Re: Second-hand FUEL Impressions

hurricanepilot wrote:
I mentioned to a mate (koalaboy, who used to post here) this morning,
that I might post his impressions of FUEL as a number of you wanted
them so he made an extra special effort. He's a fickle chap who will
like something one day and then I'll find it on my desk the next day
with another email about how some specific annoying *** thing has
made it unplayable for him. Adjust your excitement accordingly:

This is only after about an hour with the PS3 version.

Imagine Oblivion without the combat, but with cars instead and about
100 times the size. You're pretty much there with the graphics and
free-ride gameplay. Instead of beating up the odd creature, you'll be
crashing through randomly placed oil barrels (to earn in-game fuel
currency) and avoiding some particularly poor AI drivers, and then
sometime coming across a dungeon.... erm, a challenge race.

There is a career mode, but I didn't try it yet - partly because when
I started the free-ride mode, I was told I'd seen a livery to collect
and so headed off to find it. After finding out that cars don't float
and therefore driving through the lake isn't a good idea, I started
driving around the lake (in the wrong direction as it happens) and 15
minutes later was shocked to find I'd hardly moved any distance on the
map... the map which you then realise on zooming out is only allowing
you to drive a single 'cell' of the real big map. This game is not
small, terrain wise.

There is some pop-up, and the graphics are pretty good, but not AAA
(they do look remarkable similar to Oblivion at times) and the sense
of speed in the starting 'buggy' isn't amazing, although the handling
is actually quite fun. It's a true arcade experience, with a noticable
difference between surfaces but definitely not a simulation - this
isn't helped by the fact that on the PS3 there was no force-feedback
on the dual-shock (this really needs a patch).

I mostly drove around the start lake, with diversions off now and
again to hunt down barrels. After an hour, I did one challenge (a
timed hill-climb, which I completed even sticking to the road) and
then decided to leave it for the evening.

Tonight, I'll hopefully try out the multiplayer, and look into the
career mode.

I'd offer a 7.5 / 10 at the moment. It would have to have pretty
amazing things to change to improve that, although it would stretch to
an 8 with a good amount of rumble added. My biggest concern at the
moment is the creation of user races, as the map doesn't really make
it easy to visualise the terrain, and although you can go off-road
anywhere, that can actually end up being the long route in many areas
- there's a lot of map to open up though, so I may just not have seen
the good stuff yet (I hope so).

If you want a serious racer, or even the Burnout level of 'structure'
then steer clear. However, if you're interested in it for what it
actually is, it's worth a look.

Tell him 'thanks' from me. :) That's a handy review.
Also tell him he's just cost me 40 quid. ;)

--

Chris

GT: SomethingWitty


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