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FUEL - Openworld racer from Codemasters

NecroMorrius

By NecroMorrius,
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The Danster

The Danster

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I hate being slave to trading my shit in. Fucking rubbish. If those that get it today could post some impressions that'd be swell.

Like wise man, I need to know if this game's any good, huge fan of DIRT and GRID (as well as Motorstorm)

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tsunami1

tsunami1

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Surprised by such little first hand feedback so far so I shall share my thoughts after a couple of hours with the game. As fan of GRID and DIRT I have been looking forward to this for sometime.

Firstly and something I wasnt expecting are the horrible loading times, I havent yet installed the game to the hard drive, so hopefully that will make a substantial difference, but to load each event takes an eternity. Probably even worse than those in Dirt. It was the first thing that struck me about the game and I would say I spent about 1/5 of my first hour looking at the loading screen.

Right so on to the game itself. Visually its a bit of a mixed bag, the scale is hugely impressive but there is signifigant pop up, an understandable sacrifice but sometimes fairly off putting as the high detail textures replace their low res equivalants. It doesnt really wow you at any point but it all seems solid enough and the framerate, although a long way from 60fps seems stable.

I completed the first three events, and noticed each race event is win or bust. You get nothing in this game for finishing second, something I would imagine will frustate later on. The races themselves seem well done, lots of on screen events to compliment the racing, and it does provide opportunity for shortcuts, seemingly rewarding being adventurous from the racing line.

First negative would be the numerous objects that scatter the race track that will stop you dead on contact, there seems to be inconsistency in this also, some destruct on impact others seemly built out of solid rock. Another problem is the aggressive AI, they are quite happy to batter you out of the way appearing to have heavier and stronger vehicles than the player, brushing you into objects with little impact on them.

I should point out I enjoyed my first couple of hours, but I certainly dont think its a game for everyone and its clear from a brief play that signifigant flaws are present. I'm surprised it got an 8 in EDGE, so far a 7 seems to fit better. Its clearly ambitious, and I'm looking forward to playing it further but it seems somewhat of a marmite game from what I've seen so far.

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SteveH

SteveH

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I am guessing installing the game to HDD improves loading a fair bit, as although annoying, it is nowhere near as bad as tsunami seems to be suffering.

It is a shame they didn't figure out how to have the race start, and then the weather effects stream in. As it is, if you start a race during the daytime, but the challenge takes place during a stormy day, then the game has to load that in before the race starts, and then of course load daytime back in once you have finished.

I may be missing something, as I haven't played for that long yet, but do challenge icons change once you have completed them once, save looking at the map? I saw an icon fairly close to where I was, started it and realised it was one I had just done. My own fault for not paying attention to where I was, but I am sure I didn't notice the icon looking any different to signify it had been beaten.

Other than that I like it so far, the buggy feels suitably springy and you can slide it around nicely. Looking forward to getting stuck into this at the weekend. But yeah, real TDU vibe and that is no bad thing at all in my book.

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linkster

linkster

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Re the weather, it was a way of ensuring people who only played the career got to see some variety. As an aside Original plan was for the weather online to be synched via central server but that got canned when it went P2P

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misterSquare

misterSquare

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Surprised by such little first hand feedback so far so I shall share my thoughts after a couple of hours with the game. As fan of GRID and DIRT I have been looking forward to this for sometime.

.....

Probably even worse than those in Dirt.

You know FUEL has nothing to do with GRID/DiRT beyond the publisher, yeah? Completely separate dev team and technology.

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SteveH

SteveH

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Re the weather, it was a way of ensuring people who only played the career got to see some variety. As an aside Original plan was for the weather online to be synched via central server but that got canned when it went P2P

I don't think I explained it very well. What I meant was, if a challenge was supposed to take place during a storm, could they not just start you racing at whatever time of day it happens to be, and the data for the weather stream in from the disc as you play. Like waverace did back in the day, changing weather during races. Save having to wait for challenges to load up.

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linkster

linkster

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I don't think I explained it very well. What I meant was, if a challenge was supposed to take place during a storm, could they not just start you racing at whatever time of day it happens to be, and the data for the weather stream in from the disc as you play. Like waverace did back in the day, changing weather during races. Save having to wait for challenges to load up.

