	Wheelman
	Developer: Tigon/Midway Publisher: Ubisoft Release Date: Out Now Players: One	Words By:
It seems ages ago we were first shown the Wheelman teaser movies, and at that time they looked mildly impressive in a “Vin Diesel’s GTA wannabe” sort of way. Well Wheelman finally arrived and it turned out to be more than a GTA wannabe, yep, it wants to be Driver and Burnout as well… Okay, so let’s get to the plot first shall we? Wheelman is set - for some unfathomable reason - in Barcelona – I mean, although it’s beautiful it’s hardly the most interesting of landscapes, or even the most crime-ridden of cities is it? The titular Wheelman is either a Homeland Security, or possibly a CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, MFI, BBC, CBS, CNN or BMW operative (I wasn’t listening) named - wait for it - Milo Burik (who looks a bit like Vin Diesel but is really badly animated so he looks like he’s part robot, part ape). Milo is inserted into the seedy, criminal side of Barcelona on order to find out how on God’s Earth a football team with that bad a defence won the Champions League… No, that’s a lie, the plot’s not that interesting. You infiltrate a gang as a getaway driver (or wheelman) in order to take down the city’s crime lords from the inside. As in Driv3r, you accomplish this mission by killing literally hundreds and hundreds of cops, and maybe a few mobsters as well. The story is actually not that bad, the way you play one gang off against another is quite well done, but in the same way that Driv3r’s dubious morality and brainless political correctness (being a cop rather than a criminal like in naughty old GTA) made killing hundreds of cops acceptable for “gameplay purposes”, your first car chase in Wheelman sees you rack up more dead cops than an entire season of The Shield, and that’s a lot. Anyway, this version of Barcelona is sunny and colourful and quite large – they even thoughtfully supplied you with a glossy fold-out paper map of the city – does anyone really use these things rather than the in-game map? Or maybe it’s so accurate you could use it when you’re next in Barcelona? I wouldn’t recommend it personally, it could end badly. It has a matrix of similar looking streets and plazas and a bay/marina harbour area. Many of the in-game buildings are real, and most roadside objects such as market stalls, traffic lights, railings and café street furniture are breakable. You can even drive through some of the larger buildings and head down the metro tunnels to use the train lines for short cuts. The vehicles are mostly made-up, but they show some convincing bodywork damage when pranged, there’s some kind of Pontiac, possibly a Lexus and (calm down boys) the Opel Astra to drive around in, and kill cops with. If it sounds like GTA then yes, it’s a bit like GTA, only the driving is a lot pacier, less realistic and more arcade-oriented, and feels more like Burnout – if, that is, Burnout’s makers Criterion hadn’t spent time sorting the physics and handling of the vehicles till they felt just right. Regardless of which vehicle you’re driving power sliding never feels like you’re in full control, and should you hit a roadside object when travelling at speed some very strange things can happen, resulting in your car leaping in the air and careening from side to side and making you feel like you’re riding a bucking bronco rather than driving say, a sports car or a hot hatchback. The motorbikes don't really feel like bikes either, but the trucks certanly feel big and heavy enough, and are also virtually indestructible. I played Wheelman for hours on end, and never really got used to the handling, no matter what you're driving/riding, it just doesn't feel quite right somehow. However, power sliding and not hitting things fills up your focus gauge, and focus = boost or the ability to use your focus moves. These focus moves includes “aim shot” which makes everything go into bullet time slo-mo and seemingly turns your gun into a rocket launcher as most vehicles (usually cop cars) will blow up with one hit. And then there's the “cyclone”, a fun if daft move which sees Milo yank the handbrake on so the car skids through 180° and is travelling backwards (without losing any of its forward speed) so he can shoot again in slo-mo anything chasing from behind. The game also has another unique feature in its vehicle melee attacks; you swipe the right stick left or right to ram vehicles, doing them lots of damage and possibly propelling them into roadside objects where they will explode in a most spectacular fashion, and no doubt kill a few more cops. The melee attack might sound the daftest idea of the three, but in fact works the best of all, and you can even use the right stick to avoid oncoming vehicles or dodge down an alley or something similar… Although you can just enter parked vehicles or steal a passing one ala GTA, to add to the arcadeyness of it all Wheelman has just about the daftest way of stealing another vehicle I’ve ever seen. At no point is it suggested that our hero is in fact a superhero with super powers, but he can jump up to thirty yards from one vehicle to another (it’s called Airjacking™) and steal it that way. This is done by holding ‘B’ as you get close to a target vehicle and letting go at just the right moment. To be frank, it looks utterly ridiculous, is completely daft and I have no idea why an idea this stupid made it to the final version of the game. To compound the idiocy of it all Airjacking also doesn’t work terribly well, with enemies