PS3 Review: Wheelman (2009)

Much like Driv3r on the PS2, Wheelman is an adorably stupid game. Maybe Wheelman isn't stupid so much as it is really weird. It's a fairly typical Grand Theft Auto clone, starring Vin Diesel and set in Barcelona, that has some odd ideas about people and physics. It can often be frustrating and confusing, but once you get used to its peculiarities, Wheelman is kind of a charming game.

Basically, Wheelman is about an undercover agent named Milo working in Spain, tasked with disrupting and eliminating smugglers. He's given free reign by his handlers to infiltrate Barcelona's criminal organizations. While the plot is certainly not complex, it can still be confusing if you have any mind for remembering things. There's just too many poorly defined characters and vague alliances to keep track of, and there's no mechanism in the game for recapping past events, not even something as simple as character bios. However, if you just tune out the story, Wheelman is much more enjoyable.

In Wheelman, you do two things: shoot and drive. Mainly, though, you drive, and sometimes while you drive, you shoot too. For the most part, this driving is handled well. What makes the driving in this game unique is its capacity for combat. Steering is controlled with the left analog, while the right analog is used for fighting off enemy vehicles: for instance, pushing the right analog to the right while driving will result in the car dashing in that direction to ram into a pursuer. This can be done in any direction. When a car's "health" becomes critical after three or more wallops, another one will result in that car exploding in a very pretty fireball. In addition, you come equipped with an "adrenaline" meter on the bottom left corner of the screen that you can fill by driving fast, performing risky stunts and jumps, and so on. While a full adrenaline meter can power a short nitros boost, it can also enable several "focus" shooting techniques, which allow you to shoot out the tires or engine of a pursuer in slo-mo. Altogether, these techniques make Wheelman's car combat surprisingly deep and enjoyable.

Outside of the vehicle, however, combat is rudimentary. It works, but far less spectacularly than the vehicle combat, and without the benefit of being luridly amusing. Milo is difficult to control, either sprinting full-tilt like an idiot or waddling around while crouched behind cover. Aiming is actually far too easy, and in general these sequences are tedious and unchallenging slogs between drives.

Wheelman's graphics are nothing special either. Though the cars look nice, Diesel's cyber-scanned mug is incredibly creepy, and the rogues gallery seems culled from Central Casting's racial caricature cheat sheet. Like the graphics, the music is similarly bland. Yet Wheelman is commendable simply for the sheer weirdness of it all. Wheelman's Barcelona is not the abstract, glitchy playpen of Driv3r, but it's still a digital city with a unique understanding of gravity and law enforcement. Cars careen into each other and off ramps as if on Mars, men fly when ejected from a vehicle, and police respond like rabid dogs to a dislodged street light. There's also a series of side-missions and mini-games that ensure that very few normal things happen. Wheelman is like a Grand Theft Auto arcade game and is particularly suited to those who want the experience of an open world game, but without the fuss of exploration.