HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush was provided by Milestone S.r.l. for review. Thank You!

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush caught my attention as soon as I saw it at a game show earlier in 2026: a fully open-world HOT WHEELS experience that looked reminiscent of Forza Horizon for kids, and I'll tell you now that that's exactly what HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush feels like.

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush is here to do one thing: put you in a fun playground where you can throw your plastic car around in a variety of challenges, while picking up collectibles in the moments in between. And it does a great job of exactly that. Collisions? Mostly non-consequential. Fun drifting mechanics? Absolutely. A huge collection of HOT WHEELS vehicles to choose from? You got it.

Rather than giving players one big open world to navigate, Infinite Rush separates the world into 4 islands, each with their own theming and design. They're pretty sizable in their own right, and you'll have to set aside a decent chunk of time in order to explore the islands and discover all the activities and collectibles there are.

Progress comes through events, with many on each island and almost 200 across the 4 islands. These range from quick races and drift challenges to time trials and more. The variety of events keeps things fresh, with multiple types and plenty of track layouts across the islands. You'll also find quicker activities in the free-roam world, such as point-to-point time trial sprints; these are good ways to earn gold coins, which you can spend on additional cars for your collection.

Finally, there are the collectibles in the game: gears strewn across the islands to encourage exploration of all the routes, stickers on the side of buildings which you must photograph, and HOT WHEELS logos that are usually set up for some big stunt jumps.

The game world aside, driving physics is one of the key parts of any racing game, and they've really nailed it with HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush. It's about as far from realistic as you can get, which suits the game fine. This is all about fun; you can crash through objects with minimal speed loss, maintain lengthy drifts if you've got the right vehicle, and boost your way over stunt jumps and loop-de-loops.

Cars are split into different groups, each with slightly different driving mechanics and ways to earn boost. For example, one class gains boost from maintaining a high speed, while others gain boost from drifting, requiring you to drive each type of car in a slightly different manner. They also handle differently, with drift cars being exceptionally fun to drive due to the ease with which you can hold long drifts and rack up plenty of boost to maintain a high speed.

If you played the LEGO expansion to Forza Horizon 4 and the HOT WHEELS expansion of Forza Horizon 5, this game really does feel like a mash-up of the two; you have the city which you can smash through, pushing traffic and street lamps out of your way, before heading up the iconic orange tracks high in the sky for some high-speed action.

The selection of cars is a mixture of fictional HOT WHEELS vehicles and real-life branded cars (that have been adapted into HOT WHEELS); this is great for car enthusiasts, as they'll see familiar brands such as Ferrari, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and more. I didn't think that when I booted the game, I would soon be drifting around the city in a plastic Mazda MX-5.

While you can't strictly "modify" cars in the game, you can apply unlockable perks to each car; these can change 1 of the 3 key stats for the car (Speed, Acceleration, Handling), or something else, like affecting how the car gathers boost. This helps the feeling of progression in the game, beyond just collecting cars, although the changes are usually rather minor, meaning there is usually a best car that you should be using; you can't just upgrade any old car to be the best.

That being said, not everything is perfect in Infinite Rush. As the game progresses, things can start to feel a little... samey. You have to do almost 200 events across the 4 islands; after the first 60-70 events, the excitement of collecting cars and unlocking new events starts to wear thin, and it starts to feel like a grind.

Also, while the collectibles are fun to gather, the reward for doing so seems a bit lackluster. The game rewards progression with cars and occasionally perks, but given how much time some of these tasks can take, it is hard to justify going for all the collectibles unless you're following a guide to make it quick or really want all the game's achievements. Still, if you are picking it up and playing in short sessions, this may be less of an issue.

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush - Steam Deck Performance

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush runs pretty great on the Steam Deck. Controllers are the ideal way to play, and the game does support the Steam Deck's 1280x800 resolution.

Performance is also decent. The game is locked to 30 FPS, and with the CPU demands, even if you can unlock it, you're unlikely to go much higher, regardless of graphical settings. The game defaults to a mixture of Medium and High settings on the Steam Deck, although I was able to use the High preset and still maintain 30 FPS throughout.

You will see occasional stutters, mostly when hitting destructible objects, likely from a sudden CPU spike, but it's not too noticeable, and general racing and driving runs fine. The frametimes aren't overly smooth, but it's good enough, with motion blur helping to cover up the lower framerate.

Power draw is relatively high, being around 18W-21W, but it is dependent on the area. Temperatures were around 65C-70C, the fan does ramp up occasionally, but for the most part isn't noticeable. You can expect a battery life of about 2.5 hours on a Steam Deck OLED and 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

There isn't too much in the way of accessibility in HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush, but you are able to play the game in slow motion in single-player to help those with slower reaction times. The difficulty is also highly flexible, making the AI easy to beat or a challenge even for racing game veterans.

Conclusion:

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush feels like a joy to play. Tight driving mechanics, combined with a variety of environments that act as a great playground. Flexible difficulty options mean the game can be fun for young children and experienced racers alike as they build their collection of iconic vehicles.

HOT WHEELS Infinite Rush's performance on the Steam Deck is pretty good, able to run on high settings with a fairly stable 30 FPS, the game is CPU-bound so adjusting these settings won't net you better performance, just improve your battery life a little. Definitely playable, and I can recommend the game if all you have to play it on is the Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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