Hot Wheels Unleashed

• All vehicles have stats that must be paid attention to. These are Speed, Braking Power, Acceleration, and Handling. These are pretty self-explanatory and I imagine most reading this have played a racing game before, but the tracks in this game tend to have a lot of turns to facilitate drifting in order to acquire boost, so speed isn't the most important thing all the time. All stats are measured from 1 pip to 6.

• There are also two different types of boost to use. Charged is a boost that goes on for a fixed amount of time once you fill up a unit to use, and Free is a bar that can let you boost as much as you want for as long as you have some to spend. Keep in mind that if you respawn (whether forced or not), the Charged boost can't be used right away, but the Free boost can.

• There are barrier obstacles on certain tracks and you can ram other drivers into them. There are also spots with no walls if you want to try pushing them off the track, too, but this is not recommended unless you have a better idea of how to play because you will probably overshoot and go off yourself.

• Fan obstacles will push you with strong winds, but this can be negated by using the boost to get through. Keep in mind that some of them can actually help you than hinder if it's a sharp turn, but it takes practice to make it work for you.

• Be advised that there are monster trucks and they do not care about obstacles in the slightest in exchange for being a bit on the slow side (relatively) and also vulnerable to others driving under them to wreck their day.

• The shape of your vehicle also matters somewhat in that you can accidentally overturn yourself if your turn is too sharp, and it also affects how trading paint with other racers will go (whether you get flipped over, or you do the flipping, as an example).

• You can adjust the pitch and roll of your vehicle while in mid-air and not just the yaw. On PS4, the pitch and roll is done with the right stick. Perfect for the rare instances where you are expected to switch to a section that is upside-down so you land correctly. This is also mentioned in the tutorial, but it bears repeating here, trust me.

• Hitting top 3 in a race will reward you with money to spend on either blind boxes for random vehicles, or on a selection that rotates every so often for a fixed amount. You still earn some outside of top 3, but it's so low, it's not worth mentioning.

• If you already have a duplicate (or plain don't like a vehicle), you can sell for money or dismantle for gears. The more rare it is, the more it pays out. You cannot do this to gift vehicles that you earn from the campaign, however.

• All vehicles come with a base rarity (from Common -> Rare -> Legendary -> Super Treasure Hunt; Secret is its own thing but basically tends to be as good as a Legendary) and those at Common or Rare can be upgraded to Legendary provided that you earn gears to improve stats. Keep in mind also that certain vehicles will have their boost type change from one to the other.

• You can adjust the AI difficulty any time outside of a race. Normal is already plenty challenging, especially in the later tracks, and the payout is the same regardless of the setting, so don't feel the need to beat yourself up with it if you don't like it.

• Some Unleashed time trial requirements will seem very unreasonable until you figure out a shortcut or two. For most, though, it will just require you to play at your best; there is no setting to make them more lenient.

• You can get three different varieties of starting boost depending on when you press the accelerator during the count-down. From weakest to strongest they are Red > Green > Purple. But note that if you get one of these boosts it does not increase your speed at the start. It gives you more or less of your activateable boost bar. So if you want extra speed off the starting line you'll need to active whatever boost it gives you manually.