FUEL Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 26 May, 2009

Spent.

Version tested: PlayStation 3

Speaking to friends about Asobo Studios' FUEL, it's jarring how many are expecting an open-world follow-up to the last Race Driver. The name - perhaps introduced following Codemasters' acquisition of the publishing rights last year - is no doubt designed to bring it into line with GRID, and on that basis it's perhaps a mark of the publisher's confidence, and augers well for something new and interesting. But in truth, FUEL is no more an extension of Codemasters' excellent track racer than Overlord II is, and it doesn't even use the EGO Engine.

The engine it does use, however - one of Asobo's own creation - is certainly no slouch, and that's just as well in a game that promises the sort of open-world racing sandbox we haven't seen since Test Drive Unlimited, with a range of vehicles that echoes MotorStorm, and environmental factors more consistent with the cinematic output of Roland Emmerich. This is an all-terrain racer, an astonishing 5000 square miles of North American wasteland crisscrossed by winding mountain roads, rivers, hills and more categories of bracken and brush than you'd find in the Eden Project.

It's even got something of a story. As a surviving petrolhead in a post-apocalypse USA, you're competing for the fuel to survive, which you earn by winning races and challenges - and that's winning, not coming second. Fuel can then be spent on new vehicles and liveries to suit your needs and wants. But the game doesn't dwell too much upon this, which is just as well lest anyone suggest "fuel" might as well be "dollars", or, for that matter, that competing for combustible fossils by burning through them over hundreds of miles of arduous terrain is a peculiar logic.

Challenges invite you to time trial across open land, chase helicopters and, er, do more races.

That peculiarity, however, is second only to the game's decision to let you forgo the open world entirely and select races and challenges from menus, unlocking new areas of the map, with their own new tasks, through progress rather than exploration, which is for all intents and purposes rendered superficial. You can exit the menus to the wasteland, and rumble across it in your choice of unlocked car, uncovering new races, vista spots (with arresting, 40km sight-lines), barrels of fuel and other secrets, but it's a strange halfway house, some way short of the audacity of either Test Drive Unlimited or, in particular, last year's Burnout Paradise.

Then again, it's nowhere near as much fun to explore FUEL's world as it is either of the others. Although you can hook up online to populate it with other racers, and then face off against them, for the most part it's a long, barren trek across terrain designed for tough, long-haul races rather than sightseeing. And while the visuals are admirable, you don't actually do much of the exploring; the game regularly informs you that you've spotted new challenges, and marks them on your map and menus, but generally speaking you would have missed them without the popup alert.

The multiple-player open-world hub idea is rendered even more moot by the content of the races themselves. With a couple of exceptions, for example, the first 8-10 hours of gameplay is a procession of fairly slow, precarious and unhappy checkpoint races, in which the AI surges arbitrarily ahead of your bike, buggy, monster truck or what-have-you from the start, and you spend the next 5-10 minutes trying to reign it in without having to hit the reset-to-track button too often. Take it online and it's more about human skill - but also crippling lag, with other players popping in and out at random, getting stuck on the start line, or sitting in lobbies staring at the message that deadpans, "Put up with the delay here."

One option to get the jump on the opposition is to go off-road, but in practice this is dangerous business. Practical obstacles like streams and height variation are difficult to gauge from the zoomable map, so you're often better off siding with GPS arrows flowing above your car indicating the logical route, where you'll be imperilled enough as it is by unhelpfully positioned wreckage, sharp turns and terrain changes, which are bound to savage your top-speed at some stage no matter how well-informed your choice of conveyance.

The roaming weather anomalies raise the tension, reducing visibility behind a blur of flying debris, twisters uprooting houses, and electricity pylons draped across the track, but they're too lazy to turn up most of the time, for the most part leaving you to race around enormously detailed but otherwise static courses on a bedrock of handling that's closer to the frictionless toil of MX vs. ATV Untamed than the frantic, concentrating onslaught of MotorStorm.

The range of vehicles rivals MotorStorm, but they lack character.

It's also worth dwelling upon the memory of Evolution Studios' game - the first one anyway - because its track design clarifies a lot of FUEL's mistakes. MotorStorm may have been lap-based, but each of its few courses was carefully threaded with intertwining routes that rewarded experimentation and canny vehicle selection; FUEL's tracks are meandering sprawls that seldom reward either, whether you play the 70-plus pre-recorded options or mark out your own in the creator. The early promise of balancing the risk of filling your damage bar against the need for speed through a difficult corner also proves a red herring; even if you don't find yourself having to reset often (and thanks to a lot of deadly unmarked obstacles, you will), the AI is sufficiently inconsistent, gifting you race after "Expert" race for long periods and then savaging you for fun, to dilute its significance.

