Fun game so far I like it better than the first one has a better menu system and more variety with tracks and cars. Also has bikes and monster trucks. Pretty fun game bought it on sale. I wouldn’t pay full price for it wait for a sale. Graphics are good. And plays great on the steam deck.

How on earth do you accomplish these drift master events?? Seriously I've never have had such a challenge in any racing game!! This game is honestly pretty good though!💯

It has been a long time since I've played a Hot Wheels racing game with my last ones being Stunt Track Challenge and Highway 35 World Race way back in the mid 2000s. Missed out on playing Unleashed 1 and went straight to Unleashed 2 after seeing the better selection of vehicles offered compared to the first game. After giving it a solid try for a number of days and dabbling in its user generated content, here's what I can say about the title.

- Racing experience is pretty solid. It's an arcade racer with a brake to drift mechanic that has proper throttle control application that makes sliding around corners a lot more satisfying than most brake to drift models offered by most modern racing games. There's some actual skill to this as opposed to being brain-dead when going around corners.

- This is probably one of a handful of times where a boost mechanic has some proper thrusting power to it that it almost acts like a propellant. Allowing you to legitimately fly in the air if you have enough boost and are angled in such a way.

- The sound design of the cars didn't have to be this good but is absolutely appreciated. The sound design of them alone would put most modern racers I've played to shame. It has proper turbocharger spooling sounds, turbo waste gate sounds, and really good exhaust notes for most of the cars. I feel a few them could've been utilized more on some cars as they fit the style more and felt more raw than others. Good sound design in a racing game nowadays is such a rarity.

- I feel the selection of cars could've been more better. While it is technically better than the first game judging by videos I've seen, I feel the range and history of Hot Wheels as a brand hasn't been explored or represented enough with the offerings available. There's no lines like the Speed Machines, Hot Wheels Designer Challenge (which coincidentally was made to celebrate Hot Wheel's 40th Anniversary), Faster Than Ever, or even any of the obscure lines in Hot Wheels history like Crashers, Scorchers, Top-Speed, or even Tech Trax being represented here.

- That said, I was really hoping that by the second game they'd have the ability to allow the player to swap wheel designs over different models like in Stunt Track Challenge. As part of the Hot Wheels customizer community, wheel swapping Hot Wheels cars is a bread and butter thing to do and the simplest mod you can do to these toys. It not being a thing in a game about Hot Wheels feels like a missed opportunity yet again.

- Speaking of cars, a couple of the cars feel off in scale. I have a lot of the cars the game offers in my personal collection and I notice that the scale of some models are not represented properly. Ending up in some cars being a lot more bigger than they should be. The "Rivited" is the most obvious example of this issue.

- The environments are great. A lot of it feels like something from the Hot Wheels: Beat That game from 2007. There's a lot of neat little details on them if you go looking around carefully like that pizza box on the roof of the house. Or the Acceleracer cars just parked on the dedicated team lifts in the Acceledrome. I do kinda wish they brought over the environments from the first game too for much more added variety in the career mode, considering they did carry over most of the cars from the first game. I would've loved to experience the acrophobia inducing construction site theme in Unleashed 2. I do however have a glaring issue of the use of AI generated art for the posters in the Arcade environment. These could've easily been posters of old Hot Wheels media or even references to older Hot Wheels games instead. Heck, they could've also used the old box arts of older playsets that Hot Wheels has too. It's disappointingly lazy and I wished they were better with this choice.

- The livery editor is probably the worst of its kind I've used in any modern racing game. While I applaud it for allowing a player to create their own stickers that can be easily reused over and over, applying it and adjusting it is not ideal. There's no form of fine adjustment so you can't exactly place it in the spot you want it to be in without it looking ajar. There's also the issue where the game doesn't convey how you do certain things as it utilizes a lot of symbols. Not exactly helpful for first time users. Even after dabbling for in the editor for a good couple of hours I still do not know how you group things together and the option of it is always grayed out in the menu. It really needs more QA testing, or further research from racing games from 2010 and older. This is not also mentioning that you HAVE to share your creation to even use it. You can't simply just apply the livery onto a car and use it immediately. You have to do the dance of saving the creation, sharing it online, downloading your livery online, and then applying to your car for you to use it. I also wish that the liveries on the stock vehicles were all individual pieces you can utilize from the options of the livery editor. So many of the stock cars have great designs that would allow easy access for people to create cool looking liveries just unavailable. Something that Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge does a much better job of.

- The same goes for the track creator. It's probably the second worst I've touched of this kind of system and, like the livery editor, it doesn't properly convey to the player things they should know. The symbols the game gives you could've been supplemented with text among other things. Like, to even finish a course, specifically a circuit, you have to be at a specific length to even have the track piece connect. Even with the "Auto-Finish" option enabled. I can't tell you how much of a headache it was trying to build a simple course and finish it. It really says a lot how a game from 2010 (Modnation Racers) does a much better job doing track creation than a modern title like this one. You can't even place scenery stuff around a course you built either.

- A lot of the track pieces used in game feel samey in their style and function. In the many years Hot Wheels has produced toys, they've had many track pieces that could've been utilized in the game for added track piece variety. And this includes hazards. One piece I'm surprised isn't depicted in the game is the iconic Hot Wheels motorized booster that has been depicted in the World Race and Acceleracers movies. Instead we have these weird tube launchers that shoot our vehicles through the air. It really is a weird design choice compared to the other pieces.

- The game does not have a view change button and you're always stuck using a far cam on the races that sit way too high for my liking. While this is good so that one can see ahead clearer, this destroys the sense of speed one can gain by having the camera closer and lower.

Overall, I enjoyed the game despite a couple of glaring issues I have of it. It's a great gift from a great friend of mine. If all the issues I've mentioned were all ironed out with updates (or maybe even mods considering development of this game has finished), this would probably be the best modern Hot Wheels game to date I've played.