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Vin Diesel's Wheelman Mini-Review

I had some time to sit down with Wheelman last night, and I honestly can't decide if I like it or not.

At least superficially, the gameplay resembles the Driver series, as it started on the playstation 1. You are tasked with being the driver for various illegal oddjobs, such as bank robberies and drug deals, with the focus being on driving, and very little on foot gameplay (I haven't done anything on foot except run to my next car in the first few hours of play). It does have a couple of new tricks that it brings to the genre though: First, and most important, are the vehicle melee attacks. It sounds really odd, but it's actually pretty cool, while driving, if you flick the right stick forward, or to either side, the car will move quickly in that direction, if there's a vehicle in the way, it will ram it for goodly amount of damage, moreso than just running into them, if there isn't a vehicle there, it's just a quick way to move over a lane, useful for dodging traffick. The second new trick is something they call Airjacking, where you are able to abandon your current car, and steal another while driving. Basically you hold a button down, and Vin hangs out the door of his car, and then when you're close enough to a car in front of you (there's an indicator that will turn green) you release the button, and Vin leaps 30 feet from one car to the other, grabs onto the roof, and swings in through a window, kicking the driver out the other side. Why can he perform this superhuman feat? Because he's Vin Diesel!

Other than these new tricks, driving is actually pretty horrible, I still haven't figured out how to take a corner without losing almost all of my momentum, and it just feels loose. I almost felt like I was playing ping pong with as many times as I would bounce off of one wall directly into another.

There's some back story about you being some kind of undercover agent looking for something specific in Barcelona, but really it just feels like you're Vin Diesel, and this just how he drives to work everyday.

So, while it's kind of fun, just for the ridiculous over the top Vin Diesel factor, I don't know that it's something that would hold your interest for more than a couple of hours
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Comments

  1. JasonNovember 10, 2009 at 11:31 AM

    Vin Diesel can do no wrong!! Now, where is my XXX game?

    ReplyDelete

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