Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Vin Diesel is a busy man. A new film and tow new games this spring. I quite like the gravely voiced gentleman, so I’ve seen the film and played his games. Does "Wheelman" live up to the quality of his other work this year, or does the fact that Midway is now bankrupt and has asked Ubisoft to co-publish the game affect the quality of the title?

 

 

The story, like all good Vin Diesel properties, is fairly simple. You play as Milo, an undercover CIA operative who pitches up in Barcelona in order to sort out the local gangs and drug lords and the like.

 

Meanwhile, you also get involved with a high class local dancer, and also take on jobs for various people on the side. What is quite neat, taking on these side jobs helps you out in the story missions by upgrading your stats. There are a couple of nice twists and turns in the story as you play off against the three main local gangs, and some really cool cinematic moments too.

 

 

Ultimately, it’s a little generic, but quite good fun at the same time thanks to Vin’s gruff one liners and all the totally mad, over the top action going on.

 

 

The gameplay follows on again from the graphics and audio, with some real highlights, and also some depths of simplicity and awfulness not seen for some time. For example, the on foot shooting is just dreadful. You’re pretty tough, so to counter this, you get attacked by hordes of generic dudes that can’t aim well, can’t cover well, and often spawn about two foot in front of you.

 

You also can’t cover, and the duck function doesn’t work that well. Your weapons feel underpowered, and to be honest, it’s a mess, and I just hated these sections. I’d have rather had no foot access to the streets and even more time focused on the awesome driving model.

 

 

The handling is by no means perfect, but it’s a halfway decent arcade style that makes traversing the streets easy. However, the cinematic aspects to the driving is what makes the driving so great. You can smash into other vehicles using the right stick- damage them enough and the explode out in slow-mo, often in hilarious fashion thanks to the game’s dodgy/purposely over-the-top physics engine.

 

Additionally, there is some nitro to use, and two slow-mo special attacks which you have to build up ‘focus’ to use by driving niftily. These are great as you use your gun, aim at the targets given to you, and then watch the fireworks. Normally a direct hit involves whatever it is exploding in ridiculous fashion, which, to be honest, is awesome! It makes you feel like you’re in the middle of an amazing movie car chase with Michael Bay & Jerry Bruckheimer directing.