Fuel

In recent times, Codemasters racing games have been nothing short of epic, with amazing new features, wowing us all with their polished graphics. Sadly Fuel doesn't bring anything new or exciting to the racing game genre. Yes, the map is endless and I admire that, but far too much focus has been poured into this frankly irrelevant creation. It's all well and good going for 'the largest ever playable area in a video game' but it has no substance, mile after mile of baron wasteland. I personally would not mind this so much if it weren't for the 6th generation visuals. The second rate graphics are dull and lifeless and don't even compare to the quality of design in GRiD and DiRT.
Even horribly basic errors have been made, i.e. being able to drive through some buildings and other solid objects. The racing itself feels dull and spectacularly uninvolving, and very frustrating when coming to the end of a race, your steering fails you or the car refuses to automatically change down a gear, so your competitors overtake and you need to do the race over and over again. The lack of storyline is probably the least of this game's worries.
The whole idea of 'open-world' (or GTA clone) games is becoming tiresome, especially requiring to discover 500 oil barrels throughout the 14,000km square map, which is frankly ridiculous and lets be brutally honest, boring. As for the other challenges, chase the helicopter is quite involving but doesn't really prove to be much of a 'challenge', vista-points would work if the graphics proved to be worthy of the Xbox 360s potential. With the collectables, such as liveries and clothing, I feel no urge to do so as it deems itself pointless, yet such a key challenge in completing the game.
In summary, the background idea of the game was, in theory, very good, but Asobo and Codemasters have really not applied it in the best manner. The weather conditions are good, but not as good as promised in the pre-release trailers etc. The visuals are not up to current standard and fall way short of Codemasters previous releases, the challenges seem repetitive and unnecessary, and overall is generally dull. I've given the game 3 stars as it reflects the game perfectly. Average. That itself a compliment.

This game is probably my least favourite racing game I have played to date. Okay, so the technology behind it is great, fitting all that terrain into one game, nothing short of a miracle. But why did they have to lack in areas such as Graphics, Control or Sound?

The handling feels a little bit like you are trying to drive a hovercraft over water.. it just feels floaty. The graphics let themselves down a bit too, I would've expected to have seen these graphics on a PS2 or and Original Xbox and the sound? There wasn't enough, you would go 'round the corner and get the same tyre squeel sound effect as the last corner.

This game is fun if you like driving around all the time to get to races. Maybe the 14,000+ KM2 area wasn't such a good thing though. :(

This map is enormous and you don't understand the full size of it until you play the game. It would take 40 minutes real time to drive top to bottom and that's in a straight line which is nearly impossible with the many varieties of terrain.

Good Points
- massive map
- large selection of vehicles, clothing, liveries and paint styles
- variety of vehicles (different vehicles good for different types of races or terrain etc.)
- different race types and lost of different challenges(difficulty can be changed to suit the driver)
- different "things" to pick up along the way i.e. hundreds maybe thousands of "fuel" (game's currency) cans scattered around the map
- vista points (points with a good view)
- bonus cars around the map
- liveries (paints that can be put on a cars)
- many different areas to explore

Bad Points
- in the online mode you cannot go in a private match with friends to show them places on the map
- the damage metre is unforgiving which sometimes get annoying
- difference in challenge difficulty (some can be really easy whereas others are quite hard

The so called experts who have given this game 5/10 in my opinion are wrong. There is a lot to do in the game and the graphics are also not as bad as some are making out.