Milestone follows up its excellent Hot Wheels Unleashed series with an open-world spin, but the move to broader horizons introduces its own issues.13:00, 06 Sep 2026Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush gives you a lot of ways to explore, collect, and race through its four visually impactful islands thanks to its new open-world approach.‌It was only a few years ago that when a game based on the Hot Wheels franchise crossed my desk for review I’d struggle to get excited. That changed in 2021, however, when storied racing game developer Milestone got its hands on the toy-based IP for the first time, delivering a genuinely fun, thoughtful, and mechanically sound driving experience with the still brilliant Hot Wheels Unleashed.‌Fast forward to now and with one sequel under its belt, the studio is taking the series fully open world Forza Horizon style, moving the action out of the garage and bedroom and into what we imagined our own track setups would look like in the form of Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush. In general, it’s a great excuse to endlessly explore four challenge-filled islands as 100+ iconic toy cars, even if some racing refinement has been lost in the shift from straight racing to open-world exploration.‌One of the absolute best aspects Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush has going for it is a true affection and passion for what it means to collect these vehicles. With every car segmented into one of four categories - Versatile, Drifter, Speeder, and Titan - it isn’t hard to stay amped about building up your own personal collection, forming your ideal squad of Hot Wheels cars that can be switched in and out any time as you drive and then using them to complete in a slew of mostly engaging racing-based challenges to then (you guessed it) collect and race more. It’s true chicken-and-egg game design at its most moreish, with the act of racing itself being its own ultimate reward.I myself am not the biggest Hot Wheels super fan, yet even I can appreciate a lot of the care and attention-to-detail Milestone has placed into recreating vehicles such as 2021’s Baja Jump Truck, last year’s Japan-inspired ‘Feline Lucky’ car, and others in video game form. This was already one of the biggest draws of both Hot Wheels Unleashed titles previously, and the same very much remains the case in Infinite Rush.‌Now, though, competing in standard Race, Stuntman, and Drifting events won’t just see you solely earn the currency required to unlock the cars themselves, but also a litany of different boost effects and livery skins that work to help you make an even more personable Hot Wheels racing experience.I mentioned that every vehicle comes slotted into one of four categories, and the purpose of such an approach makes itself known quickly once you touch down on the starting island of Tentacle Bay. Not only does it force you to regularly switch out vehicles on the fly, but it also tests your ability to race in different events since the way boost is handled varies ever so slightly between them.The Drifter class makes it more manageable to handle your car while boosting and drifting at the same time, while the Speeder class forces you to use a single extended boost with a single button press before the meter refills again as opposed to being able to spam it numerous times in the same stretch. It’s not the most in-depth racing system, but is an appreciated way to better differentiate between all four vehicle classes.‌Feel the rushOne of my favourite aspects of the Hot Wheels Unleashed games was how it shrunk you down within an oversized version of the real world. Basements, garages, and even skate parks were all your racing playgrounds before with you appropriately shrunken down to scale. Infinite Rush’s approach is cool, in that Wheelswood, Gearville, and Drifty Temples set you within actual toyetic environments based on a unique theme, but I’d be lying if I said that the novelty of driving amongst plastic trees, orange roads, and oversized loop-de-loops didn’t eventually wear off.Sure, I enjoy jumping through the mouth of a toy dinosaur skeleton as much as the next Hot Wheels fan, but when you don’t have real-world objects to compare it to a lot of these instances lose their impact.Obviously, with four islands to explore, a lot of the fun in Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush rests on what’s available to do on them - and this is where the Forza Horizon approach winds up being a bit of a mixed bag. Not all the challenges available are winners, you see, with fun Quick Races, Drift challenges, and photo opportunities broken up with weird Stuntman tasks that see you crash around into objects within a certain time limit.‌That sounds fun on the surface, but it's less so when the act of doing such is so, well, easy. Then there’s the race types that have you crashing into randomly placed tyres across a route in order to try and maintain a combo. This one feels like an odd variant on the challenge that sees you trying to chain drifts, although it’s not quite as rewarding to pull off and various times caused me to veer out of bounds.The biggest issue Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush has going for it, however, which I imagine is likely exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2 version, are the load times. A full minute is what it sometimes takes to both load in and load out of a standard Racing event, which doesn’t sound like too much of an issue until you realise that it seriously breaks up the breezy momentum one should feel when racing through not one, but four distinct open-worlds.‌Completing each island’s specific series of events are key to unlocking new ones so there’s no avoiding it either. As such, Switch 2 players at least should expect to spend a lot of time staring at screenful’s of text regularly as you load in and out. But I can't speak towards the other versions.Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush excels when it’s encouraging you to explore its handful of joyful islands, bumping into new ways and excuses to further bolster your personal collection of both new and familiar Hot Wheels vehicles. That said, much of this fun can be dulled once you realise how uninspired certain racing challenges and events can be which, when coupled with unforgivably long load times on Nintendo Switch 2, remove the sheen slightly on Milestone’s latest toyetic racer.However, as a way to provide kids and kids at heart with ample reasons to explore and discover amngst a series of playful toy sandbox playgrounds, at its best Infinite Rush indeed offers a near infinite number of opportunities to do so.Article continues belowRating: 3/5Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush is scheduled to launch on PS5, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on September 10, 2026 .