Though it came several years before Battle Force 5, Hot Wheels: Velocity X is another game that applies a sci-fi sheen to the Hot Wheels license. To its credit, Hot Wheels: Beat That! does understand that it’s ok for a Hot Wheels game to actually be about small cars racing around big household environments – translating the toy experience into video games for once! Though Hot Wheels: Ultimate Racing is a handheld, PSP exclusive, it’s a genuinely enjoyable game that stops short of making it to the top half of the best Hot Wheels games list.

Hot Wheels Table - Etsy UK

The problem is that the cars just aren’t very responsive, resulting in a game that feels pretty sluggish to play. Standard races along with elimination races are on offer in Hot Wheels: Beat That!, with 12 different environments and over 30 familiar Hot Wheels toy cars to collect and race. Multiplayer racing and arena battles add to the experience too – even though these are disappointingly limited to just two players being able to compete, they’re excellent fun. Though a little derivative, this 35th Anniversary celebration of Hot Wheels has (appropriately) 35 cars to choose from and some excellent multiplayer action (up to four players supported on GameCube – sadly only two player simultaneous gaming on PS2). Unlike so many licensed mobile games, Hot Wheels: Race Off was fairly balanced and could be completed with skill, rather than relying on predatory microtransactions to force players to open their digital wallets and spend real money to progress. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been tuned properly gameplay-wise; the destructible environments and varied settings are excellent, but it does take a good deal of practice to get used to the unresponsive cars in the game.A strange quirk of Hot Wheels video games is that so many of them don’t treat the vehicles as toys. Instead, players will usually race familiar cars around looping environments, but generally in ‘real world’, full sized settings.

Hot Wheels Playsets | Smyths Toys UK Hot Wheels Playsets | Smyths Toys UK

Now this is how you do it! Hot Wheels Unleashed gets absolutely everything right when it comes to the Hot Wheels license – it’s hard to see how any other game could possibly match it for just how much mileage it gets from the toys it’s based on!