Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Fuel demo is out, and you can get the 1gb download here. The demo includes a couple of race events from the main game, but I’m unsure how much of the full 5000km terrain it leaves open for you to explore. Presumably it’s a chopped down version (full game is around 4gb), so you won’t be able to pursue your own ill-advised virtual roadtrips? Let me know in comments if I’m wrong about that.

When it was announced that Fuel, Asobo Studios’ apocalyptic open-world racer, boasted a daunting 5,560 square miles of terrain (14,400 km²), I immediately made a mental note to go mental, and drive around the entire world. Last week, having received some PC preview code from publisher Codemasters, I did precisely that.
Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, I promise I won’t post any more FUEL trailers until at least next week. Maybe the week after. But the first of these two game-footage spools really does give an impression of how free and open that game world is, although it’s a bit of a shame that whoever is driving keeps bouncing off the scenery. But, you know, this is one of those games where it’s probably not going matter to how good the race action is, because I’ll be off trying to leap over some crevasse I found. Anyway, go see… (And if you need a reminder as to why we’re interested in this, check out our interview.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Codemasters have released another brief (and actually a little strange) clip for the open-world racer, FUEL, this time showing off the race interface. They’ve also dated it: May 29th across the world. We’re expecting to have some time with FUEL before its release, so we’ll hopefully be able to let you know a bit more about what to expect closer to release.
Read the rest of this entry »

Open world racing game FUEL has us moderately excited. Not full-blown hype-arousal, but a mild kind of: “Hey look at that”. To find out why this is you should probably read our interview with Codemaster’s producer chap. If you’ve already been there and done that, you should click to the video below and raise a sceptical eyebrow at the claim of seventy vehicles being displayed therein.
Read the rest of this entry »

Our recent interview with Codemasters about their new racing game FUEL suggested that changing weather would be more than just a visual extra, it should also affect the racing. Of course the trailer (anterior to click) totally fails to convey that: it just looks pretty. Although I bet driving into that tornado probably isn’t going to help you win the race. Unless the finishing line is in Oz.

FUEL is, miraculously, still on course for a May release.
Read the rest of this entry »

FUEL, the quasi-apocalyptic open world racer due later this year, is a labour of love for French developers Asobo. They’ve have been working on it for several years, while developing a series of other, lesser games. Helping them realise this vision is the racing game team at Codemasters, who already have DIRT and GRID, under their belts. We talked to racing game chap and Executive Producer David Brickley about garage helicopters, exploration-based racing, and the latest four-letter acronym.

RPS: There are open world racing games, and there’s… this. 5000km2? How the hell did you make so much terrain?
Read the rest of this entry »

More Codemasters material from their recent US press day: a second FUEL trailer. This one is significantly less impressive than the last one, although it shows a bit more detail of the racetrack areas within the 5000km2 terrain of the game world. it’s really hard to guess the quality of the game at this stage, and I’m somewhat sceptical. Nevertheless, the idea of a post-apocalyptic North America to race around in appeals to be on some very basic level, and the game is going to have to be deeply crap to put me off playing it. Eurogamer have a brief overview of the game here, and report that “players will also be able to create their own races on any part of the map, and share them online.” It sounds like the core races are going to be playable a standard event-by-event race too, if you want to skip the open worldiness of it.
Read the rest of this entry »

This rather puts Burnout Paradise’s sprawling cityscape into perspective. FUEL, Codemasters’ new open world racing game, features 5000km of open terrain. This new chunk of footage illustrates that to startling effect. We were already intrigued the massive space Codies were talking about, but this brings it home. Suddenly the idea that it really does have that much space in it seems real. Not only that, but it’s out in May. Oh my.

We’ll have an interview with the developers, Asobo Studio, very soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t think I’ve ever been excited about a racing game before. I’ve enjoyed plenty of ‘em, and sometimes very much so, but I’ve never thought “ooh, I’m really looking forward to driving around a slightly better-looking race track.”

Until now. FUEL is the next inexplicably capitalised inhabitant of Codemaster’s racing stable (with DIRT and GRID. I look forward to WHEEL, GEAR and QUITE FAST ACTUALLY). And it sounds awesome. Read the rest of this entry »