Name: The Wheelman
Genre: Driving, Action
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

The industry was shocked when The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay outperformed most other shooters of its time, considering it was developed by Starbreeze and newcomer Tigon Studios, founded by actor Vin Diesel. We soon learned that, apparently, Vin Diesel really likes video games. Years passed, Microsoft never added Butcher Bay to the list of backwards compatible titles on the Xbox 360, and Tigon continued making games with Diesel's likeness. One was a remake of Butcher Bay, entitled Escape from Dark Athena, and the other was The Wheelman. Instead of simply creating another action title based on one of his movies, the developer decided to attempt to build a full franchise with The Wheelman, featuring a digitized Vin Diesel racing around the criminal underworld of Barcelona as an undercover federal agent. However, in order for the series to branch out into movies, comics, books, and whatever else Tigon hopes to achieve, the game itself has to peeform first, and The Wheelman often finds itself forgetting to disengage the parking break, burning rubber and blowing smoke instead of actually speeding off.

A well modeled Vin Diesel plays Milo Burik, an agent sent to infiltrate Barcelona's seedy underbelly for unknown reasons. Eventually, it turns out that some important government information has been taken and is being passed around by different gangs in the city, and it's up to Milo to find it. Throughout the game, Milo creates alliances with different members of large criminal organizations, using them to get closer to his goals, which seem entirely secondary to jumping on cars. It's hard to keep up with exactly what is going on at any given time due to terrible storytelling, made much worse by the lack of likable characters.

For the most part, no one in the game has any real personality, spattering out terrible dialogue and corny catchphrases in place of any sort of character development. Milo might actually be the largest offender, and most of Vin Diesel's lines are heavy-handed driving references. Before long, you'll start to suspect that Diesel might have penned the script himself, scribbling down catch-phrases and asking someone else to build a story around lines such as "You'll always know where I am... behind the wheel" and "A wheelman always knows when to stop... and when to go." There's little inflection in his voice, even for Vin, and it sounds as if they might have just used rejected Riddick voicework captured during Dark Athena's recording sessions.