The free-roaming environment has become a popular staple of this generation of games. Adventure titles like Oblivion and Fallout 3 have sat alongside more action-orientated affairs such as Far Cry 2. However, the racing genre has never before fully embraced the design on this scale. Fuel, developed by Asobo Studio and published by Codemasters, is set to change all that. Set across over 5,000 square miles of an America devastated by natural disasters, and featuring some recognisable real-world geography including the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park, Fuel’s aim is to bring you a racing environment which is both realistic and thrilling in equal measure.
In terms of realism, the game brings all the elements that you’ve come to associate with the open world environment: 24 hour day and night cycles and naturally-occurring weather including hurricanes and lightning storms married to a go-anywhere, do-anything mentality that allows you to choose who and where you race. The thrill comes in veering off-road in one of seventy vehicles, customising your own routes on the fly in competitive races either against computer-controlled players or against humans online.
Released this year on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, Fuel looks like it could allow you to race both your way, and the highway.