True story for you. We were injured by Wheelman. Not all off us, you understand, but the one whose name is at the end of this review. As we reached to slot the disc into the awaiting 360 tray, we sliced a neat chunk out of our hand. There was blood and swearing. It’s never happened before, and we took it as a sign. The universe doesn’t want us to play Wheelman, because it’s going to be that bad.

It wasn’t the first concern either. A Vin Diesel led action game with shonky visuals and a flimsy premise. Jumping between cars? In Barcelona? With Vin Diesel. Sounds terrible, obviously. And then we played it. And suddenly that sentence changed meaning forever. Jumping between cars in Barcelona as Vin Diesel? Awesome!

Let’s get the obvious negativity out of the way first. Wheelman is an ugly game. The open world of Barcelona looks like a sharply textured PS2 game, and no amount of blue skies and bright colours are going to convince us otherwise. Particle effects are about as subtle as Paris Hilton and it always flirts with absolute breakdown. Cars crash in truly bizarre ways - motorbikes sometimes shoot straight up in the air and hover about. It looks like the whole thing has been put together for about 20 quid. Probably because it has.

And yet somehow, it all works. After a sluggish tutorial which barriers off the roads and hand-holds you through the basics, you’re let loose on sketchy Barcelona, free to get behind the wheel as everyone’s favourite bald giant and get to work. The name of the game gives it away– this is Driver in another guise, and very much about the motoring. Within minutes, you’re hurtling down Las Ramblas with a Flamenco dancer yapping in your ear, learning how to melee attack with your own car. Yes, that’s right. With your own car.

Think F Zero and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. Using the right stick, Vin can slash his car immediately right and left, barging opposition vehicles in the process. In this instance, it was the police we were annihilating with Burnout style takedowns, and while the car meleeing is about as credible as Vin Diesel’s acting career, it largely doesn’t matter, because it works.

And as you plough through Wheelman’s hammy but amiable tale of an undercover cop infiltrating Spain’s least organised crime syndicate, it pays to hurl believability out of the car window and just go along for the ride. As dumb and ugly as it all is, almost every mission is thoroughly fun. The driving model is completely unrealistic – powerslides can be corrected by simply just turning a corner, most crashes are about as painful as a stubbed toe and the traffic has a handy way of avoiding you almost all of the time.

It leaves you and Vin free to work on your relationship together, that of driving at ridiculous speeds and smashing up the beautiful city of Barcelona with absolutely no consideration of Catalunian culture or history. Amazingly, it gets even better when you get hold of your first shooter. On-foot blasting is just typical stuff, a bit of cover here, a few headshots there, but it’s unfussy and simple, and the ragdoll physics on dying adversaries are unintentionally hilarious. It’s when you get your piece back behind the wheel that things really start to get interesting.

… continued