Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush Is Drifting onto PS5 Earlier Than Expected

If it has more of a Burnout Paradise feel, I'm in. But I tend to doubt it will go that far - I hope they prove me wrong.

I got tired too quickly of the previous Hot Wheels games - you had to learn and master hundreds of individual racetracks to win consistently, and the choice of car was almost always which had the most boost - nothing else mattered most of the time. It was fun for what it was, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

I am really keeping my fingers crossed that this shall prove to be just all out fun. I’m really looking forward to it, and can’t wait to dive in.

I’m not so much looking forward to things like GTA unless it shows it’s more than just what I experienced with the previous ones at this point.

So, to people like me I guess the release date as such wouldn’t have mattered, as it wouldn’t have gotten lost.

I’ll remain just as open minded as I am with GTA, whilst really hoping this Hot Wheels becomes the open world racer for me!

@RobN I got the first one on Switch thinking my kids would enjoy it but it was so brutal with the track traps and the physics. The fact you could run off track and just... keep going the wrong way made it nearly impossible for my kids to enjoy.

I played it with a neighbor kid who's really into cars thinking he'd love it and he took one jump weird, ran off track and couldn't figure out how to get back to where he needed to be. He handed me the controller and said it just wasn't very fun.

I always felt it was a shame they didn't truly make a Hot Wheels game playable for young kids.

@MFTWrecks The first two can be fun if you're good at racing (or more realistically, kart-racing style) games. But even if you are, don't expect to go into a new track and do well - the signposting is awful, you can end up off the track like you said, many tracks have shortcuts that at higher difficulties you simply MUST use to do well (but they may be hidden and you have to watch another racer take them or explore for ages to discover them yourself).

And once you master one track, there's mostly one or two races at that track, and then it's off to learn a new one. Great for hours and hours and hours and hours of content, awful for pick-up-and-play progression, or for kids.

And that cool new car you unlocked (Snoopy on the sopwith camel doghouse!!!) is probably garbage in a race so if you play with it for fun you're going to lose.

@RobN There was about 50 or 60 tracks per game, not "hundreds". Would you have preferred if you had played every track in the first hour?

And no, boost isn't the only metric to consider. Drift and the control of that is also very important. A lot of the vehicles handled very differently and has nuance and depth that needs to be understood to be competitive at the game.

@MrPeanutbutterz You're not wrong. But all that stuff made the game supremely difficult for young kids - the primary target demographic for Hot Wheels - to play.

That's my biggest gripe with the series: it's not kid friendly. And I believe it wholeheartedly should be.

If the developer wanted to make a hard(er) core arcade racer, cool. Please do that. I love the genre. But if you slap the Hot Wheels IP on something, I really think kids should be able to play it and have fun.

As it stands, the series is deceivingly difficult and I think that's a drawback.

Fair enough, "hundreds" of tracks is a bit of hyperbole, though not so much if you combine the two titles. And maybe some people feel a difference between the cars - for me, any difference in the handling or speed or acceleration were always vastly overwhelmed by the difference in boost. It quickly felt like that was the ONLY stat to pay any attention to, and to figure out which boost type you worked with best.

As for the playable for young kids, I suppose some of that depends on how young you're talking about. I do appreciate there are some harder difficulties for a challenge for older players like me, but I also felt the track designs were too often too hard to play until you memorized what was around each corner - there was just very little reaction time available. The first time through a new track was often a nightmare.

To each his own - it's been a popular series, so clearly a lot of people enjoy it more than I have. I hope they take the new one with an open world in places that improve the playability and make it more enjoyable for me, personally.

@MFTWrecks I love both the Hot Wheels Unleashed games, but you're right: the first one can be utterly brutal and is deceptive in that it actually has a very steep learning curve.

If you can get it cheap, I do recommend Unleashed 2 over 1. It's nowhere near as hard and the tracks are designed way better. For instance, the first one has a stupid amount of tracks where if you're going even a little bit too fast, your car will end up in the air instead of going down a slope, which can be infuriating. I don't recall one instance of that in Unleashed 2, which makes it infinitely more approachable. Plus it has a sideswipe mechanic that can right your trajectory if you find yourself headed towards a bad situation.

It's a Milestone game. An empty, featureless game with questionable controls and steep discounts inside 60 days are almost guaranteed.

I do really like the look of this, I think I'll hold of buying it though because it's got PS Plus Essential written all over it.

I've plenty of other things to play so happy to wait for it.

@Brigurugi I like Milestone games but yes you're right. They're flawed. The thing I find with them is that the AI can be wildly inconsistent at times. Just hoping the issues aren't as widespread as I have Ride 6 and Moto GP 26 on my backlog.

Loved the first two unleashed games.
This looks right up my street again too! Hopefully this is a refreshing blast again too. Loved the track editor too so hope that makes a return. I made over 100+ tracks on Unleashed 2.
Glad its coming early and theres a discount for the ultimate version on the store. might be tempted to bite the bullet on that!