Milestone's Hot Wheels Unleashed sequel hits Xbox tomorrow (October 19th) and ahead of its imminent arrival, we've had a browse at a bunch of reviews to see what the presses make of it so far.
The reception seems largely positive at the moment, as Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged seems to successfully build on the 2021 original. Anyway, here's what the critics think of the game ahead of launch:
God is a Geek (9/10)
"The single player campaign is packed with various challenges and stuff to unlock, and the number of cars and customisation options are enough to keep you returning. It’s a great alternative to other arcade racers on the market, and also a big improvement on the original."
TechRaptor (8.5/10)
"Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a worthy successor with plenty of new cars and customization options, fun new game modes, and even a decent single-player campaign. It improves on many of its predecessor's faults, albeit still having a few of its own."
Push Square (8/10)
"Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a highly polished, fast-paced, fun, and robust racing sequel that builds upon its predecessor in all the right ways. Addressing almost all our criticisms of the previous title by adding impressive core mechanic modifications in the form of jumps, dashes, and new terrains, removing loot boxes, and adding obstacle immunity skills, Milestone has created a fantastic follow-up arcade racer to be reckoned with."
Nintendo Life (8/10)
"Fans of Hot Wheels will feel well served from a nostalgia point of view, and inspired by its huge number of new modes. Unleashed 2: Turbocharged combines furious arcade race challenges with childlike creativity, being able to build tracks any which way, and race them to breaking point."
IGN (8/10)
"Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is an impeccably detailed and blisteringly fast racer with incredible graphics and rock-solid arcade underpinnings, although it’s guilty of forgetting to suitably cater to its wide audience at times."
COGConnected (7.8/10)
"Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged improves on its predecessor with refinements on the track and new modes. The multiplayer portion has had an overhaul with new modes that take advantage of new mechanics to offer more variety. However, the small number of environments is still an issue and makes the different tracks feel too familiar. Milestone sticks to what worked which results in a very similar experience. While it does improve on the original, it doesn’t add enough to make its way up the podium."
GameReactor (7/10)
"Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a decent kart racer. The gameplay works well, you can easily do long powerslides, the many vehicles feel and sound different and the tracks are quite well designed."
Digital Trends (3.5/5)
"Even after pulling all of those layers of progression back, there’s still a racing game experience that just feels inherently fun, realizing what I imagined my Hot Wheels were doing while I played with them as a kid. While all those Hot Wheels are given away or stored in a tote box somewhere in my parents’ attic nowadays, playing Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged made it feel like I was playing with them again."
The game has gotten some pretty respectable ratings so far then - sitting at 78 on Metacritic and 80 on OpenCritic at the time of writing. If you're still unsure about picking this one up, the first game is currently available for a loop-de-loop on Xbox Game Pass - with a whole bunch of DLC included!