Hands-On: Wheelman
Vin Diesel’s latest driving/shooting movie called The Wheelman got it’s own video game, and while we as gamers all know that rarely does a movie translate into a good video game, I figured I’d get my hands on it. After all, I like driving games and I like shooting games, so I figured I’d try a game that lets me do both.
As far as the gameplay goes, the driving mechanics are hardly believable and can only be described as laughable. The slamming and special moves aside, the handling of the vehicles on turns is ridiculous and driving to the stop point causes your vehicle to immediately stop. Even if you’re sailing through the air when you hit the target beam of light, you stop and fall to the ground. Unfortunately, the demo only allows you to run for about 10 feet as part of the game (you can run elsewhere, but there is a time limit), so my on-foot experience was brief, but it seemed a bit better (even moreso than Skate 2). Don’t get me wrong; the shooting and driving is fun, but I wish Midway had done a better job with some of the mechanics.
Perhaps in an attempt to reach a broader audience for rating, I did notice one ridiculous bit – survivors of horrific crashes. In the first level of the demo you have to take out some police cars and you do this by smashing into them and running them off the road. Miraculously, however, the cops will fall out of the car and then stand up and start to shoot you. This may be to allow the game to receive a “T” rating from the ESRB, but it certainly gave me pause.
The demo shows off some decent graphics in the opening cutscene (the close-up of Vin’s face shows some aged texturing, but I mean the tech, not Vin), but gameplay reveals some pretty drab graphics. Whilst blowing up cars (either by smashing into them with car “melee” attacks or shooting them), it looks as if Midway was content using sprites as the explosion animation. I may be wrong, but to the untrained eye it definitely looks 2D. The rest of the graphics leave much to be desired.
After having done a couple play-throughs of the demo and not getting to experience any multiplayer content, I can’t say that I’m looking forward to Wheelman upon release, but it might be a fun rental/party game with some friends or perhaps a bargain bin grab. If you’re looking for vehicular mayhem, stick with the Burnout series, or if you want driving and shooting, checkout GTA. Otherwise, passing this up won’t leave you feeling empty.
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