Widescreen Gaming Forum

http://www.codemasters.fr/downloads/details.php?id=38612
1 GB, two races, no MP. Ouch.

I like Fuel, but despite the illustrious publisher and four-letter name it is nowhere as good as Dirt, Grid or Pure in any respect.
The game is... pretty ugly, has no physics or AI to speak of and can be frustrating (somewhat awkward gameplay worsened by camera inertia, gotta finish first for a reward...) :oops: but there's still a huge playground to just drive across in a variety of crazy second-hand badass vehicles.

One big flaw/exploit though : fuel barrels keep respawning at the same spots between sessions, so you'll go exploring the map mostly for the heck of it. I thought there was a finite amount of barrels to find, which would've been a much better incentive. What were they thinking ? :?

I've been messing around with FUEL a bit. I'd have to say I agree on not comparing with the others you mentioned, except for PURE, which I never played as I prefer racing vs stunts. I did all the events in the first two camps of the full game and have beaten all the events on each difficulty level except for the Legend bike race at Tsunami, which is much more difficult than the rest.

Among my pet peeves are sluggish performance for the level of graphics, the crap arcade sound, the lack of mouse sensitivity settings, and the overall lack of in game settings for things like blur or post processing in general. I did however find on the forum for the game a thread which explains how to edit the blur effects file to remove or adjust it. He claims it doesn't improve performance, but it seemed to boost it a bit for me.

The game so far isn't living up to what I'd hoped it would be, but there are many PC games coming out this year, so a certain amount of problems with attrition aren't going to be such a big deal. Currently I'm playing Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, a pretty good one, esp if you do all the side quests.

I really have no idea what people are talking about when they say the game is ugly , are you comparing it to GRiD or Gran turismo or something?
Looks gorgeous to me and runs flawlessly on my computer.
Im finding the game pretty fun too , im not a massive fan of racing games but something about weaving through trees on a bike in the middle of a race is good fun.

fuel barrels keep respawning at the same spots between sessions, so you'll go exploring the map mostly for the heck of it

Or you'll go looking for the vista points / liveries?

Maybe "ugly" is a harsh way to sum it up, but there's a number of reasons why I think the graphics fail. Sure the vehicles look ok, but the LOD is ridiculous, the vegetation looks like sprites, the lighting during midday and night is awful... Plus a lot of objects are clones, from wooden cabins to broken trees, from the same trucks and same barrels across the road to the same farms with a ramp and fuel barrels on the roof... Riders performing random tricks seem to have 24-fps movements... All in all, a lot of things make the game look dated, despite the fancy blur and dynamic shadows. And then again, I only play on 19" panels... I shiver at the thought of what the game'd look like at 2560x1600 :?

The racing kinda fails too, too many races are just boring or frustrating. And you earn the same 4000 Fuel for a 3-lap quad race or a 20-minute monster truck rally !!

I agree exploring (well, rallying points of interest) is still pretty fun a makes up for the rest of the game - tbh I wish I could buy my way through all zones instead of having to earn any more career stars :lol:

Well I've unlocked about half the camps now, sort of breezing through just doing races. I honestly don't get why they play up the weather as a threat so much. There's only been one quad race so far that even came close to being dangerous weather wise, and even it had no tornadoes sweeping riders away.

I have to agree with scav on the graphics, but I will add some to what he said. His words verify that the horrendous LOD isn't just due to my having low end spec. I also feel many map elements are cloned. The look also has a console feel too though with overuse of blur and bloom. There are white sand trails in places that take on an annoying white glow.

I've also noticed a fair amount of no clipping regarding the AI. The only possible reason to excuse this game having as bad or worse performance than DiRT (mostly worse) is the maps are much bigger. Granted, there IS some variety to the maps and race routes, but not enough to keep it from feeling very repetitious.

Lighting and shadow wise, the game doesn't come close to the likes of DiRT. The only real variety you get there is occasionally you get a nice HDR effect when riding towards a sunset or a night race happens (1 so far). DiRT by comparison has a good variety of very realistic light and shadow, with haze and fog thrown in on some maps.

In fact that was actually one of the challenges with DiRT. There were Australian rallies where the flicker of sunlight through the trees added challenge and the fog of UK rallies, etc. It just gives a race game a whole new and very realistic dimension.

FUEL is just a very arcade like game, in everything from the look, to the sound, to the gameplay. There is no damage model to the physics, the vehicles' sounds seem as if done on a synthesizer, and the graphics just don't live up to that of modern racers.

Ironically though, there are elements of gameplay that contradict the game's arcade nature. For instance there are jump ramps scattered about on many race courses, but you're best off avoiding them on higher difficulty levels or the resulting air time will just slow you down. Oddly enough though, in quad races it's the exact opposite. Long straight downhill runs toward ramps are often the best place to catch up to and pass the AI.

One of the things I really hate about the game is the focus on customizing is solely based on looks, and even there it's nothing to write home about. You have no performance upgrade options whatsoever. There are races where it would be nice to attach traction chains on your bike for instance, as some riders have them but the player never does.

I get the feeling the chains are just a different look though because all the AI seem to slip just as badly as you do if they don't take tight turns on uphills very well. I have however noticed a few suddenly leaping forward after slipping, as if the game's telling you the AI need a crutch. Whether it's chains on the tires or just the way the AI is scripted I don't know.

The most annoying thing about the game by far is the horrid rubber band AI, esp on Legend level bike races. You'll be in 1st place doing your best to take all the turns, make all the checkpoints with as direct a route as possible, then about 300m from the finish line the guys that were limited to traveling at the same rate of speed as you suddenly somehow get a miraculous boost of speed and pass you, even though they had the same momentum and line as you. This is quite odd considering there's no turbo boost in the game and the AI usually take downhills slower than the player.

212/216 stars, all skins and vista points collected, a bunch of challenges left that I'll soon take care of. 8)

Anyone still playing ?

LOL, still have it installed, but just too many other games out now that are much more interesting to play, like CoJ 2, Batman AA, Cryostasis, Wolfenstein, and my latest fave, Red Faction: Guerrilla. I logged 25 hrs on my first run through of RF: G and there were unfinished missions at the end it notified me of and put back on the map, so technically I'm still on my first run. There's also a bonus missions campaign that predates the main campaign story. This is up there at the top of my list for current gen bang for your buck titles. Be forewarned that it lags quite a bit when toppling buildings on anything but a quad core though. Your Q9550 should handle it easily though.

LOL, still have it installed, but just too many other games out now that are much more interesting to play

^this.
Will maybe come back to it when i get bored again as it has alot of stuff to do , but currently more intrested in playing Resident Evil 5 and Batman

Yeah, I suppose having no time to install and get into something else greatly helped me stick to Fuel these past weeks :lol:
Frag, I'm glad (surprised?) you name Cryostasis among your "more interesting" games to play. I still have to complete the "PhysX enhanced" version now the patch is out. RF:G is on my "to buy" list as well - but at 25€ and 50+ hours of play so far, Fuel is definitely my bang/buck GOTY 2009. 8)

...at 25€ and 50+ hours of play so far, Fuel is definitely my bang/buck GOTY 2009. 8)

Well I tend to factor quality and variety of gameplay to be just as important as hrs spent. In fact I don't really care if a game is long if it doesn't hold my interest, it just makes it more of a negative than a plus if it feels tedious.

Of all those I mentioned Cryostasis and RF: Guerilla are the most resource intense, maybe more so Cryostasis. I've yet to see anyone make a video of it that doesn't look noticeably laggy, can't say the same for RF: G. As long as one has a fairly decent quad and supported GPU, it runs and looks pretty good.