Grab The Wheel
If you have played Grand Theft Auto or Saint’s Row, you will already have a good idea of what Wheelman is all about – an open-ended action adventure involving lots of aggressive driving and plenty of violence. However, one interesting thing about Wheelman is its Teen rating; there is little to no foul language, no blood or gore, and you cannot kill pedestrians or police (although you can destroy their vehicles). I think it’s a good thing that the developers went this route and frankly the Teen rating doesn’t detract from the experience at all; Wheelman will still please those gamers looking for the destruction and violence known to other games in the genre.
Most of the action in Wheelman takes place right where you would expect it to – behind the wheel. Vin, er, Milo, will take control of a variety of vehicles including typical four door sedans, convertible sports cars, delivery vans, motorcycles, semi-trailers, and even those tiny Smart cars. Each vehicle behaves as you might expect for a game, although generally speaking the physics in Wheelman are very loose and geared towards mayhem, intensity, and sheer fun. So for example, vans and semis are slow, lumbering vehicles that can dish out and take a tremendous amount of damage, while the Smart cars and motorcycles are are very fast yet they are destroyed relatively quickly, (and in the case of the motorcycle, offer Milo the least protection from personal damage).
Graphically indications make it apparent when your current vehicle has sustained too much damage and it’s time to bail out and hoof it, or nab yourself another ride. You will see everything from sparks fly once your tires are gone to smoke pouring out from the hood, along with lots of body damage and paint loss. Of course, with many of the story missions requiring you to put the pedal to the medal in hot pursuit of an objective, simply bailing out of your moving vehicle or stopping for a new one just isn’t an option. To combat this, Milo is able to Air Jack; air jacking involves Milo leaping from his car onto another vehicle which he quickly takes over by knocking the current driver out of the said vehicle. You can only air jack vehicles if no one is in the passenger seat and when no one in the vehicle is armed. The actual control mechanism for air jacking is simple, like the rest of the game’s controls, but it can be hard to pull off in the heat of the action. Gamers needs only to drive up behind a moving or stopped vehicle, hold down Circle, and wait for the on screen prompt to change from red to green. At the moment it changes green, just release Circle and Milo takes care of the rest. What can make air jacking tough, especially during the last few missions in the game, is dealing with all of the bad guys that are constantly ramming and shooting at you (not to mention at times the pedestrian population of Barcelona seems to be incredibly small). Overall, it’s a great gameplay element though that keeps the action moving at high speed and one that certainly works well enough throughout.
Air jacking is one of several gameplay elements besides the expected or fundamentals that you will be able to take advantage of almost immediately after starting the campaign. Three of the other elements revolve around the Focus meter, a small circular gauge situated in the lower left of the screen that fills up as you drive skillfully. Skillful driving involves speeding without ramming into things and slowing down, handbrake turns (drifting), doing wheelies on a motorcycle – it’s these types of actions that build up the Focus meter while things like driving too slow or hitting pedestrian vehicles actually detracts from your Focus level. All vehicles are capable of Focus moves, which begin with the most basic and most easily attainable ability: Boost. Boost is granted to players within just about ten seconds of driving fast and furious, and can really make all the difference in escaping pursuing police, getting through a roadblock, or catching up to your target. Boost is activated simply by pressing X whenever the Focus meter indicates it’s available.
The other two Focus abilities involve slowing down time so that you can get off precise, critical gun shots against your foes. One such move is activated simply by pressing Up on the d-pad, and in doing this the camera zooms in to a first person view, the world slows down and turns colorless, and a moving crosshair is shown on screen. During these few seconds, you can execute precise shots that do heavy damage to a vehicle or person. The other move is similar, and involves a little more build-up on the Focus meter. In this second move, the 360 degree Cyclone Spin, Milo does a 180 in his vehicle to face the oncoming foe and is able to again perform precision shooting (and then does another 180 degree turn to get going again). These ideas are neat, but frankly, I only used these moves when required to by the mission, which was pretty rare. More often, I would just use the Boost ability as I got it and therefore rarely let my Focus meter build up to the point where I had the precision shooting available to use.
A discussion of the driving portion of Wheelman should also include one of the most fundamental and critical aspects of the game: vehicle melee. Vehicle melee is simply the aggressive left, forward, and right motion you can do with your vehicle to a variety of ends. You perform vehicle melee actions in those directions simply by pressing the right analog stick in whichever direction you want Milo to jerk the steering wheel (or motorcycle). This is used to ram enemy vehicles to cause them damage and control issues; ram them enough and an icon above their vehicle flashes yellow for a short time, indicating that just one more hit will send them flying to their end. You can also use this mechanic to avoid oncoming traffic, obstacles, as well as enemy melee attempts. Combining vehicle melee with shooting really the only way you can defeat your enemies.
Shooting from your vehicle in Wheelman is easy enough to do, but to be accurate is difficult, and I imagine it would be in real life too. Milo automatically targets the enemy closest to his current field of view when you go to shoot, both from your drivers seat and when you’re on foot. You cannot skip through different targets without maneuvering your vehicle or changing what direction you’re looking in however, and that can be a problem at times. For example, let’s say you’re in the middle of a vehicular combat situation and the best move would be to shoot the passenger side gunner of the car on your left. If you are currently locked onto the back right wheel of the enemy car, Milo’s proximity to the passenger driver will have to adjust or the wheel will have to be shot out before he will change his point of view. Truthfully, in the heat of the action and just given how unrealistic the damage levels of the vehicles are, this nuisance doesn’t cause too much of a problem when it happens. It’s really more so of a mechanic you will catch on to early and work with rather than something that makes the game a major headache to play.