There's certainly a lot of content, at least - and with that much playground, devoted online off-roaders may be confident to write their own routes out of the mire. But all the same it seems unlikely. Of FUEL's many promises, too many are either broken or undermined by its handling, layouts, logic or interface shortcuts. There's no denying Asobo's achievement in building such a daring, beautiful landscape on such a vast scale, but the core of any good racing game is falling in love with its vehicles, the things you can do with them, and the places you can take them, and by that measure FUEL is distinctly average.

5 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (96) Latest comment 2 years ago

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

  • Dave52 #1 3 years ago

    First (no really)...

  • dsmx #2 3 years ago

    I'm predicting a lot of people on other sites are going to moan how harsh eurogamer are with this review.

  • Agent_Llama #3 3 years ago

    I was going to post first, but resisted... :op

    I'm sure the morons will buy this, meaning FUEL gets a sequel and Codemasters continue in their arcadey ways... /longs for another proper touring car game (NOT sodding GRID) and prays they get F1 right
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 00:10

  • Hunam #4 3 years ago

    I have a friend who worked on this.

    Time to get the mock on.

  • Triggerhappytel #5 3 years ago

    /Sigh.

    And Codemasters' slide into absolute mediocrity continues. I just hope OpFlash 2 and Dirt 2 are good.

  • Benno #6 3 years ago

    better than darkfall atleast

  • persus-9 #7 3 years ago

    Oh dear, I quite liked the look of this (yeah it sounded very silly but in a good way, a ripping off Mad Max 2 way) but I guess it all went wrong in the execution. Ah well, here's hoping the suckers who don't read reviews buy it anyway and they get to learn from their mistakes and make a sequal that lives up to the concept.

  • SomaticSense #8 3 years ago

    Codemasters only published it remember. Also remember they published Jericho as well, so they do have a past history of releasing utterly shite games.

    Personally, I'd love to see a return of proper Codies. The Codies who did Micro Machines, Dizzy, TOCA Touring Cars, and CMR. Not liking their current direction at the mo. All the personality has been drained out of them.

  • mkreku #9 3 years ago

    Strangely enough, I still want this..

  • john_silence #10 3 years ago

    Well of course! You're a kreku.

  • TurboBailey #11 3 years ago

    Ouch!

    Still gonna rent it. I love racing games

  • JHuxley #12 3 years ago

    Shame. I'd still like to play it myself though because my taste doesn't always run parallel to EG's...or most people's for that matter. Never really got in to Pure, for instance. Worth a try anyway...demo perchance?

    It's also worth dwelling upon the memory of Evolution Studios' game - the first one anyway

    I haven't come across many people that have played both games extensively and still insist the first is the better of the two. The opposite, if anything. They're both flawed, both feature track design that varies from average to utterly fantastic and are both a whole heap of fun. If anyone is still put off by EG's review (or the admittedly average demo) I'd go out and buy this instead of Fuel.

  • ilmaestro #13 3 years ago

    "Speaking to friends about Asobo Studios' FUEL..."

    If it sounds like the start of a Tim Rogers review, then it sounds bad.

  • Razz #14 3 years ago

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

    I was /really/ looking forward to this :(

  • figaro7 #15 3 years ago

    Stick to PURE, its brilliant! Oh and any chance of an Excite Bots review?
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 01:11

  • Shane86 #16 3 years ago

    How eurogamer still get early review copies amazes me, "here have a free game, no doubt you'll give it a shit review, have it anyway"

  • Escape #17 3 years ago

    'Rein it in.'

    How many hours did it take you to type, Tom?

  • Enkeixpress #18 3 years ago

    I'm still getting it because of it's huge world!

  • Atticus12 #19 3 years ago

    im not gonna pass judgment until i play it

    i would also like to know how long the guy played it for to make that reveiw
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 03:12

  • Waldo #20 3 years ago

    Sounds like Powerslide crossed with 1nsane. I'll play it, but that's mainly because I'm a sucker for racing games.

  • Beano #21 3 years ago

    5?... FIVE???... auch!!

    DIRT and GRID were letdowns for me but I expected FUEL to be better - FOOLs!

