FUEL Comments by Tom Bramwell

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.

@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.

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.

@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.

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.

@killuminati2911

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

A shame, was quite interested by this

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.

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...

"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?

@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.

But their own preview said it was fun.

sixtyfifth

"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.

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.

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

"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?

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 .

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.

Crosses off list.....next

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 :)

@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.

I knew this would be average. It's all Codemasters are capable of these days: being average, and suing potential users with flimsy evidence.

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.

Wonder if they played it for more than 3 hours?

:(

/Had high hopes for this

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.

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

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...

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.

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 :(

@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.

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.

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

@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.

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.

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.

Next Codemasters projects: FOOL and FAIL

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.

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.

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.

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 ?!?!

I bought a retail copy yesterday...

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

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.

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


Excellent.

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

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.

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.

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.