One side effect of being a father is that I now see things through the eyes of a five-year-old. Hot Wheels Unleashed for me, most likely a midsize racing game and less Trackmania – but then, if I think about it, I know my kids will love it.
Hot Wheels Unleashed’s Batman expansion, featuring a handful of cars and the Batcave? Licensed binding makes no sense to me. But my kids… My kids never knew this existed.
The Batman expansion features a Batcave environment to race around and build your own path inside, as well as five vehicles based on characters from Batman. That includes a Joker car, Penguin car, Robin car, and a reincarnated and armored Batman car. There’s also a bunch of decorative pieces to use in your Basement, part of your customizable in-game HQ.
All are beautiful. There’s a drawer in my house filled with real Hot Wheels cars, and I’m not above having favorites among these little pieces of plastic. I totally see the appeal in buying more cars, and themed, in-game cars.
But the reason my kids would never know this game existed is that the base pack costs £40/$50 and the Batman DLC costs an extra £12/$15 on top. There are a variety of other paid car packages available on Steam, too. To me, the price tag seems high given that the whole success of Hot Wheels cars has actually been predicted that you can buy one for £1.50 in Tesco when you need to distract your kids long enough to load onto the trolley.