I don't think races with changeable weather take any longer to load than normal - the weather system is fully dynamic as you see when you drive around enough of he world. It's the vehicles loading that take time.

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tsunami1

tsunami1

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You know FUEL has nothing to do with GRID/DiRT beyond the publisher, yeah? Completely separate dev team and technology.

I know, but with Codemasters having a good history of publishing high quality racing games I had high expectations for this. I dont really see the point you are trying to make, I didnt expect it to be anything like GRID or DIRT.

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Twyford

Twyford

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Hmm I'm thinking of trading some shit in for this today but need some help from people who already have it.

Is there a free roam Online?

How are the physics/crashes in this? I've heard that you crash, game freezes, load screen appears, and then you're reset. Is this right? I was hoping for more of a Motorstorm style where you see the car/bike hurtling uncrontrollably into the distance.

Can you just jump straight to a race/mode without having to drive for 10-15 minutes around the map?

One of the trailers seemed to have a destruction type mode where you ram other vehicles, is this right? And if it is then is it a multiplayer option or a single player gametype/mission.

Ta.

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p1nseeker

p1nseeker

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Hmm I'm thinking of trading some shit in for this today but need some help from people who already have it.

Is there a free roam Online? Yes, 16 players.

How are the physics/crashes in this? I've heard that you crash, game freezes, load screen appears, and then you're reset. Is this right? Yes this is true. I was hoping for more of a Motorstorm style where you see the car/bike hurtling uncrontrollably into the distance.

Can you just jump straight to a race/mode without having to drive for 10-15 minutes around the map? Yep, you can jump into career races, although you have to go find challenge races, or catch a doppler truck which will find them all for you.

One of the trailers seemed to have a destruction type mode where you ram other vehicles, is this right? And if it is then is it a multiplayer option or a single player gametype/mission. Don't know about this, maybe i havent played long enough to find these races.

Ta.

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linkster

linkster

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How are the physics/crashes in this? I've heard that you crash, game freezes, load screen appears, and then you're reset. Is this right?
Sounds nastier than it is but is a direct consequence of the free roaming nature of the tech - you might crash somewhere completely useless to you, down a gulley for example, so the goal was to respot you somewhere safe, which means loading in that part of the world. Hence the 'crash meter' - if you're careful this shouldn't happen much!
One of the trailers seemed to have a destruction type mode where you ram other vehicles, is this right? And if it is then is it a multiplayer option or a single player gametype/mission.
It's a single player 'challenge' of which there are about 200 outside the main career.
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JohnC

JohnC

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Is it easy enough to get as far as unlocking all the areas? I mean easy enough for someone who isn't great at racing games. I just want to be able to roam the whole place freely like in TDU and pick challenges whenever I feel like it.

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p1nseeker

p1nseeker

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Is it easy enough to get as far as unlocking all the areas? I mean easy enough for someone who isn't great at racing games. I just want to be able to roam the whole place freely like in TDU and pick challenges whenever I feel like it.

Yeah seems simple enough so far. I have only completed 5 career races and have unlocked 3 additional zones.

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linkster

linkster

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Is it easy enough to get as far as unlocking all the areas? I mean easy enough for someone who isn't great at racing games. I just want to be able to roam the whole place freely like in TDU and pick challenges whenever I feel like it.

You don't have to play the career at all if you dont want to. Just drive, and you'll pass helipads you can jump to later. No part of the world is locked in that sense, only the career part.

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Fondue

Fondue

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Gave this about 45 mins last night. I think I need to play it a bit more - it just seems a little confusing and disjointed at the moment in terms of structure. Also, the screen seems quite noisy sometimes - I'd prefer them to have removed a couple of the filters to make it easier to see what's going on!

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linkster

linkster

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Half the size of the Netherlands then! :)

Original plan was to be five times the size.. :(

Gave this about 45 mins last night. I think I need to play it a bit more - it just seems a little confusing and disjointed at the moment in terms of structure. Also, the screen seems quite noisy sometimes - I'd prefer them to have removed a couple of the filters to make it easier to see what's going on!

Can you elaborate on that?

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