More On Gameplay
Wheelman is made up of about thirty story based missions and some one hundred and five optional side missions. The side missions consist of several different kinds of events or challenges, and are intended to be completed in under five minutes. All of these side missions have criteria to meet a rank ranging from C up to S, and completing a side mission on A or S gives you a small upgrade and it unlocks another side mission.
The side missions include events such as Rampage, Contracts, Hot Potato, Fugitive, Street Races, and a few others. You choose your side mission of choice on the game’s world map. Most events require you to have a vehicle, although many events also provide a vehicle to you like the street races and taxi missions. These side missions not only offer a break from the story mode, but they also provide upgrades to your abilities which I found was very helpful during the last two hours or approximately four missions of the story mode. Before then however, I only dabbled into the side missions as I was more interested in completing the story mode and wasn’t finding it too hard up until the final hours. That said, I spent some time winning street race events, which increased the speed of any vehicle I used. Rampage events have you racing against a clock to destroy as much property as you can, and getting A or S status here makes any vehicle you use more powerful. On the other hand, Fugitive events have you dashing to a safe house while under heavy assault. If you make it in a certain time, you will have upgraded the HP for any vehicle you use. I also enjoyed the Taxi missions where you had a certain amount of time to get across town and the Hot Potato missions that force you to go from point A to B to C and so forth while facing a rapidly declining timer (basically a checkpoint event).
You can replay any side mission at any time and view your progress from the Pause Menu. Ultimately, I would say I spent three to four hours of my total twelve and a half hour game time doing side missions, but I’ve only completed about fifteen of the 105 available missions with an A or S rank.
Getting back to the story mode, you will spend roughly 80% or more of your time behind the wheel, running missions for the three different gangs in Barcelona. The other 20% of the time is on foot action. Regardless, the plot is all about getting the three gang leaders to trust and confide in you, something that you will eventually use to betray and destroy them with (all in the name of justice). As a side note, there are a couple of points in the story where you can choose between three different missions (normally you just go from one mission directly to the next). The last one of these is interestingly crucial in that the decision you make effects the final hour or two of the game (from who you fight to the cutscenes shown), although the ultimate game ending is the same.
To this point I have yet to talk about the on-foot portion of Wheelman. Suffice it to say that the on foot action works well and is a positive aspect of the game. Movement is done with the left analog stick, you can sprint for several seconds at a time by holding X, and you target with L2 and fire with R2. It’s also a great idea to crouch down with Circle and reload with R1. You can pick up an alternate weapon with Square and exit and enter a vehicle with Triangle. Players have an unlimited amount of pistol ammo at their disposal in addition to having the ability to use one more weapon (with the d-pad being used to change back and forth). These alternate weapons include what looks like an M249, AK-47, an Uzi, and a pump shotgun, with my favorite being the M249. These alternate weapons all work similarly and effectively, but the M249 was my fav thanks to its large box magazine.
Whether driving or on foot, missions tend to break down to a basic formula of getting from point A to point B to point C. From A to B, you usually will not encounter any kind of hostile interference. Once you’re at B, you will get a checkpoint and either be on foot or in your vehicle. Many times after working out B, you are redirected to drive to point C where the mission ends. At the start of the next mission, a cutscene furthers the story. In breaking it down like this, I don’t mean to sound derogatory; that’s just basically how the missions go. It may seem repetitive, and by the very end of the game I was feeling that to a degree, but one thing Wheelman really has going for it is how darn fun it is.
I was actually able to finish Wheelman from start to finish in three sessions, with my first getting me two thirds of the way through the story mode, which for me was a little over eight hours. Wheelman’s pacing, difficulty, and open-ended design keep it fun and entertaining for hours on end, something a lot of games aren’t able to boast. I would also chalk a lot of Wheelman’s success in this department to it’s Burnout-style racing action and well spaced checkpoints too.
In Reverse
Overall, Wheelman is a lot of fun and a very good game. I did experience a couple of issues and do have a few general points to make about the game that aren’t as positive as I have been thus far. Keep in mind that some of these issues are mentioned more so for the point of mentioning them and completeness than to really point out a glaring problem with the game itself.
First of, the install time for this baby had to be at least thirty minutes. I literally dozed off during the install, but of course it’s a one time thing and having grown up on PC games, I’m used to it. That said, I thought most of the load times in game were still pretty long. Granted, the game world is large and there is a lot of textures and scenery to put into memory, but it’s not uncommon to wait ten to thirty seconds for a mission to load.
Secondly, the game did lock up on me once and froze my PS3, but again, I’m just mentioning that for completeness. In other words, it might not have been the game and I would be very hard pressed to reproduce the issue. However, I did encounter a bug during play that forced me to load a checkpoint. This was during the motorcycle subway chase sequence; before going into the subway, I had lost my motorcycle and was running instead. I spent the better part of an hour, primarily out of curiosity, running through the subway only to find that the cutscene and scripted event that was supposed to occur did not and the game was broken at that point as I couldn’t advance the story. While definitely not a deal breaker, it would have been nice to have seen this exception handled a bit better.
I would also add that I think the final third or so of the story mode was notably not as great as the first part. During the final missions, the devs throw so many enemies at you that it’s frankly pretty silly. Obviously being a game and all, you expect some unrealism, but the dozens upon dozens of enemies that await and chase you during the final missions I thought exposed some of the game’s more subtle quirks. Quirks like how incredibly resilient the vehicles are to insane amounts of gun fire, yet how weak they can be when rammed with a van or semi truck. A late-game on foot action sequence sees Milo facing around sixty armed guys in a less than five minute span too, which I also thought just pushed things too much in the unrealistic and goofy direction.
Had the game gone on much longer than it had at that pace, I honestly don’t think the experience would have been as good. In other words, Wheelman does a nice job of not overstaying itself and ending at just the right time. With the story mode over, players can resume taking on the side missions and the two optional collection and exploration quests.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…