Hot Wheels: World’s Best Driver

Genre: Racing / Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Hot Wheels: World’s Best Driver, released on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U in 2013, with a version of the game coming to Nintendo 3DS in 2013 and to mobile devices in 2014, is a Racing game… sort of. Players don’t actually race other cars in this game, nor is the goal generally to beat times on a track. Rather, this game is about completing a series of specific challenges within a time limit. For someone interested in a Hot Wheels game for fun, Arcadey racing, this is undoubtedly a disappointment… and that’s before you even play the thing.

Yeah, I won’t waste time getting to it – the gameplay here is absolutely terrible. The first thing I noticed when playing this game was the biggest input lag I have ever encountered in a racing game. I could press the control stick in a direction, take my finger off the stick, and wait a second before my vehicle would move. My jaw dropped at how bad this was.

This is on top of the fact that this game’s challenges are not particularly fun. This feels more like some sort of tutorial for a bigger game that never materialized, like they were planning on making an actual racing game but once they finished with a collection of boring challenges they decided to just call it a day and sell this as a game.

The game can’t even be bothered to try to make it seem exciting – the game’s announcer sounds like the most boring, straight-laced, dull announcer to ever voice a videogame… and this is a Hot Wheels game, where you’d expect an announcer to be over-the-top! At the very least, graphically this game seems… okay. Not great, but at least the tracks are visually interesting and the framerate seems acceptable. And overall, everything seems polished. Dull, but polished.

Frankly, I was pretty disgusted by this game. While the presentation is decent-looking, the game is dull, controls poorly, and has dreary challenges in place of an actual, you know, game. If you’re looking for a great Arcadey racing game on Wii U, stick with Sonic or Mario Kart. If you want a great Hot Wheels game, there are some worth trying on other platforms. But Hot Wheels: World’s Best Driver is an abysmal game that no one should play.

tl;dr – Hot Wheels: World’s Best Driver is a dull, abysmal affair that only just barely qualifies as a “Racing” game, instead being more about uninteresting challenges. Unfortunately, the controls are horrendous, and the game’s announcer seems like he’s trying to put you to sleep. Do one better than that and be sure to sleep on this game – you’ll probably get more entertainment value snoozing than you would playing this snooze-fest.

Grade: D

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