FUEL
Fuel is a racing video game developed by Asobo Studio and published by Codemasters, released on June 2 2009 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and July 3 2009 for Microsoft Windows.
Fuel is an open world racing game set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by extreme weather fueled by Global Warming (According to the instruction manual), with players experiencing varying weather effects such as occasional tornadoes and sandstorms, as well as an accelerated day-night cycle. The game world is over 5,560 square miles (14,400 km²) in size and completely free to roam. In the free roaming mode, the game features the ability to drive anywhere in the game world without incurring loading times, however crashing a vehicle – or invoking the reset function to return to the road – does invoke a loading screen.
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stavrosthewonderchicken
- Tagged with: 2009 | asobo | driving | openworld | pc | post-apocalyptic | PS3 | racing | Xbox
- Wikipedia: FUEL
- http://www.fuel-game.com/
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One Review
This game is to me a perfect story of missed opportunities. The game world is ENORMOUS — almost unbelievably so. The engine is splendid, and the terrain throughout the world varied and interesting and sometimes quite chilling its depiction of a world post-apocalypse.
There were times playing this when I could almost believe that I was driving a highway in British Columbia, maybe even after the rain of death that had only just grazed us, the nightmare rain from my early 80s teen nights, but with the added Mad Max pleasure that I could just go offroad and wander up to any mountaintop I saw, any time. I loved this without reserve.
But there’s just not enough happening in the game world. It’s dead, and not just post-apoc dead, but empty and quiet, except for the occasional AI truck or aircraft. If exploration is your great pleasure, you’ll love this, but even for me, it’s not enough. It feels like they spent a huge amount of time building the world and making it beautiful, tweaking the engine until it sang, then ran out of money or time, and had to push it out before they’d built much of a game in there.
Racing is pretty fun, mind you. Really fun, sometimes, particularly in the more devastated areas of the world. Sadly, the vehicle physics are also a little — a little, mind you — lacking, which detracts somewhat from the core fun, which is racing.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to anyone who likes the same sort of thing that I do — exploring worlds vividly imagined, action, things whizzing by at speed — but I can see why many would be disappointed by it.
For me, it’s a meditative game, oddly. I play it to relax — plug in the Xbox controller to the PC and just go for a drive for an hour or two out in the mountains. It’s a meditative, contemplative experience for me. As such, I really like it.