FUEL demo today on PC, PS3, 360

By Robert Purchese Published 9 July, 2009

Check out Asobo's openworld racer.

Codemasters will offer a post-release demo of FUEL for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 today.

The PC version will be available from the FUEL website at 2pm BST (UK time). The console versions may not pop up until later.

The demo opens Ocean Rush career event and Blitz Challenge. The former is a race for seven people and the latter is a race for one person and their clock.

Console versions will also have online play for two weeks from launch, either on the Tsunami Reef course with up to 15 others or on the Ocean Rush career event.

FUEL is set in a post-apocalyptic future where racers risk life and limb to win fuel, ironically. The game came out in early June but unfortunately we weren't massive fans.

Zip over to our FUEL review to find out why.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (32) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 3 years ago

    Hmmm, cool that I can see how the console versions compare to the PC version I got last week...

    ... but I wonder if the broken AA (anti-aliasing) has been fixed for the PC demo because I and many others according to the Codemasters forum cannot enable it at all?

    Whether AA is set to 0X or 8X in the game launcher Video options, the game looks exactly the same. GameSpot also mentioned AA didn't work in their review of the PC version too. I've been in touch with Codemasters about the issue several times via email and they've been suggesting fixes but so far nothing has worked. I suspect it's a bug that the developers will have to fix.

    As for the game, it's not bad but it's very much a missed opportunity, especially as the massive open world is wasted by virtue of the fact that it's utterly devoid of animal or human life (bar the odd truck on the roads) and there's actually very little there to see or discover. Also the music is ear-bleedingly bad, possibly the worst score I've heard in a game in years. I think EG's review was spot on myself. Ambitious, yes, but deeply flawed. Still it has its moments and is reasonably enjoyable in small doses so long as I avoid the tedious freeride mode.

  • collateral89 #2 3 years ago

    i actually want to try this game :)

  • smirny #3 3 years ago

    quite liked the look of the videos, so i'd be up for trying this out, see how it handles etc.

  • UncleLou #4 3 years ago

    Nice, wanted to try that. Reviews have been not so stellar, and I want to see how the cars handle for myself.

  • andywilkie35 #5 3 years ago

    I'll definitely give this a download, worth a go

  • TFM_Excalibur #6 3 years ago

    This game looks insane with everything ramped up at 1680 x 1050 with 8xAA

  • rhubarbandcustard #7 3 years ago

    The Eurogamer review of this far too harsh.

    Check out the Rock, Paper, Shotgun review..[link url=http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ 2009/06/22/fuel-around-the-world-in-eight-hours/
    ]http://ww w.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/...[/link]

    I have it on the PS3 and it really is as good as RPS make it sound.

    Massive selection of meaty, weighty vehicles... a gob smackingly huge gaming world... fantastic visuals...just a brilliant, brilliant game.

    Like an off road Test Drive Unlimited but bigger and better.

  • El-Dev #8 3 years ago

    How has this game not been released yet? I thought it was out months ago, when the review was done!

  • coach_mcguirk #9 3 years ago

    This was my most anticipated game of 2009. But the online side is broken, and the loading times (even installed to 360 HD) are absolutely unbearable.

    The online failures are absolutely damning, though. There's no way to party up in the game and stay together. There are plenty more.

  • OldK1ngCole #10 3 years ago

    @ coach_mcguirk

    +1. I wish the demo had been made avaliable before release, if it had I definitely wouldn't have bought what I now know to be a fundamentally broken game. The AI provides no challenge at all, and as you already said the online is absolutely terrible. Loading seems to take an age and a day no matter if you have the game installed to HDD or not. This is such a step backwards from DiRT & Grid that Codemasters should be ashamed.

  • Miths #11 3 years ago

    "The Eurogamer review of this far too harsh."

    Yep. Easily an 8 for the huge, fantastic world and freeroaming possibilities (which I found a blast to explore with a ton of beautiful sights, despite so many reviews proclaiming it was bland and barren), minus a point perhaps for merely decent racing.

