6 Things I Learned After Binging On Forza Horizon 3’s Hot Wheels Expansion
1. The map is stunning
Turn 10 really has pulled off something special with this map. The loops, banks and jumps are gloriously bonkers, with the sections spiralling around the mountain in the middle being highlights in particular.
Since it’s all fairly open, most bits of track give you an almost entirely uninterrupted view of your surroundings, giving you a sense of the sheer scale of the map. You’ll be diving into Photo Mode a lot with this expansion.
2. But not easy to navigate
If you spot a cool loop or jump you want to hit, good luck finding it. It’s hard to tell what’s what on the map view, and even if you’re right next to a bit of track you fancy tackling, chances are it’ll require a good few miles of twists and turns before you actually reach it. And if you take the wrong fork at some point, you’ll probably find yourself on some crazy, rollercoaster-like section of track that’s not exactly suited for a three-point-turn…
3. Driving on a Hot Wheels track takes some getting used to
Jumping straight from Byron Bay to Hot Wheels’ loopy tropical island paradise requires a little period of adjustment. There’s something vaguely akin to physics involved, so if you attempt to drive a loop-to-loop or a heavily banked corner too slow, gravity will take over and you will fall off.
Judging cornering speeds in this alien environment isn’t the easiest, and when it comes to the races, a fairly innocuous cock-up could see you tumbling into the sea. The races are arguably more enjoyable than those in Horizon proper though - how can you not love overtaking a car while driving upside-down at 180mph?
4. The traditional Hot Wheels cars are barely controllable
There are some classic Hot Wheels-style hot rods that come with the game, most having comedy value V8 engines protruding out of their bonnets and in some cases almost entirely blocking your field of vision when using the cockpit view.
I’ve barely bothered with them, because the ones I’ve tried thus far have been a nightmare to drive. The complete lack of rear-end traction and grip would be fine, if they weren’t so damn snatchy and hard to hold in a slide. Unless you have some serious assists turned on, you’ll be all over the place in these.
Thankfully, your entire garage is carried over from FH3 proper. The only caveat is you’ll need something with a reasonable amount of power to counter the aforementioned effects of gravity.
5. It doesn’t take itself seriously
From the way the annoyingly chirpy radio presenter talks about the whole affair to the giant T-Rex snapping away at one section of track, this is not something which takes itself seriously. I’m particularly fond of the way the speed boost bits are - if you stop to examine them closely - fast-moving conveyor belts strapped to V8s the size of houses. Wonderfully silly, and exactly the sort of escapism you’ll appreciate after a tough day.
6. It doesn’t seem like bad value
Let it be known that I hate the concept of DLCs. I’m (just about) old enough to remember the days when you’d fork out for a complete game with all the cars and all the tracks, and that would be that. But while I find the idea of spending £6 on a handful of cars I’d have rather liked to have received in the original game, £16.74 (or $19.99 in the USA) for Hot Wheels - given the sizeable map and many hours of potential play time it adds to the core game - doesn’t seem too bad in terms of value.
Hot Wheels can be bundled in with the Blizzard Mountain expansion for £27. Blizzard is visually stunning to look at but the tongue-in-cheek, shamelessly silly escapism offered by Hot Wheels makes it the one I’d go for if choosing between the pair.
Any car game that manages to feature a dinosaur is a winner for me…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
27$. I could buy some hot wheels and a track for that money. And if we include an Xbox and FH3 it’s even worse. Built not bought yo
Gotta buy to build, yo.
Honestly the hot wheels cars are not too difficult to drive, I drive with all assists turned off and they really arent too difficult. The rip rod dosent have much power, the mustang is rather nice to drive and the twin mill for a 1400hp car really isnt too bad either. The only hot wheels car i found uncontrolable was the bone shaker.
Perhaps I need to try a few more! For me though it’s more interesting to see something like a modern supercar on the track, because of the amusing juxtaposition…
Agreed. I’ve tried most of them and they were driveable. However, I found them to be slower than my other builds with the same PI.
Yep, for me the Twin Mill is the easiest
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The fact that there are only 3 original HW cars piss me off. Like, c’mon, this is supposed to be a HW DLC, at least have more HW cars. We ALL know that Mattel had released more cars released so many cars other than Twin Mill, Rip Rod, and the Bone Shaker. Hot Wheels greats such as the Deora 2, Spectyte, Synkro, Rolling Thunder, Hollowback, Battle Spec, Reverb, long story short every car including the ones in Acceleracers and Highway 35, BUT NO, LET’S JUST PUT THREE OF THE MOST OVERRATED ONES.
The tracks could’ve been better. What’s the problem with having plain, orange tracks? Those blue connectors are the new kind of tracks for HW, and I hate them. Couldn’t they just make them all orange? That would probably save costs and efforts too. Alright, maybe the dinosaur is a good idea, but they should’ve went for something a whole lot better. A robotic fire-breathing dinosaur called the Mechanized Destroyer. Yes, that exists on Acceleracers. Also, hopefully they would have realms, just like the ones you can find in Highway 35 and Acceleracers.
Oh yeah, the garage sucks too. Would’ve been better if they went for something else, like Dr. Peter Tezla’s AcceleDrome.
Physics are quite unrealistic too. Enough said.
I’d say $27 is quite overpriced, but not by anymeans bad. It’s quite good, but not great enough.
Why downvotes. You have a point
An acceleracers dlc would have been amazing with all the secret shortcuts and stuff
the sad part is that its not marketed at the people who do know Highway 35/Acceleracers.
I argued the point on launch about what cars they decided to release. The Twin Mill is fine, the Bone Shaker is a newer flagship go-to Hot Wheels model, plus they already made it and the Mustang for Forza 6. As for the Rip Rod, I’m not really a fan of how the toy looks, but turning it into a buggy for the game was pretty cool.
If I could pick 4 Hot Wheels cars to have been in the game, it would’ve been the Twin Mill as is, Vulture (this is my opinion, and one of my favorites, so bias is there), Rolling Thunder or Jackhammer (a HW wagon would’ve been sweet), and the Jaded. A modification for the old Merc to turn it into the Purple Passion would’ve been sweet too.
Twinmill? Overrated? Boi.
Lets not forget, we got the TG Toyota Hilux, Zonda R and the Zenvo ST1 as well. They’re all very nice additions to the game.
Also this expansion got me back into the vibe of racing in FH3. The £17 for the game really isn’t much for what you get!
Twin mill is way too slow lol
What ever happened to matchboxes
The whole DLC thing is starting to get really ridiculous. If you want the Ultimate edition you pay around 100€, then you buy the expansion pack for another 20€, porsche pack for 7€, another not included car pack for 7€ and so on and you end up paying around 150€ for a game, that would have been one single pack for about 60€ about 10 years ago…
It’s completely annoying and just extreme money making. Making money is fine, but pissing off the ones who played since the original FM is not very nice.
There should be more hot wheels cars in this dam DLC.