“You drive like you’ve done this
before. What are you, a wheelman? “ Vin Diesel famously said this line in The
Fast and the Furious film. Now the roles have changed and he is the wheelman.
Wheelman is a Grand Theft Auto-type game, which puts you in control of Milo
(played by Vin Diesel). The game tries to incorporate all kinds of different gameplay
from titles like GTA, Burnout, Need for Speed (to name but a few) into one unique style, but falls somewhat short.
When playing the game, you will feel
exactly as you would if you were playing GTA. Most of the controls are the same
and it is very close to that style of gameplay. You control Milo as you steal
cars, shoot at gangs, and all the usual fun stuff. You will “work” for different
gangs doing missions that top gang bosses give you, but it doesn’t stop there.
Midway throws tons of content and side missions your way to try and make
Wheelman worth the money. This is where developers tried to pull in the gameplay
of other games to create a unique experience. They brought in a variety of
mini-games/side missions to the game such as street racing, rampage, hot potato,
taxi, and many more. The street racing mode lets you take control of an already
suped-up car, and race three other racers. Rampage lets you totally destroy the
city, and you even get points for doing so. Then Hot Potato is much like an
arcade racer where you have to get to a checkpoint under a certain amount of
time, and Taxi is like Crazy Taxi except a little more lame. There are quite a
few more mini-games/side missions that really have nothing to do with the story,
but some of them are fun and they can also score you some sweet trophies.
Wheelman does bring a good
soundtrack for you to listen to as you are stealing as many cars as possible and
taking out the police. The soundtrack is packed full of a variety of different
songs that will have you ready to steal cars or die trying.
Other than the “almost there”
gameplay and music of Wheelman, it struggles. In most of the story, the dialogue
is somewhat weak and boring. The voice acting just doesn’t hold up to the other
current gen games I’ve played. The story doesn’t hold much substance either. It
does set up some fun gameplay on the missions, but the story as a whole just
isn’t there. Wheelman could have been amazing if the story was a little bit more
complex and had a variety of good dialogue. The graphics are lacking as well.
The PS3 has awesome graphical power, but it was not put to use in this game.
When looking at top PS3 games, the gamer has come to expect beautiful graphics,
and Wheelman was nowhere near it.
If you miss playing GTA, and there
are no other games that interest you, you should definitely pick up Wheelman.
Otherwise, it is just an average game for 60 dollars. Yeah, you get to jump out
of cars, and ram the police into the wall, but we’ve already seen that in past
games. Wheelman had a good concept but couldn’t bring it all
together for one awesome game. Sorry Vin Diesel, but it just isn’t there this
time.
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Gameplay: 7.5
The gameplay tried to incorporate many different genres into one game, but
it wasn’t quite there. It came very close though.
Graphics: 6.5
The graphics weren’t all that great especially for the PlayStation 3. There
have been tons of games on the PS3 with better graphics than Wheelman.
Sound: 8.5
The soundtrack was awesome. There were a variety of different genres of
music on the soundtrack, and it worked perfectly for the game.
Difficulty: Medium
Concept: 6.5
The concept of the game was to try and make a game that combined a lot of
different gameplay elements that gamers had seen in other titles, or that is how
it seems. Again, the concept was a good idea, but it didn’t really tie in
together with the rest of the game.
Overall: 7.0
Wheelman wasn’t an awful game by any means. The story just wasn’t that good,
and not all the elements of the game really tied in together. If the developers
could have got all the gameplay features to work together, it would have been
absolutely great.
