FUEL, as
you might know, features a gigantic open world environment set in a post-apocalyptic
Earth, ravaged by extreme weather.
Fuel has become more valuable than gold,
though your focus will be on finishing the races to get more of that precious
liquid, something we’ve seen on the cult movie Mad Max.
Published
by Codemasters in 2009, this game received average reviews and its massive
fifty five hundred square miles of land was certified by the Guiness Book of
Records as, and I quote: “the largest playable area in a console game”.
To this
day, FUEL sold about 670.000 units worldwide.
There’s 75
vehicles to unlock, 70 races and 190 challenges. In some of these challenges
you’ll not only be facing your opponents but, as well, huge tornadoes and
massive sandstorms.
All these
features were kind of unique on a video game, but this wasn’t the original
idea. As you might know, France is home of world’s greatest offroad event: the
Dakar. In consequence, France is also a country that built fantastic drivers.
French
people are passionate for offroad events and, as a kind of homage to this fact,
Asobo Studio announced, in 2005, Grand Raid Offroad. This was
the original title of this massive open world offroad racing game and, as a
huge offroad racing fan, I was blown away by the first trailer and pictures
that came out on the internet.
Back in
September of 2005, I interviewed, for my blog, Sebastian Wloch, CEO of Asobo,
in an attempt to know more details about Grand Raid Offroad. The game
would feature typical 4x4 offroad vehicles, motorbikes and trucks, just like in
the real Dakar race, and the number of tracks to be unlocked would be, as
Sebastian mentioned, “insane”. It would
include online features such as: trading car parts, creating race teams,
sharing car improvements, parts research, etc..
As for the
length of the tracks, I was told that races would range from 3 minutes up to
several hours with no pausing. But all this depended on the publishing deal
that they were looking for.
So, there
came Codemasters knocking on Asobo’s door, probably afraid of the competition. In
order to get a publishing deal, Asobo Studio complied to Codemasters demands
and performed all the graphical and gameplay changes asked. The game no longer
featured vehicles based in real models, like the Volkswagen Touareg, and no
longer presented a threat to future offroad rally games that Codemasters were
planning to release for the next generation consoles, like the beginning of a
brand new series of Colin McRae games: DiRT (in 2007) and DiRT 2 (in 2009).
FUEL was
born and placed right in the middle between offroad games and open world
racing. June of 2009 was the release date, 90 days before the highly
anticipated worldwide launch of DiRT2.
A few
elements, though, remained intact: the free roaming mode that allows us to
drive anywhere in the game world without incurring loading times.. except if
you crash or reset your vehicle; and the exploration mode where you’ll discover
new challenges as you go.
Now, tell
me, do you prefer FUEL as it is? Or would it be much more fun if the original
idea prevailed? Just let me know what you think! You’re free to comment below!
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