HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™

I want to recommend this game really badly. If you like Hot Wheels, it's obviously got a lot to offer. But if you want a racing game, I'd look elsewhere. It's extremely lackluster. Obviously not every racer needs to be Mario Kart and have power-ups but I feel like that's the only way to make this worth playing. The only things you can do to go faster is to use a rechargeable boost, which is great, and drifting, which is not great. I don't know why but I can't seem to drift in this game without crashing into a wall or just braking completely. Drifting in games like Mario Kart and Sonic Racing Crossworlds is just done so much better. Something that also bothers me is the track hazards are a complete joke. There's usually only 1 per track if even that and when it does show up it just feels like it has nothing to do with the track. I get the tracks are trying to feel like someone built a Hot Wheels track and you're racing a toy car on these plastic tracks which is dope, but it also makes every track feel exactly the same and it gets stale and then it just feels cheap to have only 1 hazard with no theming. I would prefer like, 3 unique hazards per track around a specific thing. Like maybe a spooky one with a skeleton and a spider or a dinosaur one with a T-Rex and a pterodactyl hazard. But when a hazard does show up it's more like....why is this even here? It has nothing to do with the track. And on top of that, you have to buy each track with the in-game currency. The cars I get, but the tracks? Maybe it's not THAT big of a deal, but when all the tracks feel exactly the same it's kind of a slap in the face when in most racers, all tracks are pretty much unlocked from the get-go. On top of that, there is DLC for this game. And I think making the DC, TMNT, Street Fighter, Looney Tunes, and other collabs paid DLC is fine, that makes sense. But they are selling individual cars at DLC for like, $1-2 and stage hazards in the track builder for $3. For a $40 game, I should be getting those for FREE. It's way overpriced for an already overpriced game. I don't completely hate it. I know it sounds like it, but I actually do enjoy it. But these things are just really disappointing to see. This game could be so much better and while I haven't played the sequel yet, I really hope they improved on some of these things.