The Wheelman on Playstation 3 Hands-On Impressions.

On paper it all just sounds a bit too, for want of a better word, simple. You drive around, smash up cars, snore-snore. And while we can't guarantee The Wheelman won't get repetitive, from what we've played we do think it's awesome.

The latest game to feature actor Vin Diesel is a high-octane driving game in which you use your car as a weapon. The handling is loose and arcade-like allowing you to spin around corners with ease. You use the second analogue stick to "attack" opponents (a.k.a. ram them) which works really well. It feels really satisfying colliding into the enemies car. You can also use this functionality to dodge in and out of oncoming traffic.

The Wheelman also features some pretty awesome gun mechanics. You can simply shoot out of the window of your car at enemies, aiming at certain spots such as tires to do more damage. Alternatively, to take out road blocks you can press "Up" on the d-pad and go into a first-person type aiming mode. This allows you to pick off enemies with ease as time slows down. It's hardly original but it's still pretty cool. Even cooler is the way you take out enemies behind you. You press the "Down" button and you instantly go into a fairly similar "bullet-time" mechanic, however, this time the car spins 180 degrees allowing you to see all the traffic coming onto you. Take those guys out and the car swiftly spins another 180 degrees and you're back on the road.

We'll be interested to see how The Wheelman manages to stay fresh throughout a whole campaign, but as of right now we're looking forward to playing more. It's hardly going to set the world alight, but make you smile it certainly will.