Fuel - Review

Added June 11th, 2009 by Adam Schedler

After spending a few hours with Fuel, it's pretty tough to find anything exceptional about what it does. Its idea of an open-world racing structure is a great concept, but its execution here is so flawed you will find yourself constantly coming up with simple solutions to the game's many problems. With a few months of fine-tuning, Fuel could have been a much better game. As it stands, it's a fairly good-looking racer with lousy controls, a pointless open world, numerous bugs, and a complete lack of variety.

On paper, there are many things to do in Fuel's global-warming ravaged version of America – over seventy races, nearly 100 challenges, a multitude of different vehicles to try, and a huge world to drive around in at your leisure if you need a break from the structured events. Indeed, it would take some time to unlock all the game's different territories, collect the career stars by completing events on the highest difficulty setting, and so on.

However, these events are merely variations on five or so basic activities you will be doing constantly, from the start of the game until the end. It could be argued that most racing games thrive on repetition. But, few racing games use the same format as Fuel. It seems silly to drive around an open world to “discover” challenges and extra events, only to have them be exactly the same as the ones you finished in the last territory. Even more odd is that you can simply pop open a menu to access various challenges and races. If everything is condensed on a menu, why bother with the open world?

The quality of the game's course design, physics, and controls are the chief reason this game simply does not work, though. Whether you're just riding around the open world looking for extra paint jobs for your cars, seeking out “vista points” of scenic areas, or in the middle of a checkpoint race, the vehicles in Fuel feel lousy. There's bikes, buggies, SUVs, trucks, and so on, but none of them feel very good to drive. The surfaces are too extreme; on dirt, you totally slide out of control at the slightest provocation. Even if you're using a buggy, designed for rugged terrain, you often lose traction completely, and steering becomes useless until you've slid over a hill and off the course. Asphalt is just the opposite, and cars stick to it like fly paper. One motorcycle race in particular had me virtually unable to turn because of the traction. I eventually won by emergency braking around every single turn.

Physics are also a major problem. You never know how you're going to take a jump or how a collision will turn out. Crashing headlong into a tree may cause you to stop and reverse to get back on track, while grazing a bush will sometimes total your car, triggering a small loading screen and a reset that will set you back several cars from where you were. In a game where you frequently need to weave through bushes and forests, these unpredictable physics really bring the game down.

Most of the satisfaction left in Fuel is then sapped by some of the worst rubber-banding I have ever witnessed in a racing game. Off the start line, you always begin in last place, and your opponents will generally take off much faster than you do. Then they will slow to a leisurely pace as you whip. After several minutes of you putting space between you and your opponents (as shown by a distance meter on your HUD), they will magically appear nipping at your rear axle. Even more annoying is that the AI racers seem conveniently unaffected by all of the bouncy, slide-happy physics you'll be contending with. The game can be reasonably enjoyable, but that's only when luck strikes and everything works as advertised. Most of the time, Fuel is way too unpredictable to be entertaining for long.

On top of all this, Fuel suffers from glitches that can further dampen the experience. There were several instances where I simply passed right through boulders and trees, or slightly sunk into the world itself. These issues didn't happen often, but they stopped the race entirely when they did show up. The far bigger problem that permeates the entire game is your GPS, which frequently shows some pretty bizarre routes, both in races or when you're looking for something in the free ride mode. I was directed into oceans, mountains, and over hills into thick nests of trees. And although it's not a bug, long load times pop up at seemingly every junction of gameplay – when you go somewhere on the map, when you select a race, even resetting your car during an event. Starting the game is particularly lengthy.

The graphics are by far the best part of the game. The open world looks pretty good, and the game's dreary post-global warming vision of future America is pretty neat, if absurd, when glitches don't ruin the illusion. The exaggerated weather effects look especially good; it's neat to race through what seems like the mother of all storms. A slight graininess to the overall visuals hurts the look a bit, and some texture pop-in disappoints, but overall the game looks decent. Audio-wise, the game is very quiet. Music is mixed in the background, and the game's engines sound a bit weak and tinny. It's not a horrible aural experience, but it is understated to a fault.

Again, Fuel is just a poor game no matter how you try and look at it. There's a fair amount of content here, but it's not good. I can't imagine anyone seeing this game through to full completion. Multiplayer won't save it either; a week after the game's launch, I found less than five people were playing online, all of them alone in their match, and I couldn't successfully connect to any of them. It's a game design that just doesn't fit together. Why not just ditch the open world and focus on the physics and tracks? Why do you locate liveries for your cars by finding them out in the wild instead of, say, earning cash and purchasing them? With some tweaks and a bunch more polish, Fuel could have been a multi platform answer to Motorstorm. As it stands, it's just a sloppy game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.