  • justsomeone #22 3 years ago

    this is what happens when you start your game design by "fixing" the "problems" that idiots kept complaining were in burnout paradise. reset to track?

    i was looking forward to this too. in the end it seems, this review has simply made me want to go back and play burnout again from scratch. never compromise.

  • Lummox #23 3 years ago

    I noticed the review says that you can "hook up online". I'd originally assumed that this game was similar to TDU i.e. provided that you were connected to the net the game would be populated with other players even if you were playing the offline races. Is this the case now?

  • EmiliasHorse #24 3 years ago

    I was watching some video clips of this yesterday wondering if this was going to be worth having. Thank you Tom, answered that question for me, back to Motor Storm....and a bit of Grid.


    I just forgot, TDU is sat on shelf. I really liked that, time for some driving bliss.
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 07:28

  • Scimarad #25 3 years ago

    This is one for the bargan bin, I think. I find the idea of the game a little too interesting to resist entirely.

  • spookyzombie #26 3 years ago

    They've certainly done the most they (legally) can to copy the PURE box art.

  • kendoji #27 3 years ago

    Dammit I wanted this to be good!

  • metalangel #28 3 years ago

    Fuelish Asbo (sic) Studios, you've run out of gas! But really, why make such a vast game environment and then not put anything to do in it?

  • Furfoot #29 3 years ago

    MOTORSTOOOOAARM!

  • seasidebaz #30 3 years ago

    I KNEW this game was going to be shit. I was saying at work yesterday that the game was meant to be out yesterday and yet there were no reviews (even though it had been delayed by a week a couple of days earlier).

  • UncleLou #31 3 years ago

    Not surprising. The early videos showing the landscapes had promise, the latest videos showing the racing made it look completely unremarkable. Shame.

  • thebaron #32 3 years ago

    oh dear that's bad! was looking forward to this...

    Is it me or has the quality of XBOX 360 games gone downhill this year???


  • Quint2020 #33 3 years ago

    Ugh, enough with all this Codemasters hate, they didn't even bloody develop this one and GRID got high scores pretty much everywhere, Toca elitists need to stop bloody moaning.
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 08:43

  • Whizzo #34 3 years ago

    Not too surprising there's no demo for this one then if it's not up to much.

  • muscleblade #35 3 years ago

    "Is it me or has the quality of XBOX 360 games gone downhill this year??? "

    This is a MULTIPLATFORM game!!!

  • killuminati2911 #36 3 years ago

    Codemasters is one of the worst publisher on earth. Can't believe why they'r still open for business..

  • El_MUERkO #37 3 years ago

    better than darkfall?

  • linkster #38 3 years ago

    8/10 OPSM
    7/10 OXM
    4/5 Guardian
    4/5 Times

  • Trinod #39 3 years ago

    GRID is a word for all things good in the world

  • andromeda #40 3 years ago

    to be fair, as much as i like DiRT and grid GRID, its this extreme racing/americanisation that is responsible for the slide in quailty .
    You can never beat the thrill of hairin' it through a narrow english country lane in Colin McRae 1. RIP fella. At least this shite no longer tarnishes your name!

  • El-Dev #41 3 years ago

    @thebaron,

    There are Xbox 360 games this year?

  • Darren #42 3 years ago

    @linkster - Yes, EG are harsh with their reviews, so much so, that at times I think that they must try so hard to write them that they forget games are meant to be fun. After all they gave X-Men Origins: Wolverine just 5/10 and pretty much everyone else seems to rate it higher, even Edge gave it a 6 and it averages 73%+ on Metacritic and GameRankings.

    Then I sensibly remember that EG reviewers are just ordinary people like us who just have different tastes and standards so while the criticisms can be considered objective (if the review is well-written and balanced), the score at the end is always subjective because despite those niggles and flaws you may actually like the game. It really depends on your tolerance for such things and how much you like the genre really. I absolutely love Wolverine for example, it's one of the best movie-licensed games I've played in ages (not counting Riddick: Dark Athena as that's really a spruced up remake) and would give it a solid 7/10 myself. Yes, it can be repetitive and it's not the most polished game around but that's true of any game in any genre and that game at least manages to keep things interesting right to the very end with new enemy types and skills/mutagen upgrades. It makes exceptional use of the license and is actually far better than the movie it's actually based on. A rarity indeed! :)

    Anyway, I tend to view EG's scores as a "de minimis" limit so if a game gets 5/10 or higher and scores better elsewhere plus the demo is entertaining *and* it's a genre that interests me then it's a worthy purchase IMO. After all if I only took EG's word on games then I'd have missed out on gems like Banjo-Kazooie XBLA and the aforementioned Wolverine.

