Wheelman Preview

Wheelman is the new action game from Midway Studios who have worked along side Vin Diesel and his studio Vigon. It’s pretty cool that Vin Diesel is a gaming fan and wants this to be a decent game instead of the usual movie tie-in games as this Wheelman preview shows!

“Vin Diesel stars as Milo Burik, a CIA agent who goes undercover as a Wheelman to infiltrate the gangs and criminal powers of Barcelona, in order to stop a potential nation breaking situation.”

Wheelman is meant to separate from the film, which funnily enough starts Vin Diesel as well. Weird eh! The story is set in Barcelona because of the style of the city and it should make a nice change from GTA games that are all in America.

There are the usual gangsters in this game, with Romanian arms dealers, Spanish Mafia, Chillos biker gang loitering the streets of sun soaked Barcelona.

Another reason for the Spanish setting is because of the bright colours of the Mediterranean instead of dark and grim like Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto 4.

People have been saying that it looks quite similar to GTA 4 on PC with the main character driving and shooting of people and gangs etc, but from what I’ve read about Wheelman there seems to be some nice touches to the controls which should make it stand out from GTA a bit. If it works as well as it sounds, we could be looking at a possible opponent to GTA 4!

Each vehicle in the game has its own unique model to allow for things such as how it handles and how the car gets damaged, which does happen in GTA 4.

As for the different control system, there are a few melee attacks in the car which, if they work, will look freaking awesome!! So if you flick the right analogue stick either direction, you’ll smash into a car, and depending on your position, possibly even send your enemy off a bridge. Sweet!

Then there’s the ‘cyclone move’, and this is where you can turn your car 180 degrees to turn and shoot at your enemies whilst driving backwards. You can also ‘Airjack’ cars, so instead of stopping to get out and try steal another car, just do it at 80mph instead by jumping to another car and ask the guy whose been shooting at you to politely move over.

It’s not all driving in Wheelman, you can get out and gun people down if you so wish and hope the shooting system is better than GTA 4 as I found it to be very fidgety and not as good as previous versions.

I’m quite intrigued by these new moves that you’re able to do in Wheelman, and like I say, could turn out to be better than GTA! But we’ll have to wait and see before we make any assumptions and have a blast with the game.

Midway have used the expertise of the Stranglehold team for advice on weapon mechanics so they can get all the little details right. I usually find this is a good thing, because it’s the little details that make games that little bit more special, and kudos to Midway for taking advantage of this.

As well as the main storyline, there are a massive 105 side missions spread over 7 categories, which include:

• Fugitive
• Contracts
• Street Showdown
• Taxi
• Hot Potato
• Made to Order
• Rampage

All the side missions do tie into the game but aren’t integral to the main story of Wheelman.

From the trailers that I’ve seen the graphics do look very impressive and very polished and will look gorgeous in full HD. People said GTA 4’s graphics were second to none, but there are parts where I beg to differ. But if Wheelman looks as good in game as it did in the trailer, it’ll look sweet.

Plus download content and trophies have been taken into account which is what a lot of people expect from ‘Next Gen’ games, but some still fail to deliver. Having the benefit of these two add longevity to the game and makes you come back for more.

First impressions of Wheelman are that I’m quite looking forward to playing this, plus Vin Diesel told me to buy it otherwise he’d “break my chicken neck” as he so lovingly put it!

Ender

Related Pages:

1. Wheelman Demo (PS3)
2. Preview of Speedball 2: ‘Missing Subtitle’
3. Lego Universe Preview (Lego Online Game)
4. Mini Ninjas Demo Preview (PS3)
5. Sega Rally 2007 – Gaming Bloggers’ Preview Event

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