Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Wheelman

1. Official Site
2. Platform: 360
3. Publisher: Midway
4. Developer: Tigon Studios
5. Release Date: 03/24/09
6. Genre: Driving

by Mitch Youngblood

Maybe it is too much to ask, but I genuinely look for games that are capable of shifting my attitude towards a genre or subject. Oddly enough, Vin Diesel stars in two recent games that are diametrically opposed in this regard. The first is the updated Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (which comes with the Dark Athena campaign too) and it is uniformly fantastic. It may not have aged as well as a fine wine, but it is a shining example of what the first person shooter genre is capable of when it branches out.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Wheelman, a cotton candy game if ever there was one. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of racers primarily because they all seem to share what I call the “magnet theory.” This theory speculates that all developers of racing games make enemy cars in races repel you, which is the only way to explain how you can all start in the same vehicles at the same starting line and three seconds later they are so far in front of you they only register on the mini-map.

Then to add difficulty, all NPC vehicles are attracted to you, sometimes regardless of where you are on the course in relation to them. Also ramping up the difficulty is the addition of a physics engine that never, ever helps you out. Slightly ding a wall and your car will invariably spin 180 degrees and come to a screeching halt. This is especially fun to experience right at the tail end of a race.

Racers aren’t my thing.

Apparently the developers behind Wheelman felt the same thing as I do, but figured we would all ignore those inherent problems if they added guns, vehicular melee combat, and special finishing moves to the mix. To be sure, these additions make the game infinitely more fun than your average Burnout title (which would benefit nicely from being able to kill your opposition). Yet the game’s ultimate undoing comes from the dual-pronged attacks of the aforementioned magnet theory coupled with a genuine been there-done that attitude. Wheelman manages to rip-off the Burnout series in more ways than just the AI, while failing to rise above its source material.

In short, it is a classic case of “it’s just like X, but different.”

One thing that Wheelman isn’t is ugly. The stunning beauty of Barcelona is elegantly captured in the way the old world style of architecture melds with the new. A personal touch I found especially well done was how light reflected differently based on the car you drive. It is a subtle touch, but one so deftly performed that it helps focus your attention on a sub-conscious level.

Even when Milo is running around on foot, the game shifts perspectives ever so slightly to reveal very well done character work. It isn’t good enough that Milo wears skin tight shirts. Since it's Vin Diesel, we need to see his pecs flexing through those shirts and the developers stepped up to the challenge. I didn’t look close enough to see whether they flexed depending on his mood, but since Vin Diesel’s only mood is “solemn fury,” it is an understood constant that he is probably flexing somewhere. Maybe even this very minute. Outside your window, in fact, for doubting his abilities to find you, and make you pay.

The car explosions are also especially detailed. Whenever you perform a finishing move on an enemy, a quickie in-game cinematic shows the vehicle exploding complete with parts flying everywhere. There are also little flourishes meant to enhance the feeling of playing an action movie. When your car is on fire, you can skyjack another vehicle to keep moving. But if you wait until the last second, the camera cuts to a front view that shows you leaping onto another vehicle while your old one explodes behind you. It is all together a visual feast of a game.

Vin Diesel has the best voice. Fans of Iron Giant get all weepy whenever you mention the word “Superman” to them, and rightly so. His voice conveys sheer power, as befits the right hand of the universe. Here, his voice brings a tremendous amount of gravitas to a sub-par script. He may speak only in vague platitudes throughout the game, but he does so with an authority that is hard to ignore.

Less difficult to ignore is how everyone else rises to meet Diesel. Again, the script is awful but the players involved do their level best to make every line work. The actress playing the main female comes off as grating until the very, very end, so if you make it that far then kudos. The slimy character of Gallo is played with relish, as are the lead gangster characters. I had a personal preference for the head of the Romanian mob, but then again I’m a die-hard fan of XXX so take that for what it’s worth.

The explosions and vehicular crashes also have a strong amount of weight behind them. Using melee attacks on vehicles gets old only because of the sheer number of them per mission, but the sound effects used are terrific. If there was one complaint I had for the sound it is the lack of genuine ambiance throughout Barcelona. I think it would have been cool to drive through a park and have people screaming in Spanish to get out of the way. As it is, you have little staccato bursts here and there but nothing that gels into an honest sense of atmosphere.

The controls are pretty tight for Wheelman. Throughout the course of the game, you’re going to wind up driving practically every vehicle you can think of short of a backhoe and they all handle like you would expect them to. The flatbeds require both patience and finesse to move them through Barcelona, and when enemies start blasting out those tires it becomes an exercise in sheer willpower to complete the task. Smart cars handle like zippy little go-carts (whether that’s accurate or not I don’t know from first-hand experience). A motorcycle moves so fast that it feels less like you’re riding it and more like you’re hanging on for dear life.

Then again, that may have just been my driving style.

The right and left triggers handle acceleration and braking/reverse respectively. The LB button is your trigger while in the car, and the right trigger is used for guns while on foot. Enter/exit vehicles with Y, crouch/airjack with B, run/boost with A, and the X button is the handbrake. Everything is very well laid out and intuitive. But good lord are cars tough to handle when they lack wheels. Several missions I completed by the skin of my teeth and I was on four rims.

Fun times.

Vin Diesel’s character Milo arrives in Barcelona looking to stir things up among the various gangs. He offers up his skills as a driver in an effort to infiltrate the city’s underbelly. His goal? Uh... wait a second, it’ll come to me... Wait! Nope, almost had it there for a second. Was it to drive fast and wreck everything in sight? No, that’s more a byproduct of trying to reach an end goal of some kind.

If it occurs me as to what exactly the point of him working covertly for the CIA in Barcelona is, I’ll get back to you. I think it has something to do with obtaining a briefcase that may involve a weapon of some sort, but even that may be stretching things. This isn’t a game that’s long on plot or character details.

