Wheelman Hands On

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The shunt goes hand-in-hand with a set of moves that are linked to your Burnout-style boost gauge. This charges up as you do stupid, reckless things at extremely high speeds. Unsurprisingly, you can just use the bar to boost - but it's also good for carrying out special attacks. Aimed Shot slows down time, allowing you to aim out your windows and take out enemies with overpowered single shots. Cyclone is the same thing but more ludicrous; Vin spins the car through 360 degrees in slow motion, allowing you to spray the enemies pursuing you with lead.

The coup de grace is the Airjack. No longer do you have to tiresomely get out of your car in order to steal another one - The Wheelman lets you nick any vehicle you like while it's still moving. This is achieved by by driving up behind it, jumping through the window, kicking the driver out with both feet and taking the wheel. I can't say for certain it'll never get old, but I was still grinning like an idiot every time it happened after almost two hours of play.

The on-foot sections, by comparison, look a bit placid. It's not that they're badly designed - there's a choice of lock-on or free-targeting third-person shooting, a decent selection of weapons and a well-implemented destructible cover system. But it's all a bit generic; Barcelona's city fathers have even managed to foolishly scatter tons of explosive barrels all over the bloody place. The developers describe the on-foot bits as being there to "pace" the game, so at least they're more likely to be occasional interruptions than a major part of the experience.

The game's ramming attacks depend heavily on the weight of your vehicle. Hop into an articulated truck and you'll be hitting things like the fist of an angry god.

So how long will that experience last? The team reckons that the main storyline will take you 15 hours to finish, with another 10 hours on top of that if you want to do all the side missions. There are seven types of these in total, ranging from contract killings through to street races - incredibly violent street races, what with all of your offensive moves and even your airjacking ability still available. There are 15 side missions of each type to complete.

In technical terms, The Wheelman holds together beautifully. Even the pre-release code I saw, supposedly several weeks off gold master, is significantly slicker and more bug-free than a lot of finished games released in recent months. While driving around the gorgeously-realised streets of Barcelona, even at top speed, I saw absolutely no signs of slow-down, pop-up or other such hyphenated nastiness.

On-foot sections are entirely competent, but really not the high point of the game. Still, at least they didn't skimp on the explosive barrels.

So I unkindly suggested that perhaps I was only being shown the bits that work best. In response, Midway Newcastle boss Craig Duncan took me on a whirlwind high-speed tour of Barcelona's most visually impressive bits - declaring that he'd happily take the "Pepsi taste challenge" on the game never stuttering as you drive through the city. It's quite a boast, but after two hours with the game I'd suggest it's a bet he'd win handily. (For what it's worth, I was playing the Xbox 360 version, but Duncan is adamant the PC and PS3 versions are of the same standard.)

On the downside, The Wheelman is strictly a single-player experience. This, apparently, is down to the huge number of moves in the game which involve slowing down time - something which would have to be stripped out to make multiplayer work. The team felt like they'd just be making a "tacked on" multiplayer mode, and since there's no point doing something if you can't do it properly, it was dropped from the plan. There's full support for DLC, though, and a combination of free and paid-for add-on content is planned.

With a demo set to appear shortly, you'll soon have your own chance to try out The Wheelman's moves. In the meantime, we suggest keeping an eye on this exuberantly silly marriage of free-roaming racing and sandboxed crime.