Vin Diesel is... the Wheelman, in an average game.
You play as stone-faced Milo Burik, a driver in Barcelona, who is immediately employed to help with an escape. He barrels down alleyways and flies across main streets eluding the cops who give chase. Once the heat dies down and he parks his ride, he quickly finds himself freelancing for the three main gangs who control Barcelona: the Romanian, Los Lantos and the Chulos Canallas.. There doesn't seem to be any sort of trouble that Milo won't get himself involved in; all he needs is a car and somewhere to go.
Because the game's GTA-like, you can run around and carjack any vehicle you see. Wheelman's trick up its sleeve is that you can carjack from one car to another while in motion. Called airjacking, it's a very important tool in your arsenal of skills. When your vehicle's taking too much damage, you hold B to lean out of your car while behind a vehicle in front of you. Once you get close enough, the red arrow above the targeted car turns green, and then you execute your airjack. The only problem is, it's very hard to airjack when the action becomes incredibly intense. You can be perfectly lined up and let go of B and in that very split second, you lose your window.
Car combat plays an integral role in the gameplay. You can "melee" with your car, jerking it left and right, or ramming straight ahead. If you're in a heavy car, you can take out lighter vehicles extremely quickly, but the downside when meleeing with any ride is that more often than not, it will throw you off course in the thick of action. When they perform their melees on you, they are mostly dead on and continue to stay on course after they smash into you, even if it wasn't a direct hit.
You have a focus meter that charges when you drive recklessly and when it's full enough, you can perform some special skills. The basic ability is Turbo Boost, but the extremely useful skills are Aiming Shot and Cyclone. Aiming Shot zooms the camera in behind Milo and slows down time. During this state, you can move your reticle on drivers, passengers, tires and fuel tanks. Once lined up, you can kill drivers, pop tires and even ignite the fuel tanks and send the car flying. Cyclone works exactly the same, except that you spin the car 180 degrees, so you can shoot the enemies behind you. The downside is that several times, the game will not realign your position, meaning you'll either crash or take a turn you didn't want to.
You'll basically only have one major contact for main story missions, although occasionally you'll have two or three you can do in whatever order you want. Wheelman has quite a few "side-missions", which are just challenges. You can speed across the city as a taxi dropping off fares, take place in street races, pick up and drop off packages, cause wanton destruction by running over property and smashing into cars, escape from police, and more. These challenges serve to unlock garages, ammo stashes, and increase performances of your vehicle, attack and defense and other stats. The problem is that these side-missions quickly outnumber your main missions. Not only are some of them extremely frustrating, but they also clutter your map and there's no filter to use to make finding one particular challenge easier.
Vin Diesel will also have to step out from behind the wheel to get behind cover when it's time to exchange lead. He carries a pistol with unlimited ammo, and to be honest, you can go through the entire game with just that. He can also carry one secondary weapon, such as assault rifles, Uzis or shotguns. You can aim with a lock-on and adjust your reticule to land a headshot, or you can free aim to shoot explosive barrels. Unfortunately, controlling on foot is clumsy at times, which can have you running right out in the open when you're trying to get into better position.
The game could have definitely benefited from some fine-tuning, because the controls are quite wonky. The physics engine is also highly unrealistic, stopping you flat in your tracks sometimes when you just hit a curb, or bouncing you around like a pinball. For a game that promotes the ability to take out tires, it sure doesn't matter, as cars running on rims not only don't lose speed, but their control is not affected in the slightest. In extremely chaotic missions and the more challenging side-missions, these flaws become magnified and further frustrate the player.
The graphics are hardly impressive, even if it was still 2009. The character models look alright, but they all have plastic action figure expressions. Seeing Vin Diesel show no range of emotion at all questions whether that was a directorial decision, or if the animation artist just couldn't pull it off. The vehicles themselves look decent, as well as the environments, but the special effects look cheesy. Seeing a car blow up might be fun at first, but you start to notice how unimpressive it is after 50 or so crashes. You see the skeletal remains as you pelt enemy cars with your bullets, but just about everything in the game could have used more refinement.
In the sound department, the constant firing of weapons, slamming of cars, explosions and other sound effects are done well. There's a nice accompanying chime that follows a headshot so you know they're down for good. Tires squeal while engines rev, and the sound slows down when you enter Aiming Shot and Cyclone. There are different radio stations to listen to, but the game's original soundtrack takes over during main story missions. This original music also grows old after a while. Unfortunately, the game's voice acting is rather poor, and performed over average dialogue at best. Diesel's performance is about as stiff as his character's facial expressions.
By now, you can find Wheelman on the super cheap. The story neither contains a compelling plot or a well-executed narrative and it's impossible to care for any of the characters. Don't be fooled into thinking the game contains plenty of content with all the side-missions, because you probably won't be bothered to finish half of them. 10 bucks would be a good price and it's worth playing to experience the game's unique take on sandbox driving action.