frequently refusing to be “airjacked” regardless of how close you are to them or how long you’ve managed to be there, patiently waiting for the right moment, which never comes for no apparent reason other than the game is broken. I mean “Airjacking” for goodness sake - didn’t anyone on the QA team say “umm… this is stupid”, or that “Airjack” sounds a bit iffy? “I’m air jacking off* one car and into another”… Oh God, maybe it’s just me? Anyhoo, Wheelman’s story mode would be over and done within about 3 hours if it weren’t for all the side missions, and there’s a selection of different ones; Made To Order – Airjack selected vehicles and return them to set point. Taxi – It’s like Crazy Taxi: Barcelona edition. Rampage – destroy a certain value of property and vehicles with your own vehicle. Street Showdown – Checkpoint races. Fugitive – Get away from the chasing cops. Hot Potato – pick up a series of briefcases and deliver them to a certain point. Contracts – Destroy the target vehicle within the time limit, vehicle melee attacks only. All side missions unlock further side missions and story missions, and can be completed with C, B, A and S ranks, and getting those ‘S’ rankings will most likely drive you mad – I gave up with about a third of them left, fearing for my sanity, and my joypad’s health, but the developer's understood the addictive qualities of giving each mission a rank. I’m sure it took months for a team of terribly clever graduate coders to design, and then a boardroom full of directors to pass, but the in-game map is simply the most confused and cluttered piece of crap I’ve ever used. Every darned mission you unlock is marked with a different coloured balloon icon, so it ends up looking really nice and colourful (although maybe a bit too much like a clown’s funeral) and can be zoomed to clarify exactly what the heck you’re trying to find, but the cursor moves too twitchily (it has digital movement despite being controlled by an analogue stick) and using it is never less than an annoyance - you can’t even set a waypoint to a place of interest, only to the nearest mission. Which (just in case the designers are reading) is bloody stupid. Ahhhhh I see, that’s* why they supplied the game with a paper fold-out map… As if in another response to how bad the map is, the look of the city itself is rather spoiled by the massive and utterly needless neon icons all over the place marking where you can start story or side missions. A couple of completely implausible but fun missions that involved driving an 18-wheeler truck on a thrilling trail of destruction were the highlight for me, but genuine excitement in the game is lacking, and is too often replaced by repetitious mission structure or annoyingly simplistic tasks only made difficult by some mean time limitations. For instance, target vehicles seem to boost nearly every single damn time you do just to make catching them more difficult, without ever a hint of the ass-out power slides that you did to gain the same amount of focus/boost. And why is it that garages (that are the only place to get a vehicle repaired) are closed during missions? I mean, Huh? I know you can simply airjack another vehicle (although during some missions and chases other traffic does get rather sparse) or restart a mission, but when else are you likely to want to get a vehicle fixed in a hurry? Huh? Sterrrrrange idea. And then, just when I thought the game couldn’t get any odder or dafter, bad guys started appearing in the side missions driving around with panda heads on? I’m sorry, did I miss something? Maybe it’s a really funny Tigon in-joke? I certainly wasn’t invited to partake of the hallucinogens that the developers must have been on when they decide that mobsters with panda heads were the thing this game really needed… But the most annoying part of the game is probably the gunplay. The early GTAs and Driver 3 (Driv3r) got a lot of stick from certain parties about their shooting sections, but jeez, this Wheelman’s gun-toting makes Driv3r feel like Call of Duty. Aiming is vague to say the least, and either the enemies are so damn tough or the weapons so damn wimpy that a bad guy will take three or four rounds in the chest and barely flinch. Wandering around on foot you’ll also find that there’s no jump button meaning you constantly get stuck on objects on the floor, and no cover mode (all you can do is click the left stick to crouch). The on-foot sections are horrifically bad, so fortunately most of the missions and exploration are done in vehicles. If you’ve played any GTA, Driver or Burnout you have basically done all this before, several thousand times, only with much better vehicle handling, and without the stupid airjacking and various other daft ideas that made it into the finished Wheelman. It's a bit of a shame because although it doesn't rival GTA IV's for variety or realism, the game engine is slick and smooth, and there are some good ideas in here, but most of them are poorly implemented. I can see where the game wanted to go, but sadly it failed to hit the target, much like many of Milo’s gunshots.

Best Bits
- Good and speedy with a slick frame rate.
- A big old Barcelona to drive around in.
- Try and kill the entire Spanish Police force!

Worst Bits
- Gets tedious quicker than a Vin Diesel vehicle.
- Weird handling and messed-up physics.
- Awful map.
- Terrible on-foot sections and gunplay.
- You killed how many cops to take down these three gangs?
- “Airjacking” may be the stupidest game mechanic ever.


by: Diddly