Wheelman

Wheelman was due out in the US this week, but is now confirmed for a European release, this Wednesday. Until now, we've only had a brief clue that I'd told you what the game was all about, and it looked like it'll take you on a ride around a bunch of bouncing police cars. I can't say for certain whether the gameplay is the same or not, but given the size of the game it looks like it will be much more varied than Codemasters' venerable crash-racing franchise. There's a little GameCube version of the game in the works too, so if you're a fan of the series, you can get behind the wheel of that.

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Over the course of my time with the game, I have been curious to see what sort of multiplayer modes I'd like to see in the game. Some of them, such as the "ground race" and "car battle" modes, are definitely being planned and I'll be finding out more when I'm able to get my hands on them. For now, though, there's still plenty of single-player to dig into.

In my first match, I wanted to see if there was a mode where you could create your own race courses and share them with your friends. I didn't know it at the time. I wanted to see how the cars would look on a track with some pretty incredible interiors. As for how the different tracks would play out, that remains to be seen.

Another one I'm excited about is how balanced the AI is, as it seems a bit odd to be racing in first place, as that sounds like it would be difficult. It seems that you don't just wreck the other cars in first place, and so on, but have them start racing to try and force you to follow the track. However, a nitro system has been mentioned before, so it seems like the designers wanted to give you the opportunity to wreck them in a very good way. And we're also going to have an auto-combo system that will have cars automatically kick the tires if they aren't driving well enough. We're also going to have a car that is pretty overpowered, as it will run the place on its own. That's probably why we've had the computer and the drivers busting it out in a car. Now the cars are going to look like the AI cars do--they don't feel too big. We actually did a whole car-balance update to increase the car-balance, so we actually added some other [cops] that do things that we hadn't done before, but we wanted to have a system that really makes them feel like they're on their own.

GS: Can you give us an example of the kinds of cars you'll be able to expect to find in the game?

DS: There are 15 cars in the game. The Corvette car is the greatest of all.

GS: How many different kinds of cars will be in the game? Will there be 10 different versions of them, each with its own abilities and purposes?

DS: You can expect five to 15 different vehicles in the game.

GS: How will the multiplayer function? Can we expect the game to keep track of your personal best times in races?

DS: We didn't really want to make a game that was as fast as we wanted it to be, so we added the ability to upload your statistics and stats to your friends list and compare them.

GS: How will online multiplayer work?

DS: We created a race-creation system where you could create a race, tweak its difficulty, and watch it play out. Once your race ends, it's back to where you were, so you can just follow the race you were making. Then you can race against other racers to see who the fastest of the best is. But you can also link up with other drivers and race against them to see how their car performs against other racers. You can also look up a track to see how much of a challenge they're on and see if they can take the race online. It's an exciting new feature, but you can't use it if you don't want to, so you'll have to find your friends.

GS: Will the various cars in the game be more balanced than those of last year?

DS: Yeah, so there are a lot of car models.

GS: Will the game have any point-to-point-based races?