Review – Hot Wheels Infinite Rush

Italy’s Milestone has done more for the Hot Wheels brand in video games than arguably any developer. Beginning with 2021’s Hot Wheels Unleashed and continuing with 2023’s Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, Milestone bridged the gap between kid and adult alike with its take on the miniaturized speedsters. 

When I first saw that Milestone would continue its run with the franchise, this time via the open world Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush, my mind immediately went to 2017’s Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels DLC expansion. Right there was a blueprint for how taking Hot Wheels into an open world setting could work. The final product isn’t far off from that. But I can’t help but feel like Hot Wheels is better off sticking to the orange tracks and away from the toy asphalt. 

Infinite Rush certainly walks the walk, er, drives the drive. Using one of four vehicle classes, you can zoom your Hot Wheel (singular) of choice across four different themed islands. The plastic tropics of Tentacle Bay took me back to Burnout Paradise’s Big Surf Island but adding a giant toy kraken in the ocean and a mean green plastic octopus in the center of the city. Gearville’s rusty, industrial desert reminded me of Wario Stadium and Choco Mountain from last year’s Mario Kart World, right down to the giant roaring engine block. The inclusion of fun, oversized set pieces and interactive figures directly from real Hot Wheels toy sets sells the world that’s been created here. 

 

 

Where the world begins to fall apart is in the commute itself. If you’ve played an open world racing game, especially a festival racer like Forza Horizon or The Crew Motorfest that Infinite Rush imitates, you’ll know that you’re shown a map and on that map are dozens of icons representing missions/events you can complete. That’s all well and good with a simcade-style handling model, but you’re controlling a toy car here. And it doesn’t even feel close to how easy it should feel to navigate these mostly empty toy streets. 

For starters, the drifting model, which differs based off whether you’re controlling a heavy Titan, an all-around Versatile, a slick Drifter or a zippy Speedster, isn’t nearly tight enough to handle taking on terrain that isn’t orange track. Races are formed out of a combination of the landscaping and orange track, often with pathing that requires intricate movements the vehicles can’t easily accommodate. Then there’s the numerous foliage and objects that dot the open maps. For some reason, when you run into a bush or a rock, you end up pushing that rock in front of your car for several feet. Even if this doesn’t end up affecting your speed, it just feels clunky. This isn’t Lego 2K Drive where everything is made out of bricks and shatters when you drive through it. In some cases, this collision system meant that I didn’t make it through a tight gap or drift exactly how I would have hoped. And I’m already not high on the handling. 

 

 

So, how are the events? Well, Infinite Rush certainly does bring some variety and in this way I liked it better than I enjoyed its aforementioned Lego counterpart. Whether I was running a time trial, crashing through wheels for points, racing CPUs through gates, trying to deliver a new vehicle to each island’s dealership without taking damage, or facing off against a Daredevil or one of 4 Rushers (bosses) per island, I enjoyed the diversity. 

What I wish would have been more fleshed out are the photo events that task you with taking a photo of a landmark and often with a specific vehicle type visible in the shot. Usually the landmark is directly next to the mission portal so it was never a challenge. These are frequently the question mark missions that the game tries to present as a mysterious icon you need to travel to in order to find out what you’ll be doing. While this is primarily used as an excuse to get you to travel the islands, they’re not very big in the first place. However, I won’t say they’re not detailed and filled with intricate sights. If there’s one thing Infinite Rush nails, it’s the toy aesthetics and that much feels realized.

 

 

Here’s how your playtime in Infinite Rush will be spent. You start at Wheelwood, get to choose a starter vehicle, take on all of the available missions by driving to their map icons which will be presented as blue portals once you get to them. Finish these events and new events will populate. As you’re making your way to each event, a mischievous face icon will occasionally appear on your HUD. These are Daredevil vehicles and by approaching them as they’re driving past you can initiate a race that allows you to claim the vehicle if you win. Keep completing events until a Rusher event appears. This is the island’s boss race and completing it will grant you that boss’ vehicle and an access point to the next island. You’ll repeat this process three more times until you’ve faced off against all four Rushers in Wheelwood. Rinse repeat across Tentacle Bay, Gearville and Drifty Temples. The setup is solid but certainly tedious. 

It’s recommended you break up your playtime across multiple short sessions rather than grinding it out. There are, after all, 150 vehicles to be collected, blue gears to pick up, and Hot Wheels icons to locate in tricky spots. The game’s HUD and menus do a good job of tracking your progress. 

Speaking of, I enjoy how Infinite Rush ties earning currency into a combo meter of sorts. For every drift, near-miss with an oncoming vehicle, item smashed into, race won and so on a meter fills up at the top. This meter gifts you Rush Coins and compiles every action you’re doing via onscreen text à la Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Rush Coins can be used at Dealerships to purchase new vehicles (directly in packaging too) or paint vehicles in your collection. 

 

 

The most important form of customization comes from Modules, a series of four gears per each vehicle that allow you to install perks that improve drifting, handling and boosting. You unlock one of four slots at set points in the progression. Needless to say, there is plenty to keep you busy. But it often feels like busywork. This is why the pause menu system is great. You can break away from driving back-and-forth across the islands and compete in single races both offline for up to four players and online. The track editor is back from the Unleashed games as well and is similarly great here. 

That’s just the thing though. I would not recommend Hot Wheels Infinite Rush over either of its Unleashed predecessors. While the open islands are vibrant, filled with set pieces, and have enough to keep you busy, they’re really just a substitute for the overworld map progression in the Unleashed games. Why I end up preferring Unleashed comes down to the unexpected diversity allowed when constructing tracks to be played in random locations versus having to construct tracks within the confines of an established open world. The open world is fun to drive across a few times but loses its appeal when used for both exploration and races. It’s also just more fun to race on a track in one location and move on to a different location. Unleashed and Unleashed 2 featured arcades, living rooms, mini golf courses, and basements that felt like more immersive and believable locations for real Hot Wheels tracks. I like the imaginative playset approach done here too but appealing to our real world brains with something grounded yet outlandish is an idea that stands out more. 

 

 

At present, I would recommend not playing Hot Wheels Infinite Rush on Switch 2. It chugs along at 30 fps in handheld mode, features long load times and stutters in some of the open areas. I felt a bit of input lag that made my experience somewhat frustrating as well when I already wasn’t clicking with the vehicle handling. I was impressed with the 1080p resolution and draw distance, however. Unfortunately I can’t report that Docked mode made any of this much better. If Switch 2 is your only way to play, you could swing it and still have a decent time but you’re better off sticking the key in the ignition elsewhere for the time being. 

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush joins several open world racing games on Nintendo Switch 2 and certainly makes a case for itself as a good starting point in the genre. However, it is also derivative of other better performing and more playable examples of the genre on the platform. With slow performance, a repetitive campaign, long load times and a rough handling model for an open world racer, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is better left in the toybox. 

 

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