Fuel - It's pretty good!

[Artlover]

Preface: Forgive me if I start to ramble.

 

Fuel. Anyone playing this yet.

 

All in all I'd say this is quite a nice huge largely off road open world arcade racer. And huge it is. 5,000 square miles. Lets put this into perspective. The map is broken into 20 assorted size jigsaw puzzle piece type areas. The smallest of these areas is larger then the entire GTA:SA map. It takes over two hours of REAL TIME sitting there holding the stick forward and pressing the trigger all the way down to travel from one side of the map to the other. What, Oblibion, Fallout 3 you say. <humph> Take those pansy little maps home. Seriously. HUGE!

 

It's got a few small issues that I'd like to get out of the way first before I go on to the good.

 

The Bad:

GFX: While most of the GFX is terrific, some is crap. Mostly vehicular models are crap. MadMaxish looking junk. Semi's, dump trucks, log trucks - boxy crap. Contact zones are also very squared off. You can back yourself up to something till you hit, and fiddle the camera around to the side to see a huge gap between you and them. Not much assortment of road traffic either. Vehicular shadows seem to render to a differenent relative lightsource then everything else in the game.

 

AI: Race AI is mostly good and will be covered below. But general background traffic AI, it's horrible. They make no effort to avoid you, and when you do hit, they make no effort to get unstuck and move on. So long as you stay contacted in front of them, they don't move at all, ever. You have to move before they do anything. - You win or you don't. There is no 2nd or 3rd place. I'll lets this part slide being that it's an arcade racer geared towards a slightly less proficant racer demographic.

 

Engine: Occasional glitches, mostly with the background traffic. Sometimes they just vanish then appear down the road a ways. - Can't get out of the car and explore. Ok, maybe this isn't fair as this is true in mostly all racers. But it would be nice for once, and this would have been a good one to do it with. Like when you come across obervation towers in the forests and water towers and windmills and stuff. Ah, dreams....

 

Sound: Little weak, it gets the job done. But it's not steller.

 

 

The Good:

GFX: Other then vehicular models, most of the GFX are fairly well done and realistic. Nice sunrise & sunsets effects.

 

AI: This game has an AI that is almost the reverse of most arcade racers. In this game, the AI will tend to lead the race, but towards the end of the last lap, if you've been running a good strong race will start backing the AI off a bit and give you a win. This doesn't sound as bad as you might think, you still have to work for it. You can't be sloppy and assume the AI will dumb itself down or you will loose, even in the begininer class. It's perfect for people like me, like racers, but aren't that good at them and can never finish because you're not a geeky expert who plays 16 hours a day. Not give aways, but something that we are capable of winning with practice to give a sense of accomplishment. Where getting better and running a strong race will reward you with something. It's probably not for hardcore racers because it's not a hardcore racer, but I don't see a problem with that. The market is big enough to cater to variants of the same thing for different skill levels. It's fun challenging, not fustrating controller breaking challenging.

 

Map: What is nice is that you can travel across the entire map, including areas you haven't unlocled not. The only thing is that you won't have access to any races, challenges, vista points or anything in those areas. One thing you will find out of zone however is fuel drums. Fuel is money in this game. What you win, what you spend, etc.. But you can also just find it spread out all across the map. And this is where the game really starts to get huge. You have to go off road, you have to cut across farms, through forests, across beaches to find alot of stuff. Fuel drums, secrets, etc.. And sneaky. Drums behind trees and in bushes. On top of roofs of farm houses with a nearby and handy ramp. You can do tricks and stuff when jumping for extra stuff, but it's not really part of the game in any way persay. There pretty much are no boundries on the interiour of the map. It's all huge and solid, and if it's physically possible to get somewhere, you can get there. You can go under fallen trees, across small creeks, up mountain sides, through fences and farm land. Or if you want to miss everything, just drive around on the streets. Alot to see and alot to do. Again, seriously, Epic. You could spends months driving around and not see everything to be seen and driven across.

 

 

 

Given the scope and scale of the map and how seemless it all is plus with being open world and fully explorable and profitable from the getgo, it really does outway the problems it has.

 

It is what it is: a dumb simple easy to pick up arcade style off road racer who's challenge remains within the limits of fun for everyone with an insanely crazy amount of fully explorable playground.

 

It is one of those games where every couple of hours I'll be saying to myself I need to go to bed, then a couple of hours later still be playing it. Turing it on that afternoon then finally going to bed at 7am the next morning. Done that more then once. Cuz like ya know, I gotta check out that little spot of a lake in that valley that's 3000 miles away before I do.

 

Yeah. This was unexpectedly a good game all in all. It's gotten good reviews all around except at gamespot. In reading their review it seems the editor really kinda missed out on the points of it all and bashed it for not being a player hating cheating clone of all the other racers out there. But whatever. It's a good game and worth having.

