OXCGN Reviews Wheelman

Got Good Tread Or Bald Tires?

by dkpatriarch

© 2009 David Hilton:- 2IC-Sub Editor

New model.  Original Parts.

That’s the tag line for Vin Diesel’s sequel film Fast & Furious, currently on film screens at the same time as his driving video game Wheelman has been released.  And, strangely enough, the tag line applies to the game as much as the film.

You see Vin Diesel’s Wheelman may be a new game from his very own studio Tigon, but it uses parts from original best sellers of the various driving genres like Burnout, Driver, and the GTAs.  The question is if Wheelman has got good tread to compete with big hitters GTAIV and Saint’s Row, or does it run on crappy bald tires (spelt “tyres” here in Oz)?

Tigon Studios have been touting Wheelman as the cinematic video game equivalent of action films like Ronan, with Vin Diesel’s undercover agent persona being involved in many crashtacular ‘scenes’.  This is presumably to show how it is different to typical free-roaming driving games that involve either just street racing or a bunch of usually un-cinematic missions.

The goal here is to make the game more fun and spectacular involving more crashing, chasing, and slow-mo camera cuts to your action as you do it.  You still have your freedom to run around and do what you want, but now what you do can be done with more flair.

It all sounds good, and much of it certainly is, but it’s very hard these days to make a free-roaming crim-sim without everyone comparing it to GTAIV.  And that’s never a good thing.  Look at poor Dark Sector: that game was the first to try the Gears Of War gameplay style and failed.  Only now are there some good Gears imitators out there.

To give this game any justice you need to pretend GTAIV doesn’t exist.  I know it’s hard, but we’d play very few games if we only played the big budget masterpieces, right?

Okay, a good cinematic driving action game requires a passable story and dialogue.  The story is summed up on the back of the box: Vin Diesel’s avatar is the Wheelman, undercover agent, expert driver; his mission is to infiltrate the Barcelona underworld and eradicate an international security threat.

Besides a bunch of implausible confusing back-stabbing betrayals (by the Wheelman himself mostly) and a nagging Spanish chick who is sort of a love interest (I think the Wheelman loves mostly himself, cars and his dry gravelly voiced one-liners) that’s it for story.

I realise his films like Fast & Furious are low on plot too, but this story is long-winded, dull, annoying and strangely seems to take itself seriously.  It’s mostly annoying because everyone in the story is annoying, including the ultra cool Vin Diesel.

The dialogue and voice acting is horrid and so constant you’ll want to yell “Shut up so I can drive!”.  I can put up with Vin Diesel…his voice is great, but his lines are crap and the others both sound and say a load of rubbish.

Milo (the Wheelman), in pretending to support each of the three gangs, racks up an astounding amount of collateral damage, even for a CIA man.  Yet the gangs keep seeing him as an asset no matter the body count and the obvious fact that his bald head is involved in each massacre of their own men.

There are so many betrayals that by the end you know that the big twist will be….another betrayal!  So forget the story.

Next, a cinematic driving action game needs top action.  Here the game delivers some brilliant stuff and some ordinary stuff.  Awesomeness is delivered in the form of the use of the right analogue stick, which when flicked right or left slams into the cars next to you on that side, often sending them flying into a slow-mo cut scene showing them blowing up, complete with rag-doll mannequins flying out.

It’s a great idea that works.

Also, the air jack move, where instead of the usual sequence of: crap my car is on fire, stop, get out, find another car, throw someone out of the other car, get in, and drive, the game allows you to press “B” near a car in front of you while you are still driving and then leap into the car ahead with a fluid motion, kicking out the former driver, and providing you with a new vehicle.

During the many many many car chases and crash battles you’ll need to use it because if you decide to get out of the car and steal another, they’ll shoot you.  The air jack is not at all realistic, but it is simple and it really works too.

You also have a speed meter (called ‘focus’) you fill as long as you drive fast, drift well, and not crash much. This can be used for a speed boost (which is important and very much like Burnout), for slow-mo shooting out your windshield, or the cyclone move which is a 360 degree car spin to slow mo shoot things behind you.  Sounds cool but except for the speed boost isn’t as helpful as you’d think.

