Game Summary – Combining spectacular Hollywood-style stunts with a gripping storyline, Wheelman provides an adrenaline-fueled, cinematic thrill ride guaranteed to leave you breathless. Vin Diesel stars as an undercover agent and highly skilled driver who must infiltrate the Barcelona underworld to gather intelligence surrounding a covert heist. Posing as a driver-for-hire, he ends up caught in a crossfire of corruption and chaos while trying to stay one step ahead of local law enforcement and rival gangs.

Audio - Nothing special here worth noting.  Cars sound like they should, gunfire sounds accurate, and explosions rock like they should.  The voice acting is a bit subpar in my opinion.  Everyone has those over the top accents and then there is the monotone Vin Disel character.  I have never been to Barcelona so I don’t know how people sound there, but I have already run into the Irish guy, the Jamacian guy, the Russian guy, etc.  I feel like I have already spoken to these people before….perhaps in Liberty City.    

Visuals -  The city looks great.  It really does feel like a living, breathing city, with the exception that it looks a bit to clean and perfect.  But the buildings, cars, etc. all look nice.  The explosions look great and I simply love the “movie” mini cut scenes that happen during gameplay when you make a big jump, blow something up, or take down another car of bad guys.  It gives you that Hollywood feel to the game which is a really nice touch. 

I think the character models look a little off and I really do expect better at this point in the console life.  Resident Evil 5 has pushed the bar way up and now I expect other developers to step up and deliver what RE5 did especially during cutscenes.  

Game Play – Here is what is important.  All other aspects can be awesome, but if your gameplay is no good, then you are toast.  Thankfully Wheelman delivers in this category and it delivers big.  This game is fun to play plain and simple.  I am sure many people will compare this to GTA which I suppose is normal since this is a sandbox style of game.  But this is not GTA.  This game has a very different focus and makes driving around fun unlike GTA.  

The cars control great and are easy to drive.  There is also a difference in how each type of car handles.  When you get to the level where you are driving an 18-wheeler, you will see exactly what I mean.  That thing was a beast to drive but fun as heck.  I loved slamming my big semi into cars and smashing them into buildings.  If you could have seen the smile on my face while doing that, you would be able to understand how fun this game is.  

One thing I love about this game is that you don’t have to drive from mission point to mission point.  When you complete a mission, you can drive to the next main mission or side mission if you wish, or you can pull up your map and jump directly to it.  This saves a ton of time driving around doing nothing.  Big thanks to the developers for doing this.  I hated GTA for the fact that I had to drive everywhere.  I don’t care about cruising the city, I want to play.  

Another nice touch is if you fail in a mission, you don’t have to start all over.  I have had some missions that have had like a checkpoint in the middle and that is where I got to start back from.  Again, thank you to the developers for this as I am not very good at these types of games.  

Speaking of side missions, there are TONS of side missions and no I am not exaggerating.  I have played many different types and I have not even played all the different kinds.  They have side missions like Taxi where you need to drive someone from point A to point B in a set amound of time.  There are missions where you need to AirJack cars and drop them off at a garage while not damaging them.  This is my favorite side mission so far but some of them are really hard.  There are races around the town but besides racing, you can use your special moves and guns to take out the other cars.  This really makes for an interesting race.  Lots of other side missions await so you will have plenty to keep you busy for a long time.  

When I first played the demo, I was concerned if I would get bored with this game.  I thought how tired would I get of playing the same thing over and over.  But thankfully the developers have come up with some really awesome missions and each one of them are very different.  

For example, one mission has you chasing on guy on a motorcycle through the streets of Barcelona.  Soon, the chase ends up in the subway platforms where you have more shootouts on foot.  Then it continues on bikes down the actual subway tunnels.  You have to try shooting out the connectors between each car while avoiding oncoming trains and getting shot at.  

Another mission will find you confined to a colosseum with lots of cars and guns.  You gotta take people out while driving around this tight colosseum area.  So its not all driving down the same streets shooting and taking the same cars out.  You get lots of variety which is very nice.  Kudos to the guys who dreamed up these missions.

Replay Value – The replay value is high because you can play the game and stick just to the main missions, but with so many side missions, you will want to go back and play this game long after you complete the main story.  Or you can extend your main play through by doing side missions as you go along.  

Final Score  - B

This game is a ton of fun to play and will keep you entertained long after you finish the main story.  There are lots of fun special moves to add the “hollywood” feel to the game and they are fun to use.  AirJacking vehicles is my favorite move and I will air jack cars just for the sake of it.  If you enjoy driving around and slamming into other cars to take them out, gunplay from the car and on foot, and open world games, then be sure to take Wheelman out for a spin. 

-Wingman709