    /waits for EG to give Virtua Tennis 2009 5/10...

  • Spooke #43 3 years ago

    Codies are long past their prime.

    Now do yourselves a favour and release Toca World Touring Car in the PSP store, it was the last good game you ever made.

  • Domovoi #44 3 years ago

    Much pre-release hype and promising previews on Eurogamer, and then a 5/10 review. Weird.

    Anyway, still sounds like something fun to pick up in the bargain bin. I don't give a damn about racing mechanics.

  • Lexx87 #45 3 years ago

    And yet people STILL talk like this is a terribly low harsh score. It's average! Not great, not terrible either. Why can't people see that :(

  • linkster #46 3 years ago

    @ Darren

    Fair points all. But Tom's review I think goes further than is really necessary in kicking a game that should be lauded for the ambition it shows. Criticising the fact that in an open world game of unprecedented scale there is an OPTION to play it in a structured way that means you dont HAVE to drive everywhere is baffling - obviously its there to cater for different types of players. Similarly to say the world isn't worth exploring is beyond even the harshest criticism I could imagine. The game is far from perfect, but the other reviews so far have been fair. This IMO isn't a fair assessment, and that's a shame.
    Edited by 1 at 27/05/09 @ 09:45

  • Darren #47 3 years ago

    I've just watched a couple of the FUEL gameplay videos and I was very impressed with the engine. Love the race with the twister and I understand the game has a large variety of environments and weather conditions, always a good thing in a racing game. Only the obligatory excess of screen tearing marred the visuals but that can easily be fixed by purchasing the cheaper PC version. I'm going to keep my eyes on the other review scores because this is a game that interests me a lot. Looks a lot of fun in the videos...

  • Spooke #48 3 years ago

    Lexx, because when games cost near to £50 a pop there is no point bothering with average games. I don't buy anything below an 8.

  • muscleblade #49 3 years ago

    @Spooke

    I hope for your sake you dont mean below Eurogamer 8. Some of the best games this year - and last year got below 8 on this site.

    RE5 and Dead Space among others. Those are not average games.

  • UncleLou #50 3 years ago

    Lexx, because when games cost near to £50 a pop there is no point bothering with average games. I don't buy anything below an 8.

    Unless you're completely in line with the reviewers, that's a strange thing to do. Some of the best games I've played in recent years got a 7.

  • Darren #51 3 years ago

    @Spooke - That's all very well but whose 8/10 do you use? Surely you don't just take EG's word for it, after all how do you know with absolute certainly that you agree with their score?

    Just seen muscleblade's post... I completely agree. Dead Space was awesome, Resident Evil 5 was great fun, ditto for Banjo-Tooie and a dozen other sub-8/10 scoring games on EG. I shudder to think what great games I'd have missed had I just trusted EG. Thus I *NEVER* trust one site but rather read as many reviews as possible to get a better impression of a game in the absence of a demo.

  • Monkey_Puncher #52 3 years ago

    The footage of this I saw looked really bad, the physics on the bikes and quads was laughable and it just didn't look like any fun to play at all.

  • Emth #53 3 years ago

    @killuminati2911

    Yes just what we need. Get rid of the only decently sized British publisher left? Great idea.

  • andywilkie35 #54 3 years ago

    A shame, was quite interested by this

  • Spooke #55 3 years ago

    I was talking generally... and it's not a hard and fast rule. But the only game I've got that was a 7 is Tiger Woods I think.

  • Slipstream #56 3 years ago

    As I thought. No point in building a huge landscape if the content isn't going to compliment it.
    Developers brag about all the wrong things these days...

  • PearOfAnguish #57 3 years ago

    "Similarly to say the world isn't worth exploring is beyond even the harshest criticism I could imagine."

    If there's no point and no fun in exploring then that's a valid criticism. Are you worried they're hurting the developers feelings?

  • justsomeone #58 3 years ago

    @linkster et al

    read the new scoring policy - this game is "average". it's a pass, not a fail. it's just not a good pass.

    seems fair IMHO.

    folks that bang on about metacritic should bear in mind that their scores aggregate a lot of reviews from highly dubious sources (telegraph?). also, they're not very accurate. i noted more than once that they included an xbox360 score on a wii version of a game, thereby upping the average considerably on a duff wii conversion.

    metacritic is about as reliable as wikipedia if you don't check the details.

