Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged

I've organised more Saturday night couch-racing sessions than I can count, so when a game ships with split-screen support I sit up straight. Turbocharged checks that box, though with an asterisk that matters: the split-screen tops out at two players, not four. Community threads have been vocal about that limitation since before launch, and it stings in a game that otherwise screams "pile four people onto the sofa." Flag that before you hype up game night. On its own terms, though, this arcade racer earns its keep. The garage runs deep, with over 130 vehicles split across six classes: Rocket, Balanced, Swift, Drifter, Off-Road, and Heavy Duty. Those categories are not just flavour. A Drifter class car threads tight hairpins in ways a Heavy Duty bruiser simply cannot, and the game actively nudges you to swap vehicles for different event types rather than one-tricking your favourite model. New to the mix are motorcycles and ATVs, and they handle distinctly enough to feel like genuine additions rather than palette swaps. The drift-and-boost loop is the mechanical heart of it all: hit a corner clean, bleed speed into a controlled slide, then punch the boost out of it. Mess up and you are spinning into a wall. The handling is tighter and less forgiving than you might expect from a toy-car game, so casual players may need a session or two before they stop eating barriers. The track editor remains a standout, and reviewers across the board singled it out as one of the best in the genre. Environments span backyards, golf courses, and living rooms, faithfully evoking that childhood instinct to sprawl orange plastic track across every surface in the house. New to this entry are drift challenge events, where you chase a score around a course rather than just a podium, and elimination races that bump the last-place racer out on a timer. The story mode, called Creature Rampage, wraps the campaign in a Saturday-morning-cartoon premise about monsters invading a city, complete with animated still-frame cutscenes. The story itself is thin and dialogue leans corny, but the mode does the practical job of guiding you through the vehicle classes and unlocking the map systematically. Running about eight hours, it is a reasonable on-ramp rather than the main event. The complaints worth flagging: vehicle unlocks rely partly on chance-based systems, difficulty spikes unevenly in later campaign stages, and if you already sank hours into the first Hot Wheels Unleashed, the track editor will feel very familiar. Owners of the original may feel the leap is incremental rather than transformative. For newcomers, none of that matters much. The package is polished, the DualSense and DualShock support feels responsive on PC, and online PvP is in the box. Just manage expectations on the couch-multiplayer side: two controllers maximum, full stop.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

Be the first to comment on Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged.