Hot Wheels World's Best Driver

For a game based around a children's toy, Hot Wheels World's Best Driver is a bizarrely complex mishmash of ideas, some of which are explained to you in a rushed, clear as mud voice-over before you've even got a chance to play.

Once it's shouted the controls in your general direction, it proceeds to shove you through a series of different challenges, each with its own set of rules, different vehicles, and victory conditions.

It makes for an uneven experience, and flappy controls compound the problems.

The game is split into bite-size challenge levels, each with a three-medal rating system. The medals unlock the next chunk of the game, so it's not good enough to just finish an event - you need to do it well enough to score a couple of the awards.

Some of the races see you trying to drive at a specific speed, while others ask you to catch up with holographic representations of other vehicles, or make sure you're not in last place when you pass a marker on the track. Sometimes you're performing stunts, looping the loop, or dodging obstacles.

Confusingly enough these are broken into different categories based on the colour of the clothes of the driver you've selected, making the game feel even more piecemeal and disjointed.

And on top of all that, the controls just aren't good enough for the demands the game puts on them. The steering is too disconnected, the brakes too sharp, and the positioning of the buttons makes doing simple tasks like taking a corner unduly confusing.

And that confusion permeates every aspect of the game. It hurls information at you, most of which you don't really need to know, and corners and obstacles sneak up on you due to a lack of visual cues in the design.

It makes for an experience that's neither fun nor particularly rewarding. There's a grindy feeling to proceedings, and the tracks rarely spark the imagination. A dull look is the final indictment in what's a pretty damning litany of bad ideas and unimpressive design.

Where Hot Wheels World's Best Driver should be full of imagination and ridiculous action, instead it's a jammed together muddle of confusion and frustration.