  • linkster #59 3 years ago

    But their own preview said it was fun.

  • uglygamer #60 3 years ago

    sixtyfifth

  • PearOfAnguish #61 3 years ago

    "But their own preview said it was fun."

    Doesn't matter, previews are often positive, don't always have much time to play and pubs can get very shirty if you slag off a game in a preview. Also, both previews were done by other writers.

  • rhubarbandcustard #62 3 years ago

    Hate for Metacritic, Codemasters, Fuel and Americans in this thread.

    1. Metacritic is great. Would never buy a game without double checking the aggregated score on this site first
    2. Codemasters - one of the few remaining British publishers. They didn't develop this game.
    3. Fuel - suspect I will like this but will wait for it to hit £17.99 price point on Play. Which will take about two weeks.
    4. Amercians - I love them, warts and all.

  • ccfb #63 3 years ago

    i would like the see those writers review this game, then.

  • PearOfAnguish #64 3 years ago

    "i would like the see those writers review this game, then."

    Why? You think that having played it for a short time a few months ago their opinion is more valid, or you hope that they'll give it a higher score?

  • dirk_aircool #65 3 years ago

    The review is the important bit . preveiws are just that , usually unfinished . the review is of the whole finnished game that we get to buy in the shop, not the edited highlights the publisher/programer attempts to impress the writers with.
    I think in above post someone said it depends on the writers opinion and whether they like the genre/game type or whatever and I believe that to be true . you cant argue with opinion ( well you can but at the end its a difference of opinion not an argument ).
    Wait for demo or wait for it to hit the bargain bin . ( I got Facevreaker for £5-00 ASDA , Glad I didn't pay more . gears of war 2 £20-00 ASDA Bargain. ) Its severly annoying to spen nearly 50 conkers for a dog of a game .

  • UncleLou #66 3 years ago

    i would like the see those writers review this game, then.

    I might be wrong here, but it's usually policy that different persons do previews and reviews, which makes sense.

  • jambo74 #67 3 years ago

    Crosses off list.....next

  • XxTotalzxX #68 3 years ago

    Oh...dam. I was looking forward to this :(

    I never really got into GRID;despite its good scores, I'm a Colin Mcrae 1 and TOCA Touring cars type.

    Another great Codemasters franchise I loved was LMA manger, they might not have been technically brilliant but I loved them all the same...is there any news on whether we'll see on e on PS3/360? Sorry went completely off topic :)

  • justsomeone #69 3 years ago

    @rhubarbandcustard

    i don't read any "hate" for metacritic on here, or anything else for that matter. hate is a strong word - have a care when you chuck it around.

    if you refer to my own comments, you should notice that i merely advise caution when using metacritic, and not to simply rely on the score without checking the sources. i'm suggesting that one engages one's brain when using the website, not spouting hate.

    if one were to take the view that every opinion must be split into either love or hate, then i can see why a nuanced discussion, or a review score less than 10, may appear to represent "hate".

    hate not, my friend.

  • rhubarbandcustard #70 3 years ago

    Justsomeone: A pedant is a person who is overly concerned with formalism and precision, or who 'makes a show of learning'.

    I love to use Metacritic.

    By love I don't mean I want to buy it roses, gush endless bad poetry to it while brushing my fingers lightly over the keyboard while perusing its sexy front page.

  • JoyrexJ9 #71 3 years ago

    Wonder if they played it for more than 3 hours?

  • Retroid #72 3 years ago

    :(

    /Had high hopes for this

  • Spekingur #73 3 years ago

    It's almost like Tom only played one race in the game. Since he only seems to talk about one race that he goes through in the review. Still, this is something I will undoubtly play.

  • metalangel #74 3 years ago

    I don't see why Codebastards being British should excuse their inability to put out a decent game (as publisher or otherwise)

  • homerramone #75 3 years ago

    This pleases me.. Cos by the sounds of it Im going to like it... And my POV on games is generally inverseley proportional to any given EG review...



  • Miths #76 3 years ago

    Distinctly medicore or not, I have a feeling I'll still end up buying this - if only to spend a few hours driving around at random in that huge world.

