Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver

Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver is a third-person arcade challenge game, not a traditional racer. Forget grid starts and lapped opponents. Instead, the whole thing is structured around bite-sized events tied to four colour-coded teams: Green (speed runs), Red (stunts), Blue (precision drifting), and Yellow (destruction and jumps). You pick a team, pick one of 24 vehicles including Hot Wheels classics like the Boneshaker, the Twin Mill, and the Ripper, and then work through over 70 events spread across four Hot Wheels Test Facility locations around the world. Medals unlock the next batch of content, and you can spend accolades on driver skill upgrades and custom paint. On paper, that structure has genuine appeal for younger players or anyone who grew up blowing through a loop-the-loop in their living room. The reality, unfortunately, is pretty rough. Critics and community members alike consistently flagged the controls as the central problem. Your car auto-accelerates, leaving you with steering, drift, and any deployed items to manage, and there is no reliable way to shed speed when a corner sneaks up on you. The steering input itself feels disconnected from what the car actually does, which turns precision-based challenges into a frustration loop rather than a satisfying skill test. The trainer voices that bark at you mid-event have also drawn complaints for being grating and harsh, which is a strange tone for a game aimed at a younger audience. Community reception across platforms has been broadly unfavourable, and most critic scores landed in the low range. Multiplayer exists but needs some upfront honesty: it is Hot Seat Mode, meaning up to four players take turns completing the same event and compare scores afterward. One controller gets passed around the couch. If you were hoping for simultaneous split-screen chaos, this is not that game. The format can produce a low-key laugh or two when watching a friend fight the controls on the same level you just suffered through, but calling it a proper multiplayer mode would be generous. For the "four friends on the couch" test, this does not pass. There are a few things that hold up. The variety of event types across the four team disciplines means no two back-to-back challenges feel identical, and the medal-grade replay structure does reward repeat attempts. The iconic vehicle roster will spark recognition for anyone who owned the toy cars, and the global test facility settings bring some visual ambition to proceedings. But those positives sit inside a package that received generally unfavourable reviews across all platforms, and the PC version carries the same control and design complaints as its console siblings. Bottom line: this one is aimed squarely at young Hot Wheels fans who will engage with the brand on its own terms and forgive the loose handling. If you are a racing game player looking for satisfying car feel, challenge structure with real depth, or couch multiplayer worth setting up, you are going to hit the wall fast.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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