That’s how big the world is in FUEL. FUEL, on top of being an extreme off-road racing game, will be a completely open racer where players can design their own races. This means that you can design whatever course you’d like and spend HOURS on a single race as a result of your insane track within the 5,000 square miles of open land.
At first glance, I saw FUEL as a cross between Burnout Paradise and Pure. While there are similarities, FUEL looks to leave those other racing games in its dust with everything it's offering. Find out more on the game and to see if I write any more horrible puns, after the jump.
So yeah, 5,000 square miles. That leaves players with a lot to explore. With an environment that big, there will be lots of different terrain players come across such as swamps, forests, snow and more. The environments are based on actually places in America such as the Utah Salt Plains and the Grand Canyon. There’s also full 24 hour day and night cycle in place too.
With the various environments, certain vehicles are better suited for the different terrain. Which is why there are six different vehicle types and over 70 vehicles for players to choose from. Vehicles will include bikes, quads, SUVs, trucks, cars and monster trucks.
On top of the environments, racers will also have to deal with the weather. Lightning storms, blizzards, tsunamis and best of all, players will have to deal with tornado ... storms. The game is set in a future where global warming has fucked up the world, especially this part of the country you’ll be racing through. Odd message to promote in a racing game, but it sets up for some interesting twists when it comes to races.
If you’re not looking to do a race and just want to sight see, you can. Players can jump right into the world and find the best routes to use for their own custom races. FUEL has a 25 mile draw distance so it won’t be too difficult to find interesting locations to set up a race at.
Up to 16 players can race together or go exploring, and each of you can be racing a different vehicle. Just don't be a jerk and try to run off a friend on a dirt bike while you're in the monster truck. All of your custom created races can be shared with your friends. You can also try one of the games 100 challenges.
I got some brief hands-on with FUEL and I ran through a quick monster truck race in one of the games preset races. The controls were pretty solid and the truck handled rather well as I raced it across a sandy desert.
Sadly, I didn't get much time to do anything else with FUEL. Asobo Studios and Codemasters have spent four years working on this game and I only had enough time to experience 15 minutes with FUEL at the Codemasters event. Still, from my brief time with the game, I can easily see this being a must get for when it comes out this May on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
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That's the beauty of it though, garison. You don't HAVE to. You can just go race in the many preset races the game has, just like any other racing games. It's that option that you CAN though that makes FUEL so damn awesome.
Im really interested in this game. I loved MotorStorm, I love having the ability to just literaly drive a dirtbike over miles of open terrain and Im really interested in the possibility of Co-Op exploration of the terrain with some friends and then setting up an impromptu race or two. A 25 mile draw distance is nuts too. I wonder if it will be the Far Cry of the Racing world.
The big problem with a huge open world like this is that randomly generated terrain is usually very very boring. I'm sure there will be sections where the developers manually created and placed objects in, but the rest of the world could be full of suck.
Up to 16 players? Dirt Bikes? Wow.
16 players, riding on their dirt bikes through some kind of fucked up desert, escaping from a tornado. They kinda sold me there. If it works!
the world isn't randomly generated, it's procedurally generated. the designers just stuffed the blueprints into the game and the engine rebuilds it on the fly.
I'm not a big fan of racing games I can't attack my opponents in, but this one looks pretty interesting.
there is just one thing I would like to know about it.
With games like this I tend to get bored every once in a while and start trying to crash my vehicle into various objects or running them off cliffs. Does this game represent crashes well or will I spawn back to safety before I hit the ground or some other kind of object....?
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Contest:
4:20 PM on 02.21.2009
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Also, hell yea to Tornado Storms!
16 players, riding on their dirt bikes through some kind of fucked up desert, escaping from a tornado. They kinda sold me there. If it works!
the world isn't randomly generated, it's procedurally generated. the designers just stuffed the blueprints into the game and the engine rebuilds it on the fly.
Creating your own race tracks over such a huge playing field sounds insane.
I wish I could have driven off trck and exploded in a game like DiRT....I actually tried any times and of course died and respawned
there is just one thing I would like to know about it.
With games like this I tend to get bored every once in a while and start trying to crash my vehicle into various objects or running them off cliffs. Does this game represent crashes well or will I spawn back to safety before I hit the ground or some other kind of object....?
If anyone knows I would love to hear from them.