Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Hot Wheels Let’s Race is an animated series that released on Netflix in 2024 and 2025, with this family-friendly Arcade-style Racing game, Ultimate Speed, releasing in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. This game combines elements of the TV show and elements of the Hot Wheels brand in general into a game with plenty of wacky courses.

I have some mixed feelings about this game’s presentation. On the one hand, this game has a good sense of speed, and while there is a bit of slowdown in places, it’s not nearly as much as you might expect given that combination of speed and customizable track design (but more on that in a bit). On the other hand, the game’s modular track design means that all of this game’s tracks look really samey, and its backgrounds look detached from the tracks themselves. Also, that sense of speed is drastically curtailed during the game’s boss fights (more on this in a bit too).

Then there’s the elements from the TV show, and while I get that this game has a young target audience, wow do I hate this game’s repetitive, cheery, juvenile voice clips. Hearing a kid shouting “This is fun!” over and over again is not a way to make me think a game is more fun.

As for the gameplay, Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed has some really interesting ideas. First, the aforementioned boss battles are a clever way to add some variety to the gameplay, with these fights having players dodge enemy attacks and toss collected items from the track back at the enemy to wear down their life bar. These battles are a bit repetitive, and I don’t think the game gives players enough opportunity to dodge those enemy attacks, but the game doesn’t seem to penalize you much for getting hit. Ultimately, these battles seem like fluff to pad out the game rather than anything that truly impacts the overall gameplay.

Another interesting element here is the track builder, which lets players place various unlockable track pieces down with the game automatically rerouting the rest of the course to line up with these new additions, which is a nice touch that makes it more accessible. Unfortunately, to fully unlock this mode, you need to play through a series of… I guess puzzles? You could maybe say this acts as a tutorial, but it keeps going well after the player has already gotten the idea of how to create these custom levels. In any case, it’s tedious and frustrating for players who just want to get creating.

And while all of these elements are at least potentially interesting, they’re undone by one basic flaw – the core gameplay here is just not very good, with your racer either overreacting to your turns, or reacting too slowly, based on the circumstance. More often than not, this means that the game’s twisty, crazy courses will have you bouncing around on the walls like a pinball machine. This doesn’t greatly affect your actual racing, but it has the effect of making you feel like you’re not fully in control of your vehicle. Maybe that’s just as well for younger players who just wanna’ go fast and smash into things, but for more skilled players who want a Racing game where they feel like they’re in control, this creates an extremely unsatisfying experience.

In the end, I think Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed truly is trying to do some interesting things, but between a presentation that’s extremely annoying, clever ideas that are implemented poorly, and core Racing gameplay that controls terribly, this isn’t a game I can recommend to anyone but fans of the TV show it’s based on. And even those players I would try to steer toward other better Racing games.

tl;dr – Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Ultimate Speed is a family-friendly Arcade-style Racing game based on a Netflix animated show. There are some genuinely good ideas here, but they’re poorly-executed, and on top of that the game has an extremely annoying presentation and awful core gameplay. Unless you’re a fan of the show, I’d recommend skipping this… and even if you are a fan, I’d encourage you to pay other better Racing games.

Grade: C-

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