Sit down, shut up, and strap yourself in, as we tear down the streets of Barcelona in this review of Wheelman!
In Wheelman, you're going to find yourself behind the wheel a lot, hence the title. You won't be limited to being the guy who waits on the sidelines though. You can also skip straight to story related missions by opening your PDA and going straight to the mission. You'll be tasked with air jacking vehicles, where the Dies himself, will launch himself from the drivers seat onto another vehicle and proceed to steal it, to rescuing VIPs from behind enemy lines. Players are free to roam the streets of Barcelona, doing a plethora of things. Breaking kitty statues, performing stunt jumps, or doing one of the many side missions like, Fugitive, or Hot Potato. As you complete these side missions, you'll unlock weapon caches, garages to lose police heat, or increase your vehicles health. The high speed car chases would a lot more fun if there wasn't so many bugs. Some times, they just become frustrating. However, it's very fun to watch people rag-doll out of their cars when Milo slams his ride into theirs. The shooting mechanics are solid when you're on foot, yet, can be very cumbersome during car chases. When on foot, the left trigger locks onto a target while, the bumper is free-aim. Milo will pop up to shoot when he's crouched behind objects, which is always useful. The only real problem is the insane recoil when using automatic weapons. In a car chase, you need to hold the left bumper until the white reticule locks onto the target. When it locks on, it's usually a one-hit KO, but the reticule randomly changes targets during chases and just becomes annoying. Wheelman also lacks melee combat, which, even though you won't get into a lot of close quarter combat, is sad considering the shooting mechanics aren't the best.
Barcelona looks great! It's not an exact replica, but really captures the essence of the second largest city in Spain. You'll notice a lot of locals that are similar to the city. The character models all look great, yet some seem to have this unnatural purple skin color, and the lighting doesn't always compliment their looks during some of the cut scenes.
The soundtrack is poor, where as the voice acting is great, although some times a little stereotypical. Unlike some free-roaming games, there isn't a large selection of music to listen to while you cruise the streets of Barcelona and it's barely audible, whereas the guns are deafening.
The Wheelman is what you get when you combine games like, GTA, Burnout, and Just Cause. If you can get past the minor gameplay issues, you'll find Wheelman to be a very enjoyable experience. The achievements will require you to play through the game multiple times if you're a completionists since you're bound to miss something. I'm sure you'll find there's a lot more to Barcelona than just touring and lazing about on the beach all day.