HOT WHEELS Pass Vol. 3

My Saturday night group has a simple test for DLC: does it make us argue over who gets to pick next, or does it just quietly pad a launcher library? Pass Vol. 3 for Hot Wheels Unleashed lands firmly in the first camp, though only if you are already invested in Milestone's arcade racer. This is the third and final season pass, running content drops from June through August 2022, and it goes hard on licensed IP that will hit different depending on your age bracket. The headliner is the Looney Tunes Expansion, which drops a full new environment called the Looney Tunes Adventure Park, complete with a Desert setting that leans into the Wile E. Coyote vs Road Runner energy, plus five vehicles, a themed Customization Pack, and a Track Builder module. Alongside that, the pass bundles nine additional vehicles spread across the rest of the wave: TMNT Donatello, TMNT Shredder, He-Man, Skeletor, Swamp Thing, The Jetsons car, The Mystery Machine, a Classic Packard, and a McLaren 720S. That roster alone is genuinely ridiculous in the best way. Watching a tiny McLaren 720S drift next to Skeletor's purple chariot on a looping orange track is exactly the kind of chaos the base game was built for. Three Track Builder modules are also included: Jumping Towers, Zero Gravity Checkpoint, and Super Dealership. The Zero Gravity Checkpoint in particular opens up some properly wild community track layouts, which is where the real long-tail value lives. Rounding it out are three Customization Packs themed around Cyberpunk, Retro Game, and Hot Rod, so there is something for the aesthetic crowd too. The honest caveat: this is DLC, not a standalone game, and it does nothing to fix the base game's known rough edges. Hot Wheels Unleashed has always had a difficulty curve that can spike awkwardly on time trial events, and the new City Rumble events added by the Looney Tunes Expansion inherit that same DNA. Casual players who just want to lap the Looney Tunes Desert with friends will have a great time; anyone going for full completion in the new event set should know it can get genuinely punishing. The base game supports two-player split-screen and up to twelve players online, but that split-screen cap at two is still the one thing that stings for a couch party setup. Wheel support was never added to Unleashed, so this is a gamepad-only experience start to finish, which is fine given the arcade nature of it. Who is this for right now? If you own Hot Wheels Unleashed and have chewed through Passes Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, this is the logical finish line. The Looney Tunes environment is the most visually distinct setting in the whole DLC run, the vehicle roster is genuinely fun to mess with in multiplayer, and the three new Track Builder modules have real creative utility. If you are considering jumping in fresh, the Game of the Year Edition bundles all three passes together and is the smarter entry point rather than picking up passes individually. For anyone who just wants more silly cars and more track pieces to throw at friends on a Friday night, Vol. 3 delivers exactly that without any pretension.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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