Grand Theft Auto IV raised the standards when it comes to the open city action genre; its graphics are great and the sound is incredible. Saints Row II, The Godfather II and now Wheelman fail to not only raise the bar but they fail to even match it in both sound and graphics.

Out of all the competition that GTA IV has seen, Wheelman has to be the runner-up when it comes to sound and graphics. Despite some of the cheesy lines that Vin Diesel had to deliver such as "With me you always know where I stand... behind the wheel", overall, the voice acting in Wheelman is great. Vin delivers his standard performance... you know... slow speaking with that deep voice of his and trying to sound like a tough guy.

The rest of the sound can be spit up into two parts: action sounds and music. Today's technology is so sophisticated when it comes to sound recordings that many video games tend to sound alike in their action sequences. This is mostly true with Wheelman as well; explosions sound like explosions, gunfire sounds like gunfire, engine noises sound like engines, etc. But the "revolutionary car combat" has introduced some beautiful car collision sounds. As for the music, just like all other games of this genre, there are multiple radio stations that you can flip through. Odds are that you will find one station that you will enjoy, but at the same time, I have to say that the soundtrack in just about any GTA game is better. I find myself listening to the classical station a lot when I play Wheelman. Maybe that's why I drive so slow...

The graphics in Wheelman are done very well. Once again, I don't think that they have the same 'flavor' that GTA brought to the table, but they do look great. The cars and the motorcycles look incredible but there just not seem to be much variety in the game. It seems that there's an overabundance of Pontiacs, and I find that really hard to believe for Barcelona. Now, considering of the arcade style of and the car combat style of gameplay, I do not have a problem with the car-crumpling factor. Cars in Wheelman seem to take an excessive amount of damage and the crumpling effects do not look very realistic. At the same time, the car battles (either melee or firearms) looks spectacular; it is real eye-candy. The character renderings are also done well. You can easily recognize Vin Diesel and I like the fact that the graphics team focused on all the characters besides just the game's superstar. I also like the fire effects. I'm big on fire as a visual aid to graphics and I'm very disappointed in games that have terrible looking fire. The smoke and engine fire looks great in Wheelman, but a word of advice, if your engine catches on fire, bail out soon.