10 Hot Wheels Unleashed tips, tricks & secrets

I list 10 Hot Wheels Unleashed tips, tricks and secrets to try and help beginner and veteran players get the most from the arcade racer.

I was not expecting Hot Wheels Unleashed to get me so revved-up but, honestly, developer Milestone’s arcade racer is a blast. So I thought I’d provide some insight into the game, now that I have basically done everything and had the game before release.

Now Hot Wheels Unleashed is not a complicated game – it is made for kids and adults alike, after all. But there are things that will make life a whole lot easier, whether that’s beating time attack times or unlocking everything. Be sure to also check out the 10 best cars.

1) Hot Wheels tips: Drift all day

Speed is important in a racing game, especially one without weapons. Boosting in Hot Wheels Unleashed ups your speed dramatically. Your boost gauge fills up all the time, but far more quickly when drifting.

So it makes sense to drift around any corner steep enough for you to do so. Not only that, it is usually the fastest method and bags of fun. If you keep slamming into walls, brake and go sideways earlier. Even the fastest cars are controllable.

2) Manage your boosts

Well, actually how controllable your car is depends on when you time your boosts. Bad idea: Boosting before a corner so you smack in the barrier and tip over or fall off the edge.

Good idea: Use it on empty straights or when doing loop-the-loops so you avoid chugging slowly up hill or falling off. Or save for those moments when you get caught in a tornado or spider web.

Those grey thin floor strips recharge your boost gauge like drifting, so use them. Ideally, have one boost for emergencies and a boost spare so you avoid wasting recharge pads. Assuming your car has more than one boost slot – not all do.

Boosting before jumps can be good and may even open up cheeky shortcuts. But boosting before some of the magnetic floors can go badly.

With practice, the key is drifting hard into a corner, getting the tail very far gone to help point you out of a corner early without hitting the wall and then use boost to rocket you to the next bend. Rinse and repeat.

3) Buy a good car

There is not actually that much need to buy a good car for Quick Races. Slap Hot Wheels Unleashed on Easy mode and even the worst vehicles such as the school bus can win.

However, for time trials, online racing and Medium, Hard and Extreme difficulty, you need good stats. While you might get lucky with the Blind Boxes you get from playing the City Rumble mode, your best bet is the Limited offer menu.

Here, you can spend Hot Wheels gold on a random selection of five vehicles that change all the time. Generally, the lower down the list, the more expensive the vehicle is and the higher the performance.

Some vehicles can cost as much as 2,000 coins so prepare to save up a bit when new to the game. I bought the 24 Ours Le Mans wannabe early on, that thing is a beast, but there are many others worthy of the price. Keep an eye out for my Hot Wheels best car video.

4) Sell (not dismantle) duplicates

Rather annoyingly, the same few cars are awarded from Blind Boxes too often. So go into your collection and sell them. Use the button description at the bottom to ensure you sell a car for Hot Wheels gold, not dismantle for upgrade points.

Why? Because upgrade points are less useful and upgrading some cars can do more harm than good. Some lack the option entirely.

Note that some cars sell for more gold than when purchased such as the not-so-useful-but-cool Tanknator. And that the same car can have different values. Or no value.

5) Unlock those 9 secrets

I made a video about unlocking all Hot Wheels Unleashed secrets for one main reason. That is, without doing them your City Rumble progress comes to a halt. If you would rather work the clues yourself, a hint is to look at the names of races.

Completing all nine secrets gives you the 442 muscle car. A nice bonus.

6) Earn 5 secret cars

Speaking of secrets, don’t worry I will avoid spoilers, Hot Wheels Unleashed has five secret cars. The first as previously discussed is earned by unlocking all secrets. Another comes from completing all Quick Races. And another from finishing all Time Attacks.

Once you have earned all four secret cars, you unlock a bonus fifth one for your troubles.

Completionists will want to do this anyway, but I will say that at least two of these prize vehicles are pretty capable. And one is downright ri-duckulous.

7) Boost off the line

One of the most useful Hot Wheels Unleashed tips is to press accelerate between 3 and 2 (the closer to 2, the better) at the race start. Why? Because it fills up your boost gauge. I have also found in some instances you boost away from the start line, giving you the edge over those who do not know the trick.

Time your accelerator press right and you get purple flames and the biggest boost gauge increase. Time it wrong and you see green flames or nothing.

8) Look for sneaky shortcuts

Now another thing I have noticed in Hot Wheels Unleashed is that generally you can get two medals on all time attacks by racing cleanly, boosting as much as possible and not falling off or slamming into walls.

However, a few seem to require shortcuts. On some circuits such as Stunt Parking, Applied Gravity and Bridge Overtakes you can save tens of seconds. Unless patched by developer Milestone, this also gives you the competitive edge in multiplayer.

More obvious shortcuts involve cutting a corner slightly, many of which happen on the floor, but not too much in case you get the ‘missed checkpoint’ warning and you are reset three seconds later.

9) Learn the circuits

This is kind of obvious, but in Hot Wheels Unleashed it can make a huge difference if you know the circuits. Because sometimes you will need to rotate your car as you swap from the floor to the ceiling. Sometimes careful braking is essential.

You also have to factor in route changes, some of which are forced upon you by a fire-breathing dragon or the pinball bumper. But if you have a choice, which way is faster? Which one is easier? These things are learned over time.

Circuit memorisation is also invaluable because it helps you know where the boost and recharge pads are, when (and how) to avoid projectiles and which jumps you should slow down for.

10) No shame in an easy (mode) life

And the last of my Hot Wheels Unleashed tips is that if a certain race is too difficult for you, there is no shame in dropping the difficulty level down a notch or few. Easy mode does not penalise you at all so why not use it?

Sure, it is more intense to race at medium, hard and extreme difficulty levels. Especially with some rubber-banding going on. However, Hot Wheels Unleashed is more about fun than anything else.

Sadly, easy does not affect your time attack goals so it is not as if life will be a complete walk in the park. Or should I say, a leisurely drive?

And that is it for my Hot Wheels Unleashed 10 tips, tricks and secrets video. I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments and be sure to subscribe. Peace and love. Take care, bye.