  • symmetry #12 3 years ago

    I'll give it a shot.

  • Centipede #13 3 years ago

    Is the demo already online? Can't find it...

    I want to give it a spin... looks like a good race-game to me.

  • Whizzo #14 3 years ago

    Nice open world tech but the rather poor racing makes it all rather pointless.

  • Darren #15 3 years ago

    @TFM_Excalibur - "This game looks insane with everything ramped up at 1680 x 1050 with 8xAA"

    Wwhat graphics card do you have and which drivers you're using because AA isn't working for NVIDIA or ATI cards at all as far as I'm aware from my own experiences with a GTX 280, the Codemasters forums and the GameSpot review. Try setting AA to 0X and seeing if it looks exactly the same as 8X!

  • Darren #16 3 years ago

    @Miths - I'd love you to point out all these beautiful sights in FUEL's game world because in the four hours so far that I've been exploring the environment I've seen very little in the way of interesting nevermind pretty sights. There's lots of grass, the odd forest of dead or living trees, the occasional block of buildings or some industrial site or other, all spread out with nothing inbetween except roads, hills, rocks and more roads and hills.

    The weather effects can be nice and the sunset adds some lovely lighting effects but, IMO, the world really is bland and empty. It's far too big if you ask me. The developers would have been better making a smaller more detailed one and packing it with interesting stuff. Bigger isn't always better. And when you discover the snow and desert areas they give the impression the vehicles are floating over them because you leave absolutely no tracks, at least not in the PC version I'm playing!!!

    When you discover a Vista point, it's usually a tedious 10 to 20 minute drive to it just to collect a livery. I find that it's better to skip the free-roaming altogether and just play the game's events and challenges via the menus. Asobo Studio have made a huge world but like Just Cause before it they've failed to actually take advantage of it and give the gamer anything interesting or rewarding to do in it. Unless you like driving for hours across samey looking scenery.

    It's not a terrible game but it has a distinct whiff of unfinished about it, like the developers spent so long creating the huge, huge world to play in that they ran out of time to finish the actual game properly.

  • StrayBezza #17 3 years ago

    £19.99 on PS3 and 360 @shopto.net

    wonder if thats worth a purchase - will try demo

  • toa_boa #18 3 years ago

    >£19.99 on PS3 and 360 @shopto.net
    At that price -> everyone bite! Great little game, lots of driving fun, not as focused as Pure but fun all the same.
    You'll loose countless hours, if you get bitten by FUEL's bug :-)

  • Darren #19 3 years ago

    @donnie080208 - That Edge gave FUEL 8/10 really astounds me because this game has so many flaws and niggles in just about every area from the handling to the physics to the A.I. through to the lousy audio and scrappy visuals that I can only assume they awarded an extra 2 points because the game's huge world was very ambitious.

    It's a 6/10 game in my humble view; a good game definitely lurks below the surface but it's swamped by far too many annoyances. I really want to love it because this is exactly the kind of racing game I enjoy but the game keeps doing its utmost to make me hate it. Despite all that, it is mildly addictive, probably because I want to see more of the game world via the career mode rather than having to endure the boring freeride mode.

  • m0thr4 #20 3 years ago

    @Darren
    That Edge gave FUEL 8/10 really astounds me because this game has so many flaws and niggles in just about every area from the handling to the physics to the A.I. through to the lousy audio and scrappy visuals that I can only assume they awarded an extra 2 points because the game's huge world was very ambitious.

    It astounds me too, and upsets me slightly as I have been a subscriber since issue #1 and have kept every single copy. I have always held their harsh-but-fair scoring system in high regard.

    Not so long ago, they came under fire from 1-Up for scoring British-funded games higher than others. Unfortunately, there seems to be a grain of truth in there.

    :-(

    EDIT: Ok, not British-developed... but British-funded
    Edited by 2 at 09/07/09 @ 17:11

  • rhubarbandcustard #21 3 years ago

    M0thr4: Maybe you should read Edge rather than just look at the pretty pictures then because Fuel was developed by the French company Asobo Studios.

