Hot Wheels Unleashed is an arcade-style racing game where you race toy cars around sprawling, looping tracks through rooms and garages. Its controls, while child-friendly, offer enough nuance to reward practice. It's a game that focuses on ingenuity and creative driving as much as pure skill and is approachable to a wide range of players through difficulty settings and game modes.

Each of the cars are real Hot Wheels cars, be they from real companies like Dodge or Chevrolet or made-up ones like the Time Attaxi, and all feature a high level of detail, be it in the small surface imperfections or the paint that's scraped off during each race. The tracks are similar to real Hot wheels tracks, featuring huge web-shooting spiders, and T-Rex jaws to dodge. They also have magnetic sections which allow you to race on walls and ceilings, and the wide variety of designs make each one feel different.

As you race there are hazards scattered across the tracks, such as barriers that slow you down, or sections where you can fall off the side. You can use boosts of speed on straight sections of tracks to get ahead of your opponents, and you need to drift around corners at just the right angle to avoid crashing into the side barriers. While this drifting mechanic is simple to learn, mastering it takes significant practise and skill. During jumps, you can manipulate your car and use speed boosts to skip huge sections of the track, meaning even if you're far behind the leaders there's always a chance to make a comeback. A comprehensive and detailed track creator allows you to make your own courses, which you can then share online with other players.

Additional content increases the number of cars and tracks available to play, most notably the Spongebob season, which allows you to unlock cars inspired by the hit show, and the Batman content which brings lots of cars, races and even new campaign events to the game.

It's a racing game that blends arcade-style gameplay with the classic toys. The Hot Wheels angle offers some novelty, but it's the wide array of cars and customisations (and level editor) that really make this stand out from the usual franchise tie-in games.