If you've ever wanted to be involved in a classic Hollywood car chase movie, Midway has a game for you. Wheelman is based on the upcoming Vin Diesel movie of the same name and puts the player in control of Mr. Diesel himself. It is an sandbox action driving game taking place in a nicely recreated Barcelona.

I took a look at the opening chapter of the game entitled Frantic that introduces us to the character and the heavy driving theme of the game. You are the titular Wheelman and your first mission is to help a gal named Lomi escape from a bank heist. Because you are new to the area and don't know your way around, you must follow her directions to complete the mission. An inset map also helps with finding your way around. Throughout the level you are being pursued by police and a quick flip of the left stick will have you ramming your car into your chasers. If you are in possession of a gun, you can also use the stick to fire your weapon out the window. One insane special move called the cyclone sends your car spinning 180 degrees allowing you to shoot at enemies through the windshield. Your car takes a lot of abuse in this game, constantly smashing into other cars or in my case, walls. Luckily, once your car is wrecked, you can merely hop out and jump into another one.

Wheelman isn't all about driving however and you can leave your car to run around and take on enemies with your gun. The portion I played used both driving and on foot controls to complete the mission. The driving controls felt very tight and intuitive and the on foot controls had a similar feel. Accelerating and reversing in the car is done via the triggers and when you switch to on foot, the triggers allow you to aim and shoot your gun.

The graphics, while nice, had a certain sparseness to the details which I'm sure will be polished up in subsequent builds of the game. The camera work is very cinematic and dramatic. For instance, when making one particularly large jump, the camera switched to a front view and we got a little "bullet time" as the action slowed down so we could take in the full effect. Once the car hit the ground again everything went back to full speed. It was an effective trick and really gave one the feeling of being in a movie.

There's quite a bit of content to explore in Wheelman as well. Besides the open worldliness of the game there are also ten hours of missions and ten hours of events. I appreciated the work that went into making this title and thought it was a decent enough game, but ultimately there was not a whole lot about it that really wowed me. But then again, I am rarely impressed by franchise games in general and driving and shooting can get a bit boring after a while. I will reserve my final judgments of Wheelman until the game is actually completed and I have a chance to see more than a couple missions. Perhaps the addition of a little spit and polish will help me change my mind.