In Wheelman you take on the role of Milo Burik (Vin Diesel) who is an undercover operative for “the agency” who is attempting to recover a stolen “package” that is for sale through infiltrating the various criminal factions in Barcelona.
This game acts as a prequel for a yet to be released film of the same name also starring Vin Diesel, and I can only hope that if the film is released it explains more about “the agency” and “package” than the game does since after completing the game, as I am still at a loss as to the details of both of these things. This was not the only issue with the main plot as it felt under developed and could have used some fleshing out as the main game can easily be finished in under 10 hours and possibly less than 5.
The game itself is a mission based action driving game with limited on foot elements. Normally the limited nature of the on foot components would be a bad thing, but as the on foot parts were my least liked part of the game, as the controls were limited and “clunky” with you not even being able to jump, the limited aspect of the on foot components is actually a positive.
Most of the main missions combine on foot and driving components, with the on foot components almost always coming down to shooting, hiding in cover to recover, move forward to shoot some more, find cover when you take damage, and so on. While this was repetitive, the individual missions did not last too long and were relatively easy so it was not too tiresome.
Whether on foot or in a car you do not have a health bar, but instead need to judge your health on how red the screen is. While Wheelman has been compared to the GTA games, the nearest games in style that I have played are DRIV3R and Driver: Parallel lines for the original Xbox, which also have issues with clunky on foot controls. Wheelman is a much better, if still limited game than either of these titles however.
As well as the main story missions, there are also 105 driving based sub missions, these are split into several categories and range from time trials and races to causing as much damage as possible or capturing specific vehicles within a time limit. In general these missions are quite short and fun to play, though in some games the AI is easy to predict. If you complete a sub mission at A or S rank you unlock improvements to your car, or features in the game. It is when playing these missions that I most missed multiplayer (which Wheelman lacks) as several of the sub missions felt tailor made for online multiplayer.
The style of driving in the game is highly unrealistic (but fun), and is best described as “burnout with guns”. The choice of vehicles is good as you can drive car As well as causing damage from driving your vehicle into things, depending on the situation you can try to shoot other vehicles as well. In addition if you have enough focus enter a first person in car slow motion shooting mode that does extra damage. The most enjoyable part of driving though is probably the air jacking part, where you jump from your vehicle to another in order to take it over.
The driving is not without it faults though, the first is related to the game as a whole and that is that you do not have anywhere to store a vehicle and so when you start a game or complete a mission you often need to find the one you want. I also found myself accidentally exiting vehicles when I wanted to enter focus mode on a number of occasions as I instinctively expected the Y button to do this, until I learnt the controls. The final issue is the limited amount of information you are given about your vehicle since you do not even have a speedometer.
I thought the graphics in the game were generally of a high quality, I did encounter some texture pop ins on the buildings and on a few occasions I came across more serious issues including transparent textures and buildings that vanished allowing me to drive through where they where. The sound effects were adequate, but I thought the choice of music was limited and quickly became repetitive with the exception of in a couple of main story missions.
The achievements in the game (and the virtual identical PS3 trophies) are for the most part fairly simple to get as all but 3 can be gained by playing the game through thoroughly. The final 3 achievements are more difficult to get as one requires obtaining S Rank on all sub missions which is a challenge, the remaining 2 are of the collectible type, as they require the destruction of all 100 Gold Cat statues and to use all 50 super jumps respectively. Overall though it is a reasonable list of achievements.
While Wheelman is in no way a perfect game, I found it to be a fun game to play but in need of some “fleshing out”. Even so if you are looking for a spiritual successor to the original Driver game the you could do much worse than giving Wheelman a spin.
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