Wheels of Destruction Review

The vehicular combat genre has been dry as of late, with just the new Twisted Metal doing much to stir up anything remotely resembling “activity.” Wheels of Destruction aims to breathe some life into the realm, packing Unreal Engine tech and a cut-price PSN release as ammo with which to enter the fray — but finds itself drastically under-equipped when it comes to ideas, usability and replayability.

The game means well with its control scheme, best described as an amalgamation of a first person shooter and a driving game. The triggers and left stick steer the vehicle, up to the point that the left stick controls the aiming reticule, which in turn points the car towards a particular direction. In practice, this works well, but there’s no way of aiming up or down save for praying for the game’s auto-aim to find opponents hanging around above. Reversing doesn’t switch the direction of steering as it should, as the car will continue pointing towards the direction of the reticule; getting stuck in a tight space on the game’s handful of maps results in an embarrassingly clunky back-and-forth with the triggers until you can pull free.

The weapons, spread across machine guns, railguns, flamethrowers and the obligatory homing missiles, have a normal and an alternate fire with some more functional than others. Generally, they all pack a pretty poor punch save for the railgun and the missiles (if you hammer on the fire button). The same can’t be said for the AI in the single-player mode, which delights in exploding you from afar with deadly efficiency, usually without warning and utterly ruining your health levels and Tron-style outer shield.

It goes without saying that the game itself is pretty, for sure - but Wheels of Destruction's action doesn't hold up as well as its looks.

The maps, too, are a bit of a mess. The average FPS map has a few “hotspots” in which combat generally takes place, and they help form a coherent structure which can be memorised pretty easily. The same can’t be said for Wheels of Destruction‘s levels, most of which I spent some time driving around, back and forth, hoping I’d spot somebody in the maze-like layouts. Occasionally huge drops will plummet you to the bottom of a map, where nobody can be found, and the time it takes to get back up to the action is frustrating. The same goes for levels which feature teleportation pads, which spit you out elsewhere, especially one map which spits you out directly in front of the teleporter itself, creating an irritating infinite-loop until you realise just what’s going on.

It isn’t all bad.  The music is functional, the sounds and vocal announcements are pretty, and the game itself is absolutely stunning. But the game as a whole generally feels a bit redundant. The class system, divided into five types of car — such as the slower, stronger Heavy and the nippy, weaker Scout — isn’t really that meaningful.  Storming into an area with your layabout AI teammates somewhere in the vicinity will usually result in an ambush from your dumbfoundingly smarter opposition, but with the Scout you’ll just die faster. The game’s success will depend entirely on how well it’s received by the community, and the £7.99 pricetag might be a little much despite the game’s good looks and good intentions.

A PlayStation Network game designed with online multiplayer in mind is always a big risk, and the numbers will determine just how successful this game is. If it had a split-screen multiplayer mode this game may well have scored higher, but the lacklustre single-player and current staleness of the servers means that this pretty, barely functional vehicle combat game has stalled before it has even set off.