Fuel

Four star or unleaded?

On paper, Fuel is a ridiculously ambitious racing title. Open-world racers might be nothing new, and we've seen more established franchises moving towards giving players complete freedom to go anywhere and race at anytime. From Test Drive Unlimited to Burnout Paradise, going open-world is the ultimate expression of driving on the open road, liberating players from track-based competitions: the world is your racetrack.

Fuel takes the free-roaming racer to new heights, with a record-breaking 5,560 square miles of terrain to explore at your leisure. It's an insane achievement, especially when you consider that the whole map can be driven across without a single loading time to interrupt the ride. Filling this vast expanse are numerous challenges, races and other distractions to keep you occupied; otherwise there's limited pleasure to be gained from simply driving around, enjoying the scenery.

You can only aimlessly thrash around the rough, rural landscape for so long before you begin to get bored. Thankfully, you can pause the game at any time and access any of the unlocked challenges and career stages, leaping directly into them after a short loading screen. When selecting a race, you can choose to tackle Rookie, Expert or Legend difficulties with victory earning you 'fuel', which is your in-game currency for purchasing new vehicles.

Jumping straight into races is exactly what you'll find yourself doing as there's actually very little impetus to explore Fuel's world. Beyond discovering the odd extra livery or a vista point, the only other reason to navigate the open environment is to drive to race markers on the map. Each objective marker is highlighted on a compass that can be toggled on or off using one of the face buttons, but when you can effortlessly begin a contest at any time, this is wasted effort.

If there were something genuinely interesting and meaningful to uncover or interact with in Fuel's vast, endless wilderness, then maybe you'd feel more inclined to appreciate and enjoy it. But sadly there's very little amongst the sprawling, flat and desolate plains to attract your attention. In creating such an enormous mass of terrain, developer Asobo has merely ended up with a marginally pretty playground where they seemingly overlooked the seesaw, swings and slide.

Races are largely made up of checkpoint to checkpoint affairs, wherein you're usually forced into slavishly following the floating red chevrons that show you the exact route to take, as without this visual aid it's far too easy to get hopelessly lost. In keeping with the game's mantra, Fuel revels in pushing you off-road wherever possible. This can be both confusing and frustrating without the help of the compass switched on in your HUD, which is somewhat invasive during a race.

It also doesn't particularly help when you compare Fuel to its non open-world, off-road competitors such as Pure and Motorstorm. Although it presents itself as an extreme racer with attitude, Fuel has none of the spectacle of Motorstorm with its elaborate crashes and showers of mud or the stunts and aerial shenanigans of Pure.

There's also very little real interaction between you and the scenery, with impacts either stopping you dead in your tracks, damage-free or initiating an impromptu reset.

Add to this lacklustre sound design consisting of indistinct music and samey engine noises and this Fuel is beginning to look as though it isn't going to be igniting many fires. Presentation wise, Fuel is generally quite slick, although the nature of its core career mode is misleading. Rather than what one might consider a traditional career, Fuel instead gives the player a series of challenges that grant stars each time you win. Accumulating stars gradually unlocks new regions on the map that you can then fast travel to at any time. The various terrains cover forest, desert, snow and ice, but whether you'll muster the patience to grind through and access every area entirely depends on how long you can stand to endure the repetitive racing.

Setting Fuel in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by global warming may sound like a great idea, but this actually serves as an excuse for the empty environments, inhabited by abandoned cars, logs and other irritating detritus. Sure, the dramatic weather looks fantastic and the lighting it throws upon your vehicle is beautiful, but they have no effect upon the racing whatsoever. A full day and night cycle adds to the illusion of a living, breathing world, yet ironically there's no real life to the barren land other than the swirling tornadoes of debris that are kicked up at random intervals.

Fuel's enormous ambition can't be ignored and it has been acknowledged as the biggest game ever with a Guinness World Record to show for it. However, when that ambition fails to live up to its promise by delivering a hollow and disappointing experience, you can't help but feel somewhat nonplussed by the final product. This should have been incredible, but having tried our very best to like Codemasters' latest racing IP, we can't help but feel like we've been taken for a ride. Fuel-ed, if you will.

55%

By Richard Walker