    Codemasters had no involvement in the making of this game. Asobo used a custom made proprietary graphics and streaming engine for Fuel and it is superb at what it does.

    Codemasters are publishing this game. Nothing more than that. This constant reference to Dirt and Grid is nonsensical. Different developers, different studios, different teams, different graphics engine.

    READ Edge. It really will help to educate you a little more about games.

  • m0thr4 #22 3 years ago

    @rhubarbandcustard
    M0thr4: Maybe you should read Edge rather than just look at the pretty pictures then because Fuel was developed by the French company Asobo Studios.

    -1 for such a cheap shot.

    If you actually read Edge rather than just looking at the pretty pictures then you would know that they made absolutely no reference, in that review, to Asobo being a French company.

    Anyway, it was made with British money, so my point still stands... and yours goes rather limp. It's a shitty game and was vastly overscored by Edge.
    Edited by 1 at 09/07/09 @ 17:15

  • m0thr4 #23 3 years ago

    Codemasters had no involvement in the making of this game. Asobo used a custom made proprietary graphics and streaming engine for Fuel and it is superb at what it does.

    No, it's actually pretty crap at what it does. The car physics is extremely old fashioned (rotates around an imaginary pole sticking through the centre of the roof) and the environmental physics wildly inconsistent (whole buildings are blown apart by hurricanes while road signs and billboards don't move at all). Overall, there's a complete lack of any sensation of speed - most of the time it feels as if you're trundling along at 50 mph.

    This is a distinctly average game. Eurogamer got it spot on with 5/10 and Edge... well, perhaps their usual writers were all off with swine flu.

  • rhubarbandcustard #24 3 years ago

    "Anyway, it was made with British money, so my point still stands..."

    Actually it was made with French money. It is however being promoted and distributed with British money.

    Close but no cigar.

    Lastly, the game is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. In fact, it isn't bad at all.

    Hopefully the demo will help to enlarge the install base because I would love to see DLC for this game, and I don't think they will bother if it doesn't sell too well.

  • Rodchenko #25 3 years ago

    I still have to try the demo, but cars pivoting around their center (if true) is inacceptable. GRID had that too. I don't care how great the graphics, or how nice the scenery -- if they don't get this simple thing right they can go elsewhere.

  • m0thr4 #26 3 years ago

    @rhubarbandcustard
    Actually it was made with French money. It is however being promoted and distributed with British money.

    Close but no cigar.


    Ok, so you clearly don't understand how the video game industry and the publisher/developer relationship works, but do keep going... it's like watching a road accident play out.

  • woodyrulesok #27 3 years ago

    Is it true the cars have no damage modelling?

  • Darren #28 3 years ago

    The vehicles definitely seem to suffer mild damage modelling in the PC version but it's entirely cosmetic as nothing ever drops off and it doesn't affect the handling whatsoever.

  • thebuzzard #29 3 years ago

    The PC version seemed much better than the review led me to expect, the open world part is crap but you can pretty much ignore that and have good fun racing.

  • m0thr4 #30 3 years ago

    Is it true the cars have no damage modelling?

    They get dirty, but don't seem to suffer damage.

    The most hilarious vehicles in the game are the bikes. You can drive at full speed banging into trees and you just bounce off them, always remaining upright and never suffering so much as a scratch. The only way you can actually crash your bike is by driving headlong into something like a large rock or a building. At that point you blow up.

    The physics engine in this game is based on 80's action movies.

  • JensonJet #31 3 years ago

    The game is barely worth a 2 or 3 out of 10. It's incredibly dull. A racing game that allows you to travel in a straight line!?!? Codemasters are fast becoming synonymous with crap arcade handling racers! It amazes me that a developer's actually worked out how to create a racing game that's about as exciting as walking to your local shops.

  • makeamazing #32 3 years ago

    @JensonJet you really should consider reading more or at least knowing what you talk about before you speak. Codemasters didnt make the game, they just published it.