Holy Shit, a blog post!

Before I get into this, I'll tell you that I gave up on this game 2 hours into it.

 

 

When I first heard about Fuel, I was very excited. My two loves are sandbox games and driving games. To marry the two is bliss for me. I remember games from Microsoft on the PC in the 90s like Midtown Madness and Motorcoss Madness. Great freedom and space in those games. Needless to say, Fuel was on the top of my list for this year. As the release got closer, I heard news that it was not what it was hyped up to be. I dismissed that as just random opinion...until I played it....

 

I'll leave my gamebreaking comments for the end...

 

 

 

 

 

This is certainly the strongest part of the game and looks very good for a streaming open world. Lighting is totally dynamic with day/night cycles, weather effects that really make you feel in the world and a moon that actually gives off realistic light. When you're trashing through a forest, at night on a motorcycle with nothing other than the moon and your headlight to see, you really feel in the middle of nowhere. The cycles from day to night could be a little longer though. You can actually watch the sun come up and go back down while driving from point A to B. I guess they assumed that most people wouldn't spend that much time playing it. More on that later.

 

 

 

 

 

The controls are what you think they would be. Nothing new or revolutionary here.

The various vehicles (Motorcycle, ATV, Car, Buggy, Monster Truck, etc) have their own handling. Traction is at a minimum, so get your thumb ready, there will be a lot of overcorrecting going on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing much to report here. Sounds are solid. Not many games screw this up these days.

 

 

 

 

 

a ha...this is what I wanted to talk about.

 

Here's the skinny: The world has run out of oil and fuel is the currency. So naturally, you choose a mode of transportation that runs on the only term of trade available to get to races that make you the very currency you run on. Hmm, ok, not the smartest chap, but ok. So you are presented with a gigantic map, broken up into about 12 (or so) zones. You are only permitted in the first zone until you win enough races to go to the next zone. It sounds constrictive, but you can actually race across the whole world in free ride mode from the start. So what you have to do is ride, or drive around and find huge smoke signals which are the race markers. Once there, you can compete in said competition. Sounds straightforward, right? Here is where the game falls flat on it's face. You press A to enter yourself in the race and are presented with a 15 second loading screen. All they are loading are the other cars and the checkpoints, the map and environment is streaming so no need to load that. Do they really need to do that? Does it really take that long? Once you're done with the race, you have to endure the same loading screen to get back to the world. If you crash bad enough anywhere, you have a loading screen to relocate your car back about 100 feet. If you want to see what races you can warp to or enter in, there is a loading screen to get to that menu, then another to enter the race. After a while, you just don't want to enter into races because of the loading screens. For me, this is the dealbreaker. It really takes away from the immersion and you almost feel like the free driving you do to get to a race (or loading screen) is more of the game you were looking for than the actual races.

 

 

 

 

 

As for story, other than the one noted above, which I got from an early gametrailers interview with the developer, there isn't one and they don't explain that anywhere. With the backdrop of an oil-armageddon, you would think that it would be easy to wrap a nice racing adventure around it. Your adventure is to just collect items and complete races. That's it. You would think that a sandbox game would lend itself to choices and decisions. This one is just a scavenger hunt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

meh.

 

 

 

 

X.