Codemasters pit-crewing for Fuel

Racers are a thing that Codemasters knows well. In addition to Grid, nee Race Driver One, and Dirt, formerly Colin McRae Racing, the publisher gobbled up Sega Racing Studio in April and landed the F1 license in May. Whereas the aforementioned driving games deal primarily with the present-day real world, Codemasters' newest racer will run with a Mad Max-style postapocalyptic theme.

Today, the publisher announced that it had picked up the rights to publish Bordeaux, France-based Asobo Studios' Fuel. The game presents a (mostly) alternate world in which climate change has wreaked havoc on the Earth's ecosystem, making fuel scarce and giving rise to myriad ongoing natural disasters. From the cataclysm arises a rugged band of racers that travel the globe, competing in extreme racing competitions for the grand prize of more fuel.

Nature's vengeance aside, Codemasters hopes that the game's sheer sense of scale will help distinguish it. The publisher promises a free-roaming driving experience in which players can explore more than 5,000 square miles of terrain. More than just open expanses, Fuel will feature a variety of volatile environments that include the "tsunami-wrecked Pacific coast through the Nevada wastelands...treacherous snow-capped mountains, thick forests, arid deserts, abandoned lakeside resorts, and much more."

Hoping to bring these environments to life, Codemasters also touts the game's dynamic weather system, which will include transitions between night and day, intense sunshine, and deluges of rain, as well as destructive elemental forces such as tornados, sandstorms, thunderstorms, lightning strikes, and blizzards. The game will also feature an online multiplayer component that will pack "hundreds" of challenges.

Fuel is due out for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Games for Windows Live in the second quarter of 2009. Check out GameSpot's newly published first look at the game from this year's Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany.