Fuel

When you were young, things like a jet plane or the newest toy would take your breath away, leaving you with feelings of wonderment, awe and affection. Starting Fuel, Asobo Studios "ultimate racing sandbox title", you get that feeling as a vast unknown wilderness unfolds for you to explore.

You're assigned to race camps to compete in Career or Challenge events. Only winning provides you with fuel, the game's currency, to buy new rides. Career mode also unlocks stars, depending on difficulty, which are cashed in to unlock new race camps. With a slew of unlockable vehicles and open-world gameplay you would be forgiven for thinking developer Asobo was onto a winner.

Except it's not! The sheer size is impressive indeed but Asobo's promise to fill Fuel chock-a-block with events hasn't materialised. You can drive around the environment to your heart's content but what you come to realise is that 5000 square miles of wasteland spells boredom. One trophy/achievement is awarded for driving from camp to camp and the 40 minute haul has as much excitement as bank holiday traffic. Luckily, without kids in the back asking, "Are we there yet?"

The first race involves throwing a bike downhill to the camp. It's acceptably easy and a nicely designed introduction. After minutes you'll be playing it again at the highest level and be surprised just how simple that was as well. Following an enjoyable start, the race quality varies dramatically. Even with seven different event types, it boils down to point-to-point and checkpoint races.

Some don't allow you to use the GPS, which is not really a loss because it's alien to off-roading, but when the mini-map is clogged up with large "friendly" arrows of your competitors blocking all other detail, such as where the next checkpoint is, you really could scream.

Vehicle degradation will add to your rage. It's a random factor thought to have been removed from racing games in the nineties. Here it's meant to be triggered by damage to your vehicle but also occurs when driving uphill, just before the end of a race or when it feels like it.

Weather may look dramatic but realistically, it is another pre-programmed event. Rain, snow, lightning storms and fire smoke have little impact on the driving. Tornadoes appear to be the most impressive and would be if they were random, but they aren't, avoided by simply memorising the point they appear during each race.

Further watering down experience, your fellow competitors are the most conservative off-road drivers ever, shirking away from the wilderness unless the level prescribes it. This means races are won by minutes rather than split seconds. A woeful collision detection system doesn't help either, as hitting a truck straight on doesn't cause a restart but the smallest scrape on a barrier will.

Online modes and options almost save the game from itself. Here you can race favourite tracks or even develop new ones. This option avoids racing the AI, injecting some realistic competition and fun into the races. Unfortunately unlocking camps is necessary to develop tracks in new areas so there's the single player downside to this as well.

The wilderness creating engine underlying the whole of Fuel is incredible and we'll see it used to better effect in the future but you suspect Codemasters involvement was far more about this technology than the game itself. Fuel is a lacklustre experience and although never so broken that it's bad, it's unlikely you'll feel it was good either.