The roughly eight-hour story mode does a good job of nudging players to use a variety of cars. It’s all a bit forgettable, and I honestly couldn’t wait for the cutscenes to be over, but it doesn’t linger long enough to get in the way of the races and earning more coins, upgrades, and pieces to customize tracks. The story plays out like a motion comic, with panels moving around furiously. Creature Rampage’s premise is simple: Giant monsters are on the loose, and your job is to shrink them down and subdue them by racing, all while listening to jokes from a wisecracking robot, a professor who seems to do more harm than good with his gadgets, and a fellow racer. The game includes a story mode, Creature Rampage, but it’s mostly a throwaway Saturday morning cartoon affair. In those instances, holding a button respawns you with enough boost to try again, though you lose a handful of seconds. I never felt cheated, but I had a good laugh and learned from my overexcitement. There was more than one instance where I overdid it, finding myself unable to jump over a barrier or boosting right off a course. Limited boost made me enjoy how I had to be just a little strategic in using it. One car may only have three bars max, giving you three boosts, while another has an entire bar that lets you save or burn as much as you need.įiguring out how much and often you can boost around tracks is essential you may run into a situation where you can’t jump over an obstacle. Different cars have different boosts, which can change how you approach a race. You gain boost via drifting, and thankfully, the mechanic is forgiving and pretty easy to, if not master, at least get a handle on quickly. Players can use the lateral dash to slam into other cars, but it, along with the jump, can also be used mid-flight to right your vehicle back onto the track, fueling the chaotic control during races. Your boost bar is crucial since you use it to perform jumps and lateral dashes, two features new to the sequel. You must master your boost in standard races, obstacle races, boss races, and eliminations, which are my favorite, as you need to keep the lead for a set time as cars are eliminated until yours is the sole survivor. The focus on speed is fun, making races quick, just-one-more-time affairs. Loop-de-loops, golf balls, giant spiders, and tight corners provide a chaotic and enjoyable challenge. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 drops you onto tracks in a backyard, on a golf course, and in other real-world locations that recreate the memories of a kid who could dream up their masterpiece track and then put it together wherever they’d like. While it may not be as technical as most racing sims or as silly as the Mario Kart series, Turbocharged doesn’t lack charm.

However, it doesn’t quite have the variety of tracks to keep it fresh throughout, and the story mode is an innocuous affair, leading to middle-of-the-pack results instead of the checkered flag it was chasing. As a speed-focused arcade racer, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a joy thanks to the emphasis on going fast, collecting Hot Wheels cars spanning decades, and crafting your own tracks.

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