TL;DR: Hot Wheels Infinite Rush delivers good-looking cars, accessible arcade racing and welcome customisation upgrades, but its bland open environments lose much of the miniature magic that made Hot Wheels Unleashed special.

Taking Hot Wheels into an open world sounds like the sort of idea that should practically design itself. Give me tiny cars, enormous environments, ridiculous orange tracks and enough ramps to make gravity file a formal complaint. Hot Wheels Infinite Rush certainly has the cars and the speed, but in expanding the playground, it loses much of the personality that made the Hot Wheels Unleashed games stand out.

The racing remains approachable and entertaining, the cars look fantastic, and there are plenty of things to collect and customise. But the four open maps surrounding all of that feel surprisingly ordinary. Infinite Rush wants to make Hot Wheels bigger, yet somehow makes its world feel smaller.

The cars still look ridiculously good

One thing hasn’t disappeared: Milestone’s ability to make tiny toy cars look almost unnervingly real.

The materials across the roughly 150-car roster are beautifully represented, from painted metal to moulded plastic. Around a third of the available cars are new additions rather than returning models, although the selection leans heavily toward newer Hot Wheels designs. Older decades are comparatively underrepresented, and the pop-culture vehicles seen in previous games are absent, though Ferrari’s inclusion is a welcome addition.

More disappointing is the loss of visible wear. The Unleashed games allowed cars to accumulate scratches and scuffs that made them look like toys that had survived several years of childhood abuse. Infinite Rush keeps everything much cleaner, and while that sounds minor, it removes a surprisingly effective piece of the illusion.

These cars still look excellent. They just don’t feel quite as tangible.

Four classes, but drifting wins my vote

Infinite Rush divides its cars into four classes: Versatile, Speeder, Drifter and Titan. Each comes with its own quirks, giving you reasons to experiment rather than simply choosing whichever vehicle has the most impressive numbers.

Titans are bulky machines with longer boost meters, but completely draining that boost temporarily hurts their speed. Versatile cars handle boost differently, while Drifters naturally favour sliding through corners.

Drifters seem like the most natural fit for an arcade racer built around ridiculous toy cars. The other classes aren’t quite as satisfying when thrown sideways, and there are moments where simply charging around a corner can be more effective than committing to a proper drift.

That’s a strange outcome for a game where going sideways should feel like half the point.

The open world loses the toy-box magic

Infinite Rush’s biggest problem is its new world structure.

Rather than one enormous interconnected environment, there are four modest islands: Wheelswood, Tentacle Bay, Gearville and Drifty Temples. They offer different themes, ranging from urban areas to desert-industrial scenery and East Asian-inspired surroundings, with familiar Hot Wheels track pieces woven throughout.

The issue isn’t that they’re unpleasant. They’re simply not particularly memorable.

Hot Wheels Unleashed understood how funny and exciting scale could be. Tiny cars raced across floors and furniture while ordinary objects became enormous landmarks. Infinite Rush instead places its miniature vehicles inside environments that often resemble conventional racing-game locations decorated with oversized plastic props.

That distinction matters enormously. A Hot Wheels car blasting underneath furniture immediately sells the fantasy that you’re controlling a toy. Driving through generic streets while smashing through benches doesn’t have the same effect, regardless of how many giant plastic animals are watching.

Side activities don’t rescue exploration either. Photo challenges and checkpoint collections add things to do, but many feel more like map-clearing exercises than discoveries worth chasing.

Customisation deserves a better playground

The frustrating part is that Infinite Rush improves several areas that would have been fantastic additions to the previous formula.

Four-player split-screen is an excellent fit for Hot Wheels. Custom tracks can now support AI opponents, potentially giving player-created circuits considerably more usefulness, and wheel swapping expands vehicle customisation.

Track creation remains an important part of the package, but Infinite Rush places tighter restrictions on vertical construction than its predecessors. That’s especially unfortunate when outrageous elevation changes are exactly the sort of nonsense Hot Wheels should encourage.

This leaves Infinite Rush in a strange position. Some of its best improvements arrive alongside environments that provide fewer opportunities to exploit the franchise’s inherent silliness.

Plenty to do, not enough worth remembering

There’s certainly no shortage of content. Races, exploration activities, collectibles, customisation and track creation provide plenty to work through, while difficulty options make the racing accessible to newcomers without ignoring more experienced arcade racing fans.

The problem is motivation.

An open world is only exciting when you’re curious about what’s around the next corner. Infinite Rush gives you plenty of corners, but too few of them reveal something that captures the imagination. Its environments function perfectly well as places to drive through, yet rarely sell the fantasy of unleashing miniature cars inside an enormous playground.

That’s particularly noticeable because Hot Wheels is practically built for visual absurdity. This is a franchise where an orange plastic loop appearing somewhere physically impossible isn’t a design problem — it’s Tuesday.

Verdict

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush has a genuinely appealing idea at its core, but moving the series into open environments costs it too much of the toy-scale spectacle that made Hot Wheels Unleashed memorable.

The racing remains accessible and enjoyable, the vehicle models look excellent, and additions such as four-player split-screen, AI support on custom tracks and expanded car customisation are worthwhile. There’s also a substantial collection of vehicles and activities for players who simply want to race, collect and build.

Unfortunately, the four open maps aren’t imaginative enough to support the concept. Generic scenery, forgettable activities and less exciting pre-built tracks leave Infinite Rush feeling oddly restrained for a game based on Hot Wheels.

There’s fun here, particularly for younger players and dedicated Hot Wheels collectors, but Infinite Rush trades too much personality for freedom. Bigger roads don’t automatically make a better playground.