The story is pretty simple. You're gear head, a racing/car driving robot who works at Hot Wheels. You and your crew are working on a new car, when the big bad MetaCog, robot for a rival company, comes along with his hypnotic headlight and steal the prototype! So, you have to get it and some car parts back by winning races and getting support from people and stuff.
Racing isn't that fun after a while, but it has some early charm.
It's in the 3rd person view, so you view the car from above, a lot more above then in most driving game. The screen never changes angle, but your car turns. When you turn the car, you press the button corresponding to where the CAR is facing, not the screen, so if the car is going south, the left/right are reversed, which can make it seem kind of odd, but it's not a hard thing to get used to.
While you race, besides just maneuvering through the cars and streets and stuff, another way to make it easier to win is to get items. These include Oil spills, which you can use to make other cars slip out, fireballs, which you can
use to screw with enemy cars and make them stop, or spikes, which slow down enemy cars until they repair themselves. They can do this to you, too, but they rarely do, except bosses, who you need to destroy, instead of beat in a race.
The game would be more fun if it wasn't so easy. It is aimed at younger kids, though, so that makes sense.
Something that should be noted is that it doesn't used a save backup, when you're done, it gives you a password that you enter next time you play to resume from where you were, so you have to write it down or something. It's not as bad as needing to buy a whole separate memory card or anything, but it is irritating.
While you race, there's some beat playing in the background lightly, and there's revving and skidding sounds depending on what the cars are doing. It's what you'd probably expect from a hot wheels game.
The graphics are fine. Nothing spectacular, but they're good enough to let you know what's going on.