[bdog_147]

Thanks for the review. I Might check it out when it's a little cheaper.

[moycon]

Quick...stop the presses.

Artlover posted mostly positive comments about a video game in a thread!!!

 

This game sounds kind of similar to Test Drive Unlimited, especially with comments like...." It's all huge and solid, and if it's physically possible to get somewhere, you can get there."

Have you played TDU Artlover and if so how does it compare? (Besides the obvious better graphics I hope)

It should be noted I think TDU was a freaking AWESOME, really well done game.

I need to fire it up again soon and see if it's aged well.

Edited June 29, 2009 by moycon

[DaytonaUSA]

2 hours was my old commute to work. Why would I want that in a video game

 

No seriously though, is this like Burnout which didn't really have an objective and you just did what you wanted to and drove around finding challenges?

 

If so I think I'll pass. I like to race, go to the next race, ect.. not wander around aimlessly doing random stuff and getting bored after 15 min, ya know? I've heard that most of the people picking this up seem to think this game is pretty "meh" so would you recommend plunking 60 on it?

[Artlover]

This game sounds kind of similar to Test Drive Unlimited, especially with comments like...." It's all huge and solid, and if it's physically possible to get somewhere, you can get there."

So, I dug TDU out again. I wouldn't call them simmilar.

 

TDU is a lot smaller then Fuel. If I was going to guestimate, lets say 1/4 the size. Yes, Fuel is that huge. Also, while you can go off-road in TDU, it doesn't seem like your really ment to do so. Soon as you go off the road the game starts rambling on about "if you have an accident or go off road, hit <back> to return to the road quickly". It seems like the off-road porition is really geared around being actively involved in an off-road race. Further, you can't seem to nagivate to every part of the map. There are fences and barriers here and there, and they are not breakable. In Fuel, if there is a fence or something, you can plow right through it. So there were many areas in TDU that I couldn't get to, such as the airport. I spent over half an hour trying to get my car out onto the runways of the airport, no go, it's all fenced in. Telephone poles and stuff don't break either, no matter what you are driving or how fast you are going. Hell, even a street sign will just about brings your car to a stop if you hit one.

 

Controls in TDU aren't all that great. This is one of those games (like Mass Effect) where you need to keep the manual handy or else it takes you 10 minutes to figure out how to access everything. Especially the map. Confusing and down right annoying. Left & Right triggers zoom in and out, except when you're all the way out, and it goes to the credits. Sorry game, I was trying to see if the mp zoomed out anymore, not see the f'in credits. Also, speaking of the map. You try to pull the map up, and the game takes controll away from you, bringing your car to a sudden stop no matter where you are, pretty much leaves the game running in the gackground while you're in the map, then when you exit the map leaves you to deal with whatever accident/mess happened. I was on the highway headed for the airport, went into the map, then just as I exited the map got rear-ended which launched me several stories into the air and sent me flying into the swimming pool area of a group of apartments that was totally surrounded by little concrete poles so I couldn't just drive out and had to hit <back>. So it's like you want to pull up the map, you'de better pull off on the side of the road and stop first. Realistic maybe, but not fun. Driving physics seems off too.

 

Racing is a little bit more serious too. Which is fine for all the experts, but makes lesser experienced drivers fustrated and unable to fully accomplish everything.

 

 

I mean, look, TDU isn't really a bad game. For it's time a few years ago, I'm sure it stood up better. Even now it tries to be fun and largely is, but some of the issues I mentioned above kinda ruin it, for me anyways.

 

 

No seriously though, is this like Burnout which didn't really have an objective and you just did what you wanted to and drove around finding challenges?

I think I would say more like N4S:Underground 2 or N4S:Most Wanted in that sense.

 

But it's not exactly without purpose. While the entire map is open to explore, the races/challenges/vista points/vehicular upgrade points and all are not accessable in areas where it isn't unlocked. So you need to compete in the races and challenges to earn tokens to unlock the events in new areas.

 

If so I think I'll pass. I like to race, go to the next race, ect.. not wander around aimlessly doing random stuff and getting bored after 15 min, ya know? I've heard that most of the people picking this up seem to think this game is pretty "meh" so would you recommend plunking 60 on it?

Well, in that case, this is not your kind of game and you won't like it. It's an open world driving exploration game with racing elements, not a straight up racer. For you, I'd like to suggest GRID. That's a pretty awesome looking/playing straight up racer.

 

That said, even if it was your kind of game, it's still not worth $60 IMO. Then again, most games aren't to me. Tho I think $30 would be fair. On the same token, there are worse ways to spend $60 (like Alone in the Dark ).