17 years ago today, we played a game called Wheelman and in the role of Milo Burik drove around the streets of Barcelona.
The subtitle of the first Driver game was “You are the Wheelman”, but did you know we had a game where we actually Wheelman? And not just any – but Vin Dieselno more and no less.
Wheelman was a game that appeared in 2009 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. In this action adventure, we became CIA agent Milo Burik who on the streets of Barcelona dealt with the local criminal milieu.
The game had an open map where we performed about 30 main and a hundred side missions. The gameplay was mostly about driving, although there was also some shooting on the ground. There was no lack of action – Vin Diesel was literally jumping from car to car here.
Unfortunately none of that helped the game to be below average. At that time, we already had a lot of other games of a similar type. Not counting GTA 4 at the time, Just Cause 2, Saints Row 2, Mercenaries 2 and other things were played. There was simply no room for Wheelman.
It is interesting that it is parallel to the game a film was also planned which was also to star Vin Diesel. However, the film was eventually abandoned. The game itself did poorly in sales, and no one tried to preserve it in the digital age. Wheelman is thus not available to play on current platforms today.