Once players take control, they will discover an intricately detailed and lushly recreated version of the famed Spanish city. The beauty of it is terrific, but the sheer number of back alleys and side streets and hidden paths is astonishing. The city also has, for the most part, a lived in feel. It honestly feels like the civilians are going on with their lives around you, which helps maintain a sense of immersion.

That sense is thrown out the window, however, the second you learn how to slide tackle with your car. Wheelman feels like an amalgam of multiple games but if primarily ripping off the Burnout series wasn’t enough, the developers felt the need to thrown in a dash of NHL as well. During races, events, story mode, or even when casually taking a spin, Milo can hip check cars, excuse me – “melee”, thus rendering any sense of realism moot. This is an arcade game through and through to the point where you’ll find yourself looking for the slot to drop another quarter upon your death.

This is vintage coin-op stuff. Smashing your car into others in a sort of car-fu, shooting out tires, highjacking (excuse me, AIRjacking) vehicles one right after the other only to trash them and move on to the next. It is all quite a lot of fun… for a short time. Then the repetition sinks in and you learn how to blow through street races at S ranking one right after the other. It helps to airjack a motorcycle, then eliminate your competitors during the race. This brings up the special moves available, which take things from “arcade level” to outright insanity.

If you have enough energy (accrued through driving wreckless, fast, or being as destructive as possible) then you can activate boost, or one of two special moves. The first move is a sort of “one shot-one kill” maneuver where Milo fires, in slow motion naturally, through the front windshield at a target. Should he hit the target then it goes up in a massive fireball. The second move is called the “cyclone” where he spins around 180-degrees and fires through the front windshield again, only this time he has to hit the target several times before it blows up.

Geico and State Farm are clearly not the target audience for this game.

In addition to the story, Wheelman has multiple side quests available. These include street races (self explanatory), Hot Potato (collect items and return them to a point before time runs out), Fugitive (escape to a safe house before you get caught), Contracts (destroy Vehicle X in a set time) and Made to Order (capture X amount of cars and deliver them to a garage as unspoiled as possible). The trick to all of these is remembering that you are not limited to the vehicle you start in. With races in particular, it is in your best interest to highjack a motorcycle right from the start. There are tons of these events scattered across the large city, and those coupled with a campaign filled with lengthy missions means you’ll have plenty of game.

So why the low score?

Because this is exactly the type of game you play the heck out of for two weeks before either trading it in or putting on your shelf then forgetting you have it. Nothing that Diesel does, outside of wearing a t-shirt that says “Alpha” on it, makes a lick of sense. While some of the missions are fun (the battle with the Romanians in the coliseum stands out as particular awesome), none of it is remotely original. Also, the Havok physics engine needs a major overhaul by this point.

Watching cars fly across the screen is great, except when it’s yours. Especially when it’s yours and the cause of the wreckage was getting winged by a Smart Car (true story). I thought I’d seen everything, but if someone could please explain the physics responsible for why my roadster can smack into a parked Smart Car, only to fly off at a 45-degree angle OPPOSITE the way I was coming... Then they must be a programmer on this game.

But it isn’t the lack of realism that hurts this game though, or even the ridiculous lengths to which the physics engine goes. What crashes the game are the insane lengths to which the AI cheats or has a leg up on the player. Watch during any mission where you have to pursue a target, pretty much the entire game, and you’ll watch as the target blasts off so far in the distance it’s possible their vehicle came equipped with a hyper-drive. Meanwhile, you’re left in the dust scrambling for the hydro-spanner and wondering how best to catch up. This happens every single time too, and it is beyond ridiculous. Eventually you figure out ways around it, but in a head to head feat of skill you’ll never win.

Ever.

When Milo is on foot, the AI isn’t much better. Not only do enemies have the perfect position to snipe or flank you, or both, but their shots never miss. Fortunately, you are protected by Vin Diesel’s natural ability to absorb metal as his preferred method for his daily dose of iron. It helps that he can take enough punishment to find cover. But the game is very clunky whenever the player is on foot. The game is called Wheelman, not Runner. All momentum comes to a screeching halt when you have to exit a vehicle, then slowly approach a situation you know is going to explode into a gunfight any second.

Some of the missions are fun, but not enough of them to warrant playing this beyond the sake of curiosity.

There is a lot of game here, but it is largely the same. If you airjack a motorcycle in each race, you should be able to blow through all the street races in an hour or so. Ditto pretty much every other side quest, so if you’re after achievements and little else then this is the game for you.

Wheelman is flashy, it’s fun for about two days, then it gets repetitive and the insanity of the enemy AI begins to suck all the fun right out of the game. Eventually you catch yourself wondering aloud why you’re playing it instead of something else, and you can’t think of an answer. Once you put Wheelman aside you forget about it inside of an hour. This is pretty much the definitive rental of the day. Or of this month at least.

Wheelman is not a memorable experience in the slightest but is fun for the most part while you’re playing. The caveat there is “for the most part.” There is plenty of fun to be had, but you have to accept the wonky AI, a physics engine that will never, ever go your way, and the game literally hurling enemies at you to the point where it’s easy to mistake this as a vehicular version of 99 Nights.

That’s not a compliment.

Taken as a whole, Wheelman is a fun weekend title that fans of arcade style racers will enjoy, however briefly. If there is one major complaint among the many listed above, it is that the game lacks staying power, gravitas if you will. It’s fun to a point while you’re playing, but 10 minutes after stopping for the night I literally couldn’t tell you what the last mission I completed was.

This pretty much sums up Wheelman in a nutshell.

Gaming Trend Score

78

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 92
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 65
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:78