First things first, FUEL is big, i mean very big, you thought it was a long way down to the shops to get a can of beer and some fags but this is mind achingly big, so big in fact that it will give you the ph33r first time you set your worthless mortal eyes on it. The red zoned area to the right is an accurate scale of map size (i have l33t photoshop skills no?), that's Norfolk, Suffolk AND Cambridgeshire with some overhang left. The small white square is the size of the Midnight Club: Los Angles map + South Central. now do you get the kind of size we're talking about? good.
The numbers, 100,000kms of roads/tracks, 14,000 square kilometers of map, 70 different vehicles + numerous paint and decal packs. There is NO vehicle tuning or otherwise general buggering about with gear ratios, spoiler angles, tyre types or anything else that will keep you awake at night, you buy your vehicle, you choose your race and go. It's that simple, unless you're in free ride mode that is and the world, quite literally, if not your oyster, a great vast spoilt national park to blatt around in.
As you win races and challenges you earn stars, which in turn unlock new sections of the map, the trouble here is that early on you will have to grind the races, racing the same old pile of rust and steel around the same tracks to build up your supply of stars and fuel ad nausium until you have enough to buy a new vehicle, which you will need to progress as most races are vehicle specific to enter. Sucks i know, so your first few hours will seem like an endless deja-vu. It's only until later on when you have unlocked a vast portion of the map and have a selection of vehicles in your garage that things really do start to get interesting, this is no Pacific Rift, you're in this for the long haul.
Online you have access to 16 other players in your particular zone, if you choose to race away from them because you're ashamed at being thrashed by a gang of kids, then the servers will filter you discreetly into a new gang of 16 players for you to race against seamlessly. Feel free to head on over to the nearest hub (one of many many dotted around the map) for a chat and to sign up for the next race, or you could just go all MadMax and spend your hours roaming the map picking up events if and when you please. All the races and challenges from the single player mode are open as well as a race editor a-la Midnight Club, so that 70 mile burn across the map is just an invite away.
/// mobiletone
