Fuel blends beautiful graphics, great tracks, and extreme vehicles and manages to cook up an underwhelming experience
Story
There isn't much story here. From what I gathered, the player is racing to get fuel to buy upgraded vehicles to race in new areas. The areas become unlocked as the player wins races and collects stars. Each race is worth a star and fuel depending on the difficulty that is selected. This is the first game breaking problem. The difficulty is all over the place. The easiest is extremely easy with the opposition being almost a half of a kilometer behind at the end of the race. The medium difficulty is usually very easy as well, but sometimes it is impossible. The same can be said for the highest difficulty. Sometimes it is just right and sometimes, even after a perfect race, the computer finishes hundreds of meters in the lead. The only way to know what difficulty to choose for a race is to do the race and see what the AI is like on that race. This makes for a frustrating experience.
Gameplay
The handling and controls are easily picked up and easily mastered. There aren't power-ups, boost, or any driving assists to help the player so it is very straight forward. The way to get ahead is to take short cuts and look for ramps to by-pass objects. The AI, for the most part, sticks to the easiest track and does not take short-cuts, but some how they corner on rails. Which brings me to my next downfall, there is a set of physics for the player and a set for the AI. The AI never brakes when they are supposed to, but does brake on straight aways for no reason at all other that to let you pass. Nice eh? Well, they also have nitro which makes them fly past the player at random times as well. Again making for a very inconsistent and frustrating experience.
Graphics
The graphics are wonderful, especially on the PC. Some areas are almost tropical with beautiful overlooks, rich sand beaches, green jungles, and crisp, blue water while other places are dark, have tornadoes going, fires burning, and feel wholly apocalyptic. This is something they really got right and it is great.
Sound
There is sound... but it is underwhelming. The track selection sucks and the cars don't sound as extreme as they look. About average for this type of game I'd say.
Value
Seeing that it can be had for around 15 dollars on steam (I picked it up for 3 dollars on sale) it does offer a good value as there are tons of tracks, vehicles, and locations. The game offers around 20 hours of campaign and some multiplayer, so you do get your money's worth. There will be frustrating moments, but if you play the game for the visuals and the fun and don't worry about advancing extremely fast then it can be a great game. If you are easily frustrated by losing for no reason occasionally then I would skip this one as it does cheat the player. Overall for the money, pick it up for quick racing fix.