great stunt action, amazing destructible city, poor story
Wheelman is a driving game based on mission. It have many factors that can make it good game. Vin Diesel, Amazing stunt actions, and Unreal Engine. But it lacks of good story, facial animation, and challenge to the gamers.
The story, Vin staring as Milo, a wheelman (a.k.a crazy-ass-driver), coming from US to Spain (no background story of him or what so ever) jump into the heart of gangster activities on Barcelona. Take jobs from one gangster to another. The story is weak, the cutscenes are bad, plus bad facial animation (i know Vin have a cold-looking face but he doesn't have any facial expression on it! he just moving his lips, it's so plain)
The gameplay, Wheelman have interesting gameplay, with so many amazing stunts! I really love the air jack system! It's a mechanism to jack moving vehicle by jumping from your current vehicle, really great, it's very useful cause your enemy can damage your car pretty badly. Another good idea is aimed shoot system where you can automatically aimed your shoot to your enemy's vehicle wheel, engine, or the driver. You can use cyclone (this is the best part of the game) where Vin spins his car 180 degrees then shoot his enemy's vehicle behind him. It even more amazing when he's driving a bike! Vin can use melee attack with his car too, this is a great idea, by simply tap the right analog button to the left or to the right, the car will smash other vehicle around it, great! While on foot, Vin can't punch people, he can only shoot them with infinite ammo handgun and limited shotgun, assault rifle, or smg, Shooting mechanism is simple, it use auto aim, just like GTA. No cover mechanism but you can crouch. The gameplay is great, the problem is, Vin is so great, he's a type of die hard man with fool enemy. Sometimes it can be intense with the numbers of enemies chasing and shooting at you but with those two shooting mechanism and melee attack, Vin can escape easily, there are no challenge to the gamers.
The graphics is amazing, a free-roaming game with unreal engine, it just great. The environment is very destructible, there are some low frame-rate but it won't disturbed you. Too bad the game doesn't have good physics, you can see the car blow almost 10 meters up in the air with extreme explosion effects.
The sound, average but it have cool scores, Vin Diesel's voice is awesome.
So, this game is for you who likes crazy stunts and the excitement of blowing your enemies ass.