Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Hot Wheels: Velocity X

Written by John Scalzo on February 21, 2003

Full Review: You know the X stands for Xtreme!!11!!1!!

Everyone had a collection of Hot Wheels cars as a little kid. Driving them across desks and up walls, basically any flat surface. Crashing them together in a spectacular destruction derby on the kitchen table. Now THQ has tried to capture that feeling with their latest Hot Wheels racer known as Hot Wheels Velocity X.

Velocity X has a ton of options and you'll be spending most of your time in the Adventure mode. Adventure mode wraps the three other modes of play (Battle, Drag Race and Challenge) into a story of a boy and his Hot Wheels. You control Max Justice, son of Dr. Peter Justice, who has invented Velocity X, a new type of car fuel. The formula has been stolen by a gang of goons and it's your job to get it back. Not exactly deep, and riddled with ludicrous plot holes, the story is pretty much an afterthought to the driving.

Navigating the tracks is the first of many problems you'll encounter shortly into the game. The controls are much too loose to be effective. You'll be slipping and sliding all over the tracks. And when most of the tracks are littered with obstacles that will take time off the clock you'll be riding the brake much of the time. The controls are made harder by the less than perfect framerate. OK, I'll be perfectly honest, the framerate sucks. It's often jumpy and at one point dropped to less than one frame per second. That's decimal numbers people.

The one thing the tracks do get right is that they're built like real Hot Wheels tracks. There's loop the loops, vertical ramps and nearly every wall can be ridden up. It's definitely fun for awhile. The problem is that for many of the extended loops and some of the vertical ramps you can't tell where you're going. Especially when you consider some of the level objectives like having to grab pieces of a map when you're on the clock, being able to see and hitting the right spot on the track is key.

What Velocity X does do well is the style and number of Hot Wheels cars and gadgets available. The cars all look great and if they were die cast would fit right in with the rest of my Hot Wheels cars (yes I still own my entire collection). Each car has it's own unique design and it's own strengths and weaknesses. And each gadget is fun to play with. When is a machine gun on a Hot Wheels car ever a bad thing? Although it's annoying that the level objectives are given to you after you choose your car. Knowing the right car and the gadget for a certain situation is an important feature.

The other feature that Velocity X gets at least partially right is the stunt system. The stunt system is built around using L1, R1, and the analog stick to spin your car in all directions when it's the air. Very simplistic, but it works because the point system is the basis for your Turbo meter and the amount of ammo your gadgets have. So all of a sudden landing a well placed 360 spin in the heat of battle will put you right back in the game.

Graphically the game holds up pretty well. Bright colorful worlds and like I said before, the cars look fantastic. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it more than adequately gets the job done. The sound is another fine, but not too exciting job. The voice acting is terrible, but what can you expect? But the crashes, engines and other sound effects all come off pretty well. Again, no surprises, just your standard set.