There are certainly some excellent ‘cinematic action’ moments: do a great jump or perform a spectacular crash and the camera leaves you in your car and gives you the outside slow-mo vision of what you did.  Because the environments are surprisingly destructive you can have some pretty awesome cuts.  That’s it for cinematic action though.

The rest of the action in the main story is very repetitive.

There are some good fun missions like crashing a newseller’s stands and then newspaper trucks, there’s the initial police chase around Barcelona which is good fun, there’s one where you get to do anything to scare your passenger into talking, and there’s a cool subway chase on motor bike (which becomes less enjoyable if you have to redo it hundreds of times because of poor game save points for such a challenging level).

But there are also constant chase and destroy missions, too many avoid pursuit and death missions, and some wobbly dysfunctional on-foot sections.

The on-foot sections, which while necessary to explore the city, change cars, and add some shooting action for variety, just doesn’t make it past frustrating.  You can walk, you can duck, you can sort of run (not well), you can press LB to free aim and you have an auto-aim using left trigger that sometimes finds the right guy you want to shoot and sometimes misses the guy standing next to you putting bullets in your avatar’s bald head.

The on-foot enemy AI sucks but so does your friendly AI…In one mission you have to escort a gang member who seems to have forgotten how to pick up one of the many guns lying around and shoot it.  He just stands there.

A good cinematic action driving game really needs good driving sections.

The side-missions and just roaming around the city of Barcelona are actually more fun than the main missions.

They may be repetitive too, but you get to choose from a range that include Crazy Taxi-style missions, a hot potato game where you have timed deliveries, you can just look around for hidden ‘cinematic jumps’ or gold statues to destroy, there’s street racing, rampage where you need to cause high $$ damage, and fugitive where you need to escape others intent on catching and killing you.

The driving mostly feels pretty tight, though car sim buffs will scoff at that.  You have a fairly good variety of vehicles including vans, tiny Smart cars, what look like Porsches, mopeds, bikes, trucks and more that have different driving and damage-taking strengths.  They look pretty good too, though again car games like Project Gotham will have vehicles with more detail.

Finally, a good cinematic action driving game needs to be a good game.

The big city of Barcelona (thank you Tigon for making one of these games in a non-American city!  Kudos!) has a variety of landmarks and areas ranging from the medieval alleys of the Bari Gothic, to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, a bull arena, a port complete with cruise ship, parks, squares, and fountains, to more modern areas and wider roads.  The combination of narrow almost hidden alleys and big wide roads is excellent.  Grab a Moped and explore!

The look of the city is actually better than I expected for this style of free-roaming game, but nowhere near on par with GTAIV.  The lighting is pretty good and the city looks attractive for the most part, even from close inspection on foot.  The character models beyond Vin Diesel are awful and repeated though, and there is fairly regular clipping and noticeable pop-in in the distance.

The sound is both excellent and poor.  The music you can play in the game is great: you have the usual interactive car radio with dance, rock, classic, urban, etc. music and the overall Spanish guitar sound really suits the game.

I highly recommend cranking up the classical radio station while you smash cars around you into lovely cinematic explosions!

The guns and explosions are very weak sounding though.  In a supposedly cinematic game you want your gunfire and explosions to stand out, not pffft pfft ping pooof! The sound effects are definitely below the quality of the music.

The game is worth it if you love free-roaming exploration of a unique environment, air jacking cars, smashing things Burnout-style, doing slow-mo jumps, playing taxi, listening to different stations while driving around, or any of the other ‘playground’ play available.  The strength of this title is the sandbox.  There’s no multiplayer either, which is a shame.

If you are after a great main story with varied and addictive gameplay, then forget it.

New model. But old parts.

“7/10

© 2009 David Hilton:- 2IC-Sub Editor

Please share us around

Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | "vindiesel's Wheelman reviews", "wheelman review", Burnout, Driver, Midway games, Tigon Studios, Vin Diesel, vin diesel wheelman, Vin Diesel's Wheelman review", Wheelman reviews