blog
- E3 08: Hands-On The Wheelman
- Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Coop
Earlier today I had a chance to sit down with Midway and play through a few levels of The Wheelman, developed by Vin Deisel’s development team, Trigon Studios (best known for Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. They hope to create an IP that can be used in movies, games, and every other kind of media, starting with the videogame releasing later this year. The lead character, Rich Wilkes is based on Vin Deisel, sharing his likeness and voice.
Watching the game being played doesn’t do it justice, and once I had my hands on the controller I definitely liked what I saw. The game was developed on the Unreal Engine and definitely shares some of the scars of titles that have used it. Textures looks slightly dulled and everything has a slight grayish feel. The Wheelman is also to reap some of the benefits of the engine, namely a good physics system and steady framerate. Throughout my play I had a few issues with the title like the abovementioned graphical inadequacies, some control problems, and some shoddy animations, but most of those problems should be fixed when the game ships later this year.
One feature of the game that definitely makes it feel over-the-top is a stunt called “Air Jacking.” The “Air” refers to the fact that you are jumping off of a moving car and on to another, and the “Jacking” refers to the fact that you swing through the window, kicking the driver out of the door and commandeering his vehicle. If your vehicle is damaged or you simply feel like taking out a driver, air jacking lets you do it with relative ease and looks cool as hell. Midway has also implemented what they call “car melee,” which is a fancy way of saying “smashing your car into others by using the right analog stick.”
The main focus of the game, according to Midway, is to bring the feel of a movie chase scene to a videogame. While it has been attempted before in games like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Stuntman, The Wheelman is trying to take the idea to an entirely new level. The resulting gameplay feels more like a polished version of Eidos’s Just Cause than a racing game. Being able to exit your vehicle and engage in battles on foot, some fantastic shooting mechanics like spinning your car in a circle and shooting enemies in slow motion, and fantastic use of the Unreal engine make this game worth following I only hope that the minor issues I had are fixed in the finished product.
Related Articles:
E3 08: EA Press Conference Wrap-Up
Dead Space to Feature 'Strategic Dismemberment'
| Share this article: |
|
Comments
Playing GRID and GT5: P recently have reawakened an itch in me to play a good old fashioned smash-em-up driver. I know that Burnout had some of that going on, but this could also be an intriguing entry. Plus, car jacking sounds bad ass.