature is due to my inability to find it or is indeed bad design.) Despite these... transgressions the ability to use whatever environment you want, and build however you want can be fun and allow for some crazy tracks that put developer-made ones to shame. Oooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrr you happen upon some cursed obstacle course purposefully designed to be as obtuse as possible and frustrate you into quitting. I do somewhat despise that custom tracks take up 3 of the 5 options to vote on when playing online as there's a very good chance that you get a track that's hardly worthy of being referred to as a "racetrack."

There isn't much for me to complain about in regards to monetization at the time of writing though I would say that the car packs might be a bit too expensive for what they are. Nothing to really write home about other than it being nice to see an actually complete game not trying to pretend like you didn't just pay a fair chunk of change to purchase it.

In regards to the expansions... kind of disappointing but at the same time I can't feel particularly strong about it either. They add small little challenge sets to run around in to the campaign mode, and offer up some additional tracks in new environments that you can also build in. They feel somewhat hollow in the sense that they ultimately kind of just feel like they're... there, really gives that feeling of budget constraints. Nothing really wrong, just a lot of untapped potential.

A good game that is criminally overlooked. While it has some rough edges and certain aspects that feel "cheap," there are plenty of parts that are very fun and for a slightly reduced price, make this game a worthwhile purchase. (Wish online had more players though...)

This game has Steam Deck verification, but is completely broken. Single player cutscenes do not play resulting in a black screen that can't be skipped, and forces the player to force close the game. This stops all progression being made on Steam Deck. This game is a lot of fun, but with it being Steam Deck verified and broken I can't recommend this title. What makes it worse is the developer seems to be ignoring this issue. If this ever gets resolved I will gladly update this review.

Update: The developers have updated the game to play properly on the Steam Deck.

The game itself is fine. Pretty standard Hot Wheels game. NGL I really only got this for the AcceleRacers content. Matel if you ever read these please release more AcceleRacers stuff.

I did not like Hot Wheels Unleashed due to multiple glaring issues. So, I wanted to try out Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged to see its a worthwhile sequel. Thankfully, Milestone changed a good amount of stuff that I can recommend Unleashed 2 over the first game. I have a video talking about how its improvements, but for the sake of the Steam review, I also listed out the improvements in written form below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAxSYbi14s4
Just like with Unleashed 1, all vehicles can race together on track, which is not something I wanted to see. Seeing monster trucks racing together with motorcycles still doesn’t feel right. However, I am glad to see that the cars are now separated into different types. You have drifter, swift, offroad, heavy, rocket, and balanced. Tracks will provide a recommendation on what type of vehicle you should use on them. This makes vehicles not only more distinct from each other, but gives you a reason to use one over another. You also can see the upgrade tiers much clearer now, with cars being either stock, powered or ultimate.

So while I still would like to see separation between the classes in races, the changes have lessened this overall problem. Plus, the difficulty tweaks have helped further mitigate this issue as well.

In Unleashed 1, it felt like you had to use the best cars on hard and extreme to be able to even compete. However, this is no longer the case as it seems the higher difficulties scale better to your car and upgrades. Also, the rubber banding has been toned down enough that it doesn’t feel the AI is outpacing you constantly. No matter what vehicle I use on hard, I can usually do quite well with it. Balancing difficulties is always challenging due to the skills levels of players, and what they expect for each difficulty. So, you may not agree with my assessment here, but from my experience from both games, Unleashed 2 feels fairer.

Progression has been partially improved. Being able to clearly see the different upgrade tiers has helped, and the blindbox system has been replaced with spins. What’s good about these spins is that you don’t always get a car, as credits, upgrade tokens, and more can be gained from them. This means they are not a vital way to obtain vehicles unlike the blind boxes. Plus, the shop is back, and cars rotate out of it quicker than in Unleashed 1. You can even pay a small amount of credits to rotate the shop manually.

I still would prefer a more rigged progression system, where you don’t have to rely on the spins and shop randomization to get vehicles. However, it's at least a step in the right direction, and feels a bit more rewarding than the previous entry.

I was afraid that one thing Milestone wouldn’t listen to was the monetization complaints. Unleashed 1 was plagued with three season passes, racing season battlepasses that are no longer available, and a high price tag. I’m happy to say that Unleashed 2 walked back a lot of these decisions. There are no racing seasons, and only two season passes. The Legendary edition also includes all the content, unlike the Ultimate Stunt Edition for the first game that did not. Plus, Unleashed 2 also included much more content in the base game, so it feels much more deserving of the $50 price tag unlike its predecessor. I still recommend the game on sale, but I didn’t feel like I was getting ripped off with Unleashed 2.

To end the video, I want to highlight additional aspects of Unleashed 2 that are a step up from the first game. Firstly, the handling feels way better, with a tighter drift angle that better compliments the track design. Secondly, the environments are also great, with more interesting locations, and now having outside areas. Thirdly, the additional game modes of elimination, grab the gears, clash derby, drift master, and waypoints have introduced some much needed gameplay variety. Lastly, the new movement abilities, like side shunting, and jumping makes the racing a lot of fun. Dodging hazards, jumping back on track, and messing with opponents has added some much needed depth to the game.

While Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged did not fully address everything I complained about, the changes have been enough that I’m enjoying it. This is what the first game should have been as Unleashed 2 is a more complete and fleshed out experience. There is still plenty room for improvement, and I hope to see more substantial changes in potential sequels.

The secret to my wallet is more Highway 35/Acceleracers content :)

A lot more going on then the first game, so far all for the better. I'm really liking it! It's also working great on my Steam Deck.

Spend your money and time on this rather than Forza Motorsport.

Game is gud, until the AI or the physics decides to screw you over for the 10 billionth time just like it would in the 1st game