Wheelman

The desert highway of open-world vehicle action is a hazardous one. Can Vin Diesel conquer it?

	Version 360 (PS3, PC)	Developer Midway	Publisher Ubisoft	Genre Action

Page: 1  2 

Page 2

There are a few jumps to discover, but nothing like the plethora of air-catching opportunities you get in Saints Row 2, and interior space is a rare quantity, visible mostly in story missions or cut scenes. You won't be sniping from the summits of many supermarkets, or cleaning out many strip clubs. The developer rubber-stamps its creation with famous landmarks - the Arc de Triomf and the Plaça de Catalunya, among others - and Euro-friendly rides like mopeds and smartcars, but these inclusions are little more than gloss.

While the driving controls - gas pedal on right trigger, brake pedal on left trigger, handbrake on X button, left stick to steer - and arcade handling model are unremarkable, The Wheelman claws back some ground with its pleasantly deranged "vehicle melee" and "Focus" power-ups. Twitching the right stick left, right or forward pummels your ride in that direction as though it were mounted on coasters, body-slamming other cars until they detonate in gratuitous but watchable slow-mo. This doubles as a defensive move, letting you swerve out of reach when an enemy tries to get cosy.

Meleeing other vehicles, power-sliding with the handbrake and straining the speedometer builds up "Focus" juice, which fuels three kinds of special move. Hitting A unleashes a speed boost. D-pad up drops you into slow-mo cockpit view and lets you pick off vehicles ahead by pumping pistol shots into their fuel tanks, while D-pad down repeats the trick but spins the vehicle 180 degrees first.

The Wheelman also tears a few leaves from the Pursuit Force rulebook in the form of "air-jacking". Hold B when you're on the tail of a tasty ride, release when the little target icon glows green and Milo/Vin will hurl himself from one vehicle to the other, slide into the driver's seat and kick its previous occupant out the passenger door. It's exactly the kind of disarmingly stupid, cinematic fodder that might, in greater quantities, have made the game memorable.

Sadly, duking it out on foot is nothing like as fun. B button toggles a combat crouch, left trigger locks on and right trigger fires. When locked, the right stick can be used to fine-tune your aim. The AI does little to enliven this thoroughly unambitious approach, with goons frequently standing out in the open to chew your bullets. Toss in a recharging health bar and you'll rarely lose.

There are glimmers of promise at times. While many of the story missions simply ask you to drive somewhere, shoot somebody up and live to tell the tale, some verge on the inventive. Early on you have to find your way to a bomb defusal shop in a clapped-out ride with a broken handbrake, following the self-contradictory and less than punctual directions of a delirious mobster. But the drive-shoot-flee jobs far outweigh the really interesting stuff, and the side missions are too shallow to take up the slack.

Vin Diesel did us proud with The Chronicles of Riddick, so it's a shame to see him pinning his name to something as insipid as The Wheelman. Let's hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Page: 1  2 

MORE REVIEWS >>