Hot Wheels Unleashed steals SpongeBob’s secret recipe for fun

Hot Wheels Unleashed already has one of the craziest collections of licensed characters I’ve ever seen in a video game before. While the game has a collection of standard Hot Wheels cars and unique oddballs like sharks and dinosaurs, the company has also spent years creating Hot Wheels inspired by several properties that they’re finally calling in for this game.

I’ve already been in races where my replica of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider has gone up against the Back to the Future Delorian, the TMNT van, Snoopy from Peanuts on his doghouse, the Barbie Dream Camper and a monster truck designed to look like Blanka from Street Fighter.

And recently Hot Wheels had even added a slew of DC Comics-themed items with both the Batman Expansion that gave us Batmobiles, a Wonder Woman vehicle, a Robin vehicle, and the amazing Penguin vehicle complete with umbrella, AND the Super Villain season which gave players the ability to unlock vehicles based off famous DC baddies like Deathstroke, Poison Ivy, Cheetah, Black Manta, and, of course, Harley Quinn. Little annoyed Lex Luthor didn’t get a nod but maybe they’re gonna do a specific Superman one. Knock on lead.

But now Hot Wheels is going from leaping tall buildings in a single bound to a pineapple under the sea with the new SpongeBob Squarepants season.

This season, like the Super-Villain season before works like your traditional battle pass. Instead of getting the cars for the price of the battle pass, you have to earn them within a certain amount of time. Now, I like Hot Wheels Unleashed a lot, I won’t lie, I’ve gotten a lot of fun out of it, but a battle pass in a game that one has to pay full price for is kind of obnoxious. I bought the last battle pass only to never get the majority of the vehicles I wanted as the XP you earn is itsy bitsy.

That being said though, I am REALLY impressed with the creative design that went into these new Spongebob vehicles, and that’s coming from someone who’s only experience with the franchise is via memes.

The season pass gets you the vehicle based off the character Sandy Cheeks right out the gate. One of the best parts of these cars, unlike with the previous one, is that you can tell who these characters are supposed to be right out the gate. For example, the Sandy Cheeks vehicle has everything from the spacesuit dome to the squirrel tale to the flower.

But there’s also a secondary thing they did with this vehicle that completely blew my mind. Hot Wheels Unleashed has one of the best vehicular damage systems I’ve ever seen. If you hit something your vehicle (for that race only) with have its paint chip in different ways depending on the kind of material you set your car to be. And if you fall off the track and have to be respawned, on many of the vehicles the glass will actually have a greasy thumbprint. It’s a small detail that really impressed me but Sandy has something really special going in that department that I didn’t notice until my second race in the car.

Watch me test drive the vehicle and see if you notice it. If not, I’ll just show you after the video.

It’s okay if you missed it. Maybe you were distracted by the Batcave or my amazing drift game, I don’t blame you on either but here, check out this picture.

The vehicle is filled with sand. Whenever you hit jumps or bump into things it gets mildly worse. This was me taking a screenshot on the second lap of a three lap race. Notice that even the bolts of the vehicle have sandy built up like someone just dug this toy out of a sandbox. I absolutely love that.

I’ve yet to unlock the other vehicles so I haven’t see yet if they have any special perk like that but even if they don’t, here’s what the other vehicles look like. Even without a special damage system, they’re all brilliant to look at. Personally, I love the Plankton one above all.

The SpongeBob SquarePants season has already started but it goes until March 29th so you still have, hopefully, plenty of time to work at it. In addition to the vehicles, you can also unlock a series of basement items and profile details. The pass goes for $5.99 and is not covered by the Hot Wheels Pass Vol. 1.