Wheelman: First Impressions

I've been having a little run around Tigon Studio's latest game for a while now. For those who don't know what it's about, there's a brief gameplay trailer here:


It's supposedly an open world game but, rather like Far Cry 2, it focuses on one aspect of that world. In this case, the driving. There are sections where you shoot people but the game tends to stumble at those points, only picking up speed again when you get back on 2 or 4 wheels.

Here are my observations.

1) The graphics really aren't very good.

I do quite like this, it means that people who like the game won't be doing so because it looks pretty ala Call of Duty 5 (which is honestly the only reason I can think of to like that particular piece of shit)

2) The Engine is a little dodgy

The car physics and so on are pretty good - it feels rather like the Burnout games... very arcadey, not realistic at all. On foot, things feel less well put together.

3) It's good fun.

The cars and bikes are great to drive and there are more than a few bells and whistles to make car chases interesting. You can ram sideways with the left and right cursors and, if you build up enough focus, you can pull a 180 in your car and shoot people whilst driving backwards, which is awesome.


4) There's a fair amount of variety.

This is a tricky one - as with Far Cry 2, the gameplay of Wheelman is basically the same excellent 30 seconds of play time repeated over and over and over and over again. Like far cry 2, though, there's variety in the side missions. Some will see you evading the cops whilst getting to a special location, some will see you playing courier, some will see you causing as much damage as possible.

It all boils down to driving from here to here whilst avoiding these people but that's pretty much what every driving game is anyway.


So what's actually wrong with it?

Well the shooting sections are rubbish, as I said earlier. They're like the shooting sections in GTA 4 or Saints Row 2 - IE totally generic third person shooter. They're not worse than those two games, by any means, but they're as basic and generic as you can get really. There are more than a few AI holes in the shooting sections, as well.

There aren't too many shooting sections though, which is nice.

Should you buy it though? That's a tricky one. I do like the driving sections - they feel quite fresh in spite of the limitations of the engine. The plot is quite good, I just wish it would get to the point a bit more rather than having you run around doing errands.

Should you buy it.... Well.... it depends how much it ends up being. It gets released on Steam tomorrow and if it's £20 then I'll be getting it. If it's over that, probably not.

It's a solid game and there should be a fair bit of replay value but it's not a stellar title by any means. Worth checking out though, especially if you think (like I do) GTA 4 & Saints Row 2 were mutton dressed as lamb.