  • Yodzilla #77 3 years ago

    Man I really wanted this to be an open world MotorStorm. Watching those videos though makes the racing look so damn bland and it looks no where near as polished or exciting and Pacific Rift :(

  • justsomeone #78 3 years ago

    @rhubarbandcustard

    one might be considered, at the very least, "uncritical" if one fed the word "pedant" into google, and then just picked the very first wikipedia entry one found, then copy/pasted the very first paragraph from that entry.

    one may also be considered "ignorant" if one compounded this by failing to realise the irony of dismissing someone as a "pedant", simply because they take the time and effort to explain themselves to you, and instead sidelined thought and discussion for simply picking a word you may have heard once, and having to look up the meaning in wikipedia.

    just saying.

    by the way, i looked up "love" in wikipedia, but that doesn't seem to describe what you have for metacritic. try "faith". it's ok, you don't have to read past the first sentence.

  • Yodzilla #79 3 years ago

    Serious question: is there even any vehicle damage in this game? I've not been able to find anything one way or the other online and from the videos it looks like nothing happens to your car when you slam into things.

  • asilaydyinguk #80 3 years ago

    this is a harsh review but its nice to see a harsh review now and again

  • Andreas2402 #81 3 years ago

    @Yodzilla: Yeah, just watched the video too and there isn't a damage model at all. The vehicle accelerated like a sports car and had a high speed of 95 m/h which equals about 150 km/h. Seems to be a pure arcade racer. The steering doesn't look that complicated either. I guess the simplicity of the game in terms of racing properly was so overwhelming that the reviewer forgot to mention all that.

  • zakrocz #82 3 years ago

    Like has been said, 5/10 is seen as Average and we don't want to be shelling out 40 notes on an average game.

    There is no news on a demo which is a bad sign, especially for a new franchise that has no prequels for us gamers to refer to. If Codemasters had faith in this game surely a demo would have surfaced by now...?

    And to the lemons slagging off Codemasters, shouldn't you trolls be spamming the Codemasters forums with your bitterness like you usually do?

    Colin McRae 2,3,4,5 & DIRT 1 & GRID are average games are they, LMAO, you're having a laugh and you really should stop embarressing yourselves.

  • slayaz #83 3 years ago

    Nothing wrong with codies, I think they do a sterling job, but remember they are only the publisher in this case.

    At least they are getting behind games that are trying to do something a bit different.

  • Rodchenko #84 3 years ago

    Next Codemasters projects: FOOL and FAIL

  • coach_mcguirk #85 3 years ago

    All these mentions of games costing nearly £50 - where on earth do you buy your games? Even if the RRP is nearly 50 notes, I think the last time I paid more than £35 for a game was The Orange Box on release day (£39.99 in Tesco).

    Very keen to try this, despite the review.

  • lukaz #86 3 years ago

    Sounds like driving physics are not that good. I recently got Baja: Edge of Control and can recommend it. Maybe better than Fuel for sim fans.

  • lwwarrior1 #87 3 years ago

    I think this review is quite unfair as he says the going off the course is very difficult and he hits objects. but to be honest the reviewer might be totally shit at racing games and so making this review biased. and as for the on-line being laggy im sure asobo could easily fix that. e.g. look at gears of war 2. it used to take 20 mins to find a game but now I find one pretty much straight away. btw the official xbox magazine gave this a 70% and the guardian gave this a 4 out of 5.
    and for you retards slagging off codemasters, they didn't make this game asobo studios did codemasters just publish it.
    Edited by 1 at 28/05/09 @ 09:24

  • captain_SPiKE #88 3 years ago

    Gamestation has posted that this is now delayed until the 12 of june. I dont think you have don it any favours by reviewing un-finished code .
    will wait for an official review we think ?!?!
    Edited by 1 at 28/05/09 @ 10:28

  • themagicaltaz #89 3 years ago

    I bought a retail copy yesterday...

    So the code should be finished... I hope.

  • m0thr4 #90 3 years ago

    Sounds like driving physics are not that good. I recently got Baja: Edge of Control and can recommend it. Maybe better than Fuel for sim fans.

    Yeah, even from the EG videos you can see the way the car appears to turn on an imaginary vertical pole that goes right through the middle of the roof. The weather physics are completely contradictory too... whole buildings are torn apart by tornadoes as the roadside trees, sign posts etc. remain completely unaffected.

    I know it's an arcade game, but there still has to be some suspension of disbelief.
    Edited by 1 at 28/05/09 @ 14:56

  • cw- #91 3 years ago

    Fuel is great fun, yet it gets 5/10? RacePro is a big pile of wank and gets 8/10?


