Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush Preview: Milestone serves up a more arcade Forza Horizon-like open-world

Time and time again, developer Milestone has proven its versatility in the racing category. Whether we're talking about simulation motorbike racing games or arcade-geared alternatives with an anime aesthetic, the Italian studio has become one of the biggest players in the racing world. Following on from multiple past explorations into the realm of Hot Wheels, Milestone and the miniature racing brand are teaming up once again, this time for a more ambitious option that brings together open-world adventuring and intense linear races, a project known simply as Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush.

While you won't have to wait too long before being able to dive into Infinite Rush of your own accord, as the game will launch on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2 on September 24, I've had the luxury of being able to get an early taste of the wider game in a preview session specifically set in the Wheelwood area, one of four open areas offered in the full game with this one coined by the giant King Kong-like ape straddling a skyscraper in the middle of the map.

The preview session let me loose in this wider world to experience all it had to offer. What you can expect is a Forza Horizon-styled map, a world where you can freely explore wherever you want, avoid traffic along the way, gather collectibles, complete Stunts and other side activities, and also activate races of a variety of kinds. It isn't a direct copy of Forza Horizon's formula, but you can see there's inspiration taken from Playground's concept, a little bit akin to what Visual Concepts did with Lego 2K Drive shortly after the Lego Speed Champions DLC launched in Forza Horizon 4 and seemingly tested the water. Now we have another example of this, as it was only with Forza Horizon 5 that the Hot Wheels expansion arrived.

So anyway, you choose a car from a handful of types. There's the all-rounder Versatile, the offroad-geared and bigger Titans, the quick Speedsters, and also the agile Drifters, and you can choose one car for each of these categories and then hot-swap between them while out in the open-world. If you do want to switch the cars selected in each category, you can do so but it will involve a trip to the garage through a menu. With your cars chosen, you are dropped into what's best described as a city overrun with children's toys. We see a typical array of urban and rural, regular buildings and key points-of-interest, and then these are enhanced by bright orange Hot Wheels tracks stretching through the sky, enormous dinosaur statues to race around and sandpits to zoom throughout, and it's all stitched together into a rather cohesive and entertaining whole that makes blasting around the map a real treat.

Milestone clearly wanted to create a more arcade - and perhaps even child-friendly - version of the Horizon formula, as when you travel around you find hundreds of Gears and around 10 Hot Wheels Billboards collectibles to gather per zone, which are effectively the equivalent of Bonus Boards. Adding to this are photographer side tasks where you use a photo mode to snap pictures of key POIs, drift and speeding challenges, delivery tasks where the aim is to get from point A to B as fast and cleanly as possible, even rival cars zooming around who you can challenge for added fun. Again, it's a playground that Milestone is offering here and while it lacks some of the precision and depth of a Horizon game, it works well enough to engage.

As for the races, expect to be battling it out against AI who could benefit from being quicker on a rather limited number of tracks/courses that are repeated time-and-again except with using slightly different game modes. In theory, Elimination operates differently to a basic Quick Race, but if you are miles ahead of the opposition, there's no real change, meaning you just find yourself putting in qualifying laps on a track you've already raced around four times in a row on different game modes. It could benefit from a bit of versatility and variety, as right now, it seems to be the cars themselves where the biggest changes are found.

And credit to Milestone for offering up a really broad garage in Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush. We're not talking about real cars here, but their Hot Wheels counterparts, meaning small plastic-looking machines without number plates and with bizarre shapes and accents sticking out in all manner of places. There are real cars that have been converted into Hot Wheels, be it a Nissan GT-R or a Koenigsegg Jesko, but also the wacky creations the brand has been known for, including the T-Rex-troyer and the Sharkuiser. They handle like an absolute dream too, as again, the aim here isn't to offer a closer semblance of simulation racing but to target simple and easy arcade driving, meaning cars stick to the road like glue and go from 0-230 km/h in about a second when boosting. It's madness but also good fun.

It'll be interesting to see how Milestone goes about changing things up in the other three islands on offer, but as it stands, like the Hot Wheels Unleashed games, it does seem like the development team has achieved what it's set out to do, in serving up light and straightforward arcade racing where the focus is on having a good bit of fun first and foremost. It's a formula that works and is easy to appreciate, and I have no reason to argue against that after my hands-on time with Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush.