Wheelman Preview

We reckon that Wheelman's got something even better than the vehicle melee, and that's the Cyclone special move, a 180 degree slow motion vehicle spin which flips the camera into the car, providing you with an over the shoulder view to take shots at other cars through your windscreen. The Cyclone, triggered by a d-pad press, is just one of a series of super moves that will be time limited and only available when your Focus Meter is filled by driving dangerously. So, where did the inspiration come from?

Expect plenty of explosions and Hollywood-style chase sequences

"I always think of Die Hard 3, where Bruce Willis actually does the move", explains Shaun. "He's getting chased, he's in a nearly destroyed car, I think it's missing the driver's door. He grabs the hand brake, turns, takes the shot, hits the engine, that car goes flying. We watched every action movie that had these car chases and we were like, OK, we have to do that. We didn't want to have a simulation. We wanted to have a Hollywood feel."

The Cyclone is just one of many super moves that will be included in the final game, an area that has, perhaps surprisingly, had useful input from Vin himself. "He's what I call a fast twitch player. He likes the over the top, the big hits", says Shaun. "When I was told Vin Diesel was going to be involved on the project I was expecting like, OK, he'll care about what his face looks like, what his character looks like, of course he'll want big arms and he'll worry about his voice.

"But then he actually plays games. He's actually a gamer. So it's been interesting dealing with him. He's like, "oh you know what I'd like you to do..." He doesn't know about the nuts and bolts but he's like, "you know what would be fun if..." it's like, OK yeah, that makes sense. So it's been a lot better."

Vehicle melee is guaranteed to get stolen, according to executive producer Shaun Himmerick.

So, with elements of GTA and Burnout, how is Midway describing Wheelman? "We call it MAG - multiple action genre" Shaun says. "We built it around the core of driving. We focused on that and getting that right first. We wanted that to feel good. And then we built a lot of the missions around a primary path, but the player can do what they want because it is an open world. So if they want instead to jump on a motorcycle and go through a back alley because there is a short cut... player's choice if they want. Then what we do to help add very specific elements is, we'll know the player is going to go from here to here, but they can take any route they want, so we'll set up multiple things, so at the very least they're guaranteed to hit one or two of them. So you can play the mission and hit different things at different times."

We have high hopes for Wheelman. Vin Diesel garnered a great deal of respect from the gaming community following the release of 2004's excellent The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, developed by his video game production company Tigon Studios in collaboration with Starbreeze Studios. While Starbreeze has nothing to do with Wheelman, we're hoping Vin can help Midway Newcastle create the game Driv3r always should have been.

Wheelman is due out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC this Autumn.