Hot Wheels: Beat That!

7.0
Good

Gameplay	8.0	"Hot Wheels skids onto 360"
Graphics	7.0
Sound	7.0
Value	7.0

By Morgan Bates

Activision’s latest Hot Wheels title plays like Acclaim’s old racing title Revolt which hit the Nintendo 64, Dreamcast and PlayStation about ten years ago – too long ago for the younger gamers.

To start off you select an event to play, and meet mission goals to progress. The game begins on easy difficulty. As you progress, more events, cars, zones, and difficulty settings become available. The first zone is Bedroom, which gives you a good idea of what to expect from the game: bright visuals and plenty of power-ups with which to wreak havoc on your opponents.

As you win races you collect flames necessary for unlocking the new vehicles, difficulty levels and zones. Each of the zones is a single track with a variety of events to play on it. Events include Eliminator, where the cars at the back are eliminated at regular intervals; Rampage, in which you hit as many cars as you can with rockets before the time expires; and Quick Race, the standard three lap race event.

Each race has specific target goals which you must meet to complete the race and get the flames and secondary goals – which are entirely optional, but will speed up your progression. To aid in the collecting of the flames, weapons are scattered throughout each track with which to slow your opponents. These include rockets, mortars and air strikes. All weapons can be supercharged to make them more powerful and effective.

The races are fast and over the top. Needless to say, if this were based on real cars the physics would be way off. However, in the case of Hot Wheels cars these are spot on (I used a couple of the toys to confirm it).

Because there aren’t any human drivers risking their neck in the cars; crashing into a wall at high-speed only slows you down. You’ll bounce off walls if you bump into them side on. Even if you land on another car after a jump both cars will keep going as if nothing happened. Although this is the case with a lot of racing games, it’s more realistic when you’re racing in Hot Wheels cars, as that’s how they would act if you were able to drive the toys.

Once you’re done with the single player races, you can take the fun online with quick race, eliminator and two multiplayer-exclusive modes: Stock Battle, where you score points by attacking other players; and Timed Battle, which is the same as above with a time limit added.

Hot Wheels: Beat That! is an interesting combat racing title with plenty of events to play, cars to unlock and weapons to exploit. It’s a fun title for the kids, and even older gamers may get a bit nostalgic value of their old Hot Wheels cars.

NZGamer.com - Hot Wheels: Beat That! Facebook