    Excellent.

  • itsgood2slide #92 3 years ago

    Edge review: 8/10. That's quite a disparity. In their opinion: interface bad, gameplay great.

  • urbannomad123 #93 3 years ago

    Yep, my issue of Edge plopped through the door today and, since this game has been on my radar for a while, I was pleased to see an 8 out of 10 score. I have always found Edge to be a quite reliable source for reviews, and this review in question was quite well balanced. Furthermore it was clear with some of his/her comments that some time had been spent with the game. The Eurogamer review is strangely jarring. Not sure how much time Tom spent with the game. Definitely on my to buy list.

  • Gamesoldier01 #94 3 years ago

    I have rented the game and to tell you the truth it really is not that bad of a game. Is it worth $60, I'm not sure, but if you take the game for what it is, an arcade type of racing experience, then you will not be disappointed. The map is the largest I have ever experienced. One of the worries I had about the game before it came out was with such a large area to cover within a game, another aspect of the game would have to suffer, like graphics, gameplay, etc... Eurogamer did make a very good point about the actually driving experience in Fuel. You do seem to kind of float above the terrain and your vehicle does not take each and every bump the way you would expect or experienced in other racing games like Dirt or Grid. I believe the developers may have done this on purpose. This games terrain is so vast and so altered, that if the vehicles took each and every bump, hill, cliff, depression, puddle, and canyon with the same type of vehicle physics involved you would never get through a race. The terrain is really that diverse. This is one aspect of the game that I believe non of the reviewers from any of the sites I have read took into consideration. This game does have a lot of potential and I have not even played the online portion yet. This game has to be a good time online.

  • Miths #95 3 years ago

    I suspect this game will wear thin over time (don't they all really?), but I've thoroughly enjoyed the first six hours I've just finished with only a couple of short breaks. And I've actually only spent around half an hour racing (career and challenges), the other five and a half hours I've just been cruising around, visiting a couple of vista points, picking up a few liveries and otherwise marvelling at the often stunning landscape. And I've only seen small parts of the first two out of 19 sectors.

    As for the actual driving and car handling, I rather like it. Sure, it's an arcade racer through and through, but I really feel like they did a good job of the handling model - both muscle cars on the large tarmac main roads (and they can handle gravel roads as well, as long as you keep the tail end under control, which is one of the aspects that really has a nice feel to it in my opinion) as well as buggys off road and on gravel roads.
    Right now I'm using a fast hybrid buggy that does well both off road and on tarmac, and it's just a wonderful and very powerful beast. And that includes the engine sounds, as it does for most of the cars and bikes I've driven so far (it's been a few days since I read this EG review so I can't recall if weak sound was one of the things pointed out here, but it was in at least a few other reviews I've seen. I don't agree at all when it comes to engine sounds at least).
    I'm not crazy about the one quad bike I've tried so far, but then I hadn't expected to be, but I'm looking forward to trying one of the road bikes - off road I really prefer a buggy.

    Even if many of the races turn out to be bland and repetetive I know I'm going to love this game for at least as long as it will take me to explore and seemingly many different terrains and locations. Sure, there's a bit of pop in now and then, some terrain textures could be better and the world can seem sparsely "decorated" (however I had feared it would pretty much be nothing buy empty terrain with a few trees in it, but there are countless small farms, burn out car wrecks, oil tanks, forrest fires, a fair amount of NPC traffic and an overall feel of a desolate but not completely empty and sterile world), but if you enjoy sightseeing and random road trips across deserts, salt flats, beaches, forrest and burnt out prairies, mountains and more, this might just be the game for you.

    This is definitely at least a 7/10 in my book - and based solely on this initial six hour session it's close to a 9/10. Sometimes I get the feeling that reviewers - often, I imagine, being forced to play games to completion - get completely burned out on long games, which probably makes it hard to remember the time where the game in question was actually fun.
    If I just get 12-15 hours of exploration and a bit of racing out of FUEL I'll be perfectly satisfied.

  • duffster #96 2 years ago

    It's now £11 on steam. Played about 3 hours, and really liking it. Playing on PC at 1920 x 1080 with 8 x AA and 16 X AF and it looks lovely. So far it's a 8/10, maybe it will get boring but hey, it's 11 quid.
    Edited by 1 at 29/07/10 @ 04:48