Metascore
58 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 25 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 25
  2. Negative: 4 out of 25
  1. 75
    If you're looking for just having some dumb fun driving in a big sprawling city, smashing and shooting every last thing in your way, then Wheelman is a great pick. However, it never even attempts to reinvent the wheel from any other free-roaming action-adventure.
  2. “Never get out of the car”, the heroes of Interstate ’76 used to say. If the developers of Wheelman decided to follow this credo, they could have focused their efforts on turning lifeless Barcelona into a real city, instead of churning out boring TPS sequences. Or they could have made a menu for editing keyboard shortcuts. Or re-do boring side missions and build them into the story.
  3. It’s simple, direct, linear, sometimes spectacular, so Wheelman can actually inject a rainy weekend with a dose of fun, but it’s not grand enough to bring the sun to a week spent in London.
  4. Though it’s fun at first due to the arcade steering, Wheelman quickly decelerates to a halt, because of the dull story and the imbalanced difficulty.
  5. It’s like an ironic mustache or mullet. Like having a Steven Segal DVD in your collection. You’ll never get any real use out of it. You just have it in with your other games to show you friends you have a sense of humor.
  6. Packed with high-speed chases, car combat (you can bump rivals into walls) and ridiculous explosions, the game's still far from perfect. Sloppy looking characters, excessive loading and average on-foot shooting keep it several steps behind the competition. As a rental, however, Wheelman offers some decent thrills.
  7. Wheelman is best described as a B-movie. Bad production values and a lousy script. However, the funny one-liners, bad dialog and over-the-top action make up for lost ground. Wheelman is by far a good game, but still a very enjoyable one.
  8. Wheelman is good, but far from outstanding. The PC-Version's controls are unintuitive and some graphical glitches and missing detail-settings are making it hard to recommend the PC-Version. Nevertheless: if you consider yourself a fan of the Transporter-Movies, the Driver-Series oder simply Vin Diesel: Wheelman is exactly your game!
  9. There's a line drawn between uncomplicated action and stupid nonsense and that's exactly where Wheelman is lurching about. In large parts it's like GTA with the exception that nothing really works. The game feels artificial, unfinished, has no soul and takes itself too seriously. At least that's unintentionally funny.
  10. Carjacking is quick and fun, at least the first few times. After the first few missions, things feel awfully repetitive.
  11. If you want a nice, plain action game with Vin Diesel, you couldn’t make anything wrong. It’s fun to drive with the car and destroy the others.
  12. It's certainly mechanically sound, but you should probably attempt to find it at a slight discount.
  13. 48
    I wanted Wheelman to be a guilty pleasure, like 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, but it's just guilty of being a poor game.
  14. Wheelman is a relatively successful movie based game without a movie. It translates spectacular over-the-top cinematic racing action to an accessible game, set in the pleasant surroundings of Barcelona. Unfortunately its gameplay is so dumbed down that it lacks any challenge whatsoever, making Wheelman a decent – but flawed – snack that lies somewhere in-between GTA IV, Driver, and Burnout.
  15. Terrible story, excellent missions. Car chases and street shootouts in this arcade game will surprise you with their fast pace. Don’t forget to switch off your brain to enjoy Wheelman completely. [Apr 2009]
  16. 62
    Unfortunately, while on paper it might have sounded like a Fast and Furious calibre idea, in reality Wheelman is barely a Pacifier.
  17. Five years ago it might have been average. [June 2009, p.100]
  18. Wheelman executes its core mechanics well, but not much else. [June 2009, p.76]
  19. In a further bizarre twist, The Wheelman has no interest in how wheels behave. [June 2009, p.89]
  20. Awful on-foot controls. [July 2009, p.72]
  21. It's fast, spectacular and full of action - three attributes I require from every good racer are there, and in double helping. I can get new vehicles without stopping even for a moment. But the missions on foot are much worse and as a consequence the overall experience is rather unidimensional. [May 2009]
  22. The collaboration between Vin Diesel’s software house and Midway has given birth to something original and exciting, with fast paced action and Hollywood blockbuster’s style as the best elements in the game. Longevity, around 15 hours, is another strong point in the production, making of this game a must have for all the free roaming action game lovers, who will find in Wheelman the right dose of adrenaline and cinematic action.
  23. Diesel-powered, but it’s lacking the turbo injection that we want.
  24. Midway Studios Newcastle and Tigon Studios have created one of the most frantic games of the market, which unfortunately fails in its lack of depth and repetitiveness.
  25. I can't recommend it at its current price point. The car combat is fun for a couple of hours, but everything else is riddled with so many problems.
User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 29 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 9
  2. Negative: 1 out of 9
  1. RaymondF
    8
    Fun game, but the pc version doesn't let you redefine the keyboard and mouse mappings, (it has different presets you can switch between)which is pretty bad, especially if you have a non standard keyboard like I do, buit the default mappings are mostly usuable. Graphics are not bad in 1920x1200, slightly above average quality for an Unreal Engine 3 games. This game would be a good buy when the price comes down. Full Review »
  2. KarolinaM
    9
    It's one of those games where you can just jump in and have some fun driving and destroying everything around and go back to your daily life feeling satisfied and relaxed. It doesn't have the depth and complexity of GTA for sure but who cares? I don't think it's ever meant to be GTA, it's designed to be fun and it delivers! Full Review »
  3. MacM
    9
    The so called "official" reviews of this game have been so unfair to this title. The game offers massive over the top movie style action and it does so at a frantic pace. I think too many people have GTA4 in their minds when they look at another sandbox driving game, and I have played all the GTA's to death. I've also played Saints Row 2 on the Xbox360 and if I had to pick one out that gave me a boost of adrenaline during missions, the Wheelman so far (without completing it) wins it hands down. I am an 'older' gamer of 39 years, and in many games, if I fail a mission in a game that has taken 10-30 minutes to do I tend to put it down and come back to it the next time. Wheelman keeps me at my PC and I have incentive to complete them because they are so much fun. Add into the mix, an amazing Soundtrack that fits in perfectly with the action going on, and you will be impressed. Listen to gamers views, not these so called experts who write biased reviews in their magazines and websites. This game should easily have a few scores of 90+. A big thumb's up from me. Oh, and on a last note, I run a q6600cpu, an 8800gtx with 4gb ram. On Vista x64 running at 1680x1050, forcing 16xAF and 2xAA via control panel I achieve over 80fps average. The game has never crashed ONCE since installation, and it is the only game in the past 12 months I've bought where I can remember never having to scrounge around forums trying to find fixes. The game is extremely stable and optimized for PCs. Full Review »