Review on Playstation 3 Fuel by Jack Ford

Muscle cars, motorcycles, quads, dune buggies and monster trucks, all races? Sounds like another racing game. But wait. There's 5,000 square miles of wilderness here! Fuel is a new racing game with 5,000 square miles of open world to explore, over 200 events and around 75 cars to drive. Is the massive open world and sheer amount of content enough to recommend this game, or are there better racing games out there? -------- ---------------------------------------- --------- --- -------------------------------------- ---------- --- --- Storyline: There is no real story in the game. It has a setting - a futuristic wasteland devastated by global warming. But there is no real plot, no characters, no plot twists. I don't count the story in the final grade. ---- --------------------------------- -------------------------- - ---- ---------------------------------------- Graphics: The ones in the game Graphic engine is excellent. The cars are highly detailed and given the sheer size of the open world, the environments look amazing. But there are a lot of popups and sometimes (especially at night) you can see the white dots that make up the rendering of the worlds. But other than that, the graphics are impressive, although there are some better looking racing games out there. --------- ---- ------------------------------------- - --------- ---- ------------------------------------ -- --------- --- Audio A: The in-game sound is amazing. The music (consisting of a fairly typical guitar wander) is decent, although it can be a bit annoying for some. Fortunately, apart from the title track, there is no licensed music. Some people might prefer licensed music, but I don't. Whenever there is a racing game with licensed music, the developers always make the mistake of choosing the worst possible music - just look at Burnout Paradise. So I'm glad Codemasters has settled on instrumental music and not licensed music. The engine sound is also excellent. But I have a comment. Sometimes a 100 mile muscle car is more like a 100 mile lawn mower. This sound used for engine noise is not as close to a car engine as I would like. But the engine noise isn't the worst I've ever heard. ------------------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------------------ -- - ---------------------Gameplay: The gameplay is very similar to a regular open-world racing game, only there are some new interesting types of racing that have never been seen before have been previously seen in the racing genre. But let me talk about the open world first. The world is divided into 19 camps, each with career races and challenges. You can drive any vehicle you like and explore the world by collecting liveries, vantage points, and custom vehicles. Liveries give one of your cars a new look and viewpoints give you a breathtaking view of the world. Maverick Vehicles are upgraded vehicles that move in the open world that you can collect. And then there are Doppler trucks. For example, if you track down a livery Doppler truck, all of the liveries in that camp will show up on your map so you don't have to try to find them - you just have to follow the map to collect them. See also Races and Challenges. There is a wide variety of races: Checkpoint, Wild Track, Knock Out, Raid, Endurance, Seek n' Destroy and a few others. And this brings me to another complaint about the game - some of the races are boring. Now there are races where a tornado rages across the track but some other races are simple races where you drive on a paved road with no chilly weather effects. These races aren't necessarily boring, they just pale in comparison to other races. There is also a strange change in race selection. Events are scattered across the countryside but it is possible to select an event from the menu. Which begs the question: what's the point of driving five miles straight to get to an event if you can select it from a menu? It's not necessarily a bug, just a weird setup that I just throw away. It may sound like I hate this game, but I don't. I've really enjoyed this game since I bought it. Collecting collectibles in the wilderness is a lot of fun and some of the races are fun. But there is another downside – AI. Let's say you are in a race and the AI is very basic. You win the race for miles. Then you move on to another race and the AI owns the road and they overtake you with ease. It looks like the AI in this game collects all bad kinds of bad racing AI from other arcade racing games. There is a simple stupid AI. Really intelligent AI. Rubber AI. Again, I don't want you to think that I hate this game. This is one of the best racing games I own. But these shortcomings reduce the overall rating of the game. However, don't let these shortcomings put you off this game. I highly recommend this game to all arcade racing fans. The game also has an online racing component, but for some reason no one is playing online. Not that it's a big deal as the offline component is hard to recommend. But if nobody is online, it will be difficult to get some achievements that require you to participate in X online races or complete X online races first. However, if you have a few friends willing to play with you, it's not a big problem. Overall, the gameplay might not be as good as other racing games on the market, but if you're looking for a different racing game, look no further. --------------------- ------------------------------------------- --------------------- ------------------------------------------- ------------------- ------- --- ------- ----------------- Constant attraction: this is by far the best part of the game. . There's just so much to do in this game. This game will easily serve you for years to come, even after you beat the game. You have to participate in 75 career races, 190 challenges and hundreds of collectibles. While it lacks the brilliance of Burnout Paradise and the thrilling split/second races, it has something other racing games couldn't match - a deep and immersive open world with HUGE content. --------------------------------------------------------------- - ------------------------------------------------ -- ------- -------------------------- In general: if you are looking for a racing game with a lot of content that will serve you for many years , a huge number of collectibles, a selection of vehicles to rival Motorstorm and wonderful graphics and sound, go no further. Fuel is a game that every racing fan should check out. Below is the ranking system. This is on a 10 point scale. Story: N/A Graphics: 8.5 Audio: 8.5 Gameplay: 8.0 Appeal: 9.5 Overall Rating: 8.5 or 4 1/4 stars