There are 2 things every man wants, to own a monkey and be in a heist. So Dane Cook says. Well, this game fulfills one of those desires, it slaps you right into the center of some of the best looking, hollywood chase scenes. I think the best way to describe this game is, GTA4, but with more of an emphasis on driving. Take, Need For Speed underground's free roaming, add in a dash of GTA, and lightly sprinkle in some bullet time and you have Wheelman, featuring Vin Diesel. (Is that REALLY his real name?) 1. Graphics/Sound Graphics: The game looks good, the cars are well detailed and i was impressed with the level of detail IN the cars. When you first take the wheel you will notice Vin shifts gears and reacts to what is going on outside of the car. The passenger does the same thing making the people actually feel real. Old games, you get sides swiped, your people sit there, this game, you get hit, your passengers are freaking out. My largest complaint graphically is that vin, moves kind of robotically. He is OVERLY large in the upper torso, looks kind of foolish and he doesn't have a lot of smooth animation outside of the car. Granted this is a driving game, but there are elements where you need to get out of the car and they are poorly animated. Also! Why does he look like he is made from plastic? i know that there is the ability to make people look real and not like a glazed doughnut. Sound: The game has wonderful music that crashes you into the car chases. It is intense and pounding and adds to the intensity and hype! The car sounds are pretty good too, but unfortunately i think they put more time into the cars and not into the cut scenes and voice acting. Now vin is not the best actor, that is just my opinion, but in this game the cutscene dialogue feels chopped together. It feels more like they filmed on other sides of the world and just tried to splice the conversations together, i don't think the studio wall has as much emotion as their human counterparts, because sometimes it feels like that is what they were doing. 2. Game play/Controls Well, this game handles well. The cars are not as responsive or realistic as a racing sim, and the shooting takes some getting used to. There are some pretty impressive moves that you can do such as, throw the car into a 180 go into slow motion and shoot at the cars chasing you. You can jump from one car to another and hijack it, which was pretty cool. One cool feature is that they take your car and focus on it as the weapon, you have the ability to crash into people and throw them off the road, a flick of the joy stick and you throw your car into the one next to you. The thing i don't like, and i guess this is just standard in a race game, is that you have TURBO on every car, i wish that when i moved from car to car they had turbo boost. Sadly, i got in my jetta and it did not have a turbo button, maybe i need to get vin to drive it :D. It uses a similar system to burnout to build your special moves. The controls themselves are laid out well. You can do a multitude of moves with little practice. Over all, not a hugh learning curve, but air jacking may aggravate you a bit, since you have to be in the right spot behind a car to do it. 3. Story So far the story is that you are a wheelman (big shocker) hired by someone, who we don't know yet, and you start out picking up a girl who has just stolen a brief case. what is in that brief case? not sure, diamonds, documents, a copy of resident evil 5? not sure but i am sure this will be explained more in the actual game. Vin apparently has a past and that is all we know so far. The story seems promising enough and i am really interested to see how it will unravel and where it will take us. I am sure it will be intense, this doesn't just seem like another driving game, but a game with a fast paced story. I could be wrong, this is just the demo. 4. Pros/Cons Pros: If you love driving, this is a FUN demo. If you like vin diesel, hope you like him coated in doughnut glaze...oh, that sounds wrong, all the women are flocking to XBL to download it now. If you like gunplay, crashing into cars and intense action, this is a FUN game, it is worth the demo i hope that final game is a bit more polished. Cons: I still cant get over Plastic Vin...i thought i had seen the last of shiny characters, but guess not. Also the voice acting is better between house cats and sometimes more entertaining, it seems like they try to be funny or witty and it doesn't come across right. I was not pulled into the story right away, but again, this is a demo, though it should be polished more, i hope the final is smoother and that the story flows better. Also, it seems that most cars are pontiac, just an interesting thought...i do want to go out and buy a pontiac now. Multiplayer?!?!?! Does this game have it? we will find out and i wonder how fun it could be, tons of car jacking and races that include crashing into other drivers? we shall see. Final Thoughts: Fun game, worth a play, leaves a lot of questions for me in the final build. I reccomend checking it out and deciding for yourself, Has A LOT of potential to be a very fun game. replay value, not too sure if it has it, as of right now, No. Check it out and let me know your thoughts, so far it's seeming like a rental.
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