I realise it's been a while since I've done a blog entry, and figured this would be the best way to bring my blog back to life.

FUEL is the word. Codemasters' latest 4 letter racing game hit the shelves today in Australia, and I quickly picked up my copy. I've put in about 3-4 hours so far and unlocked about a quarter of the map. It's epic. The map that is. I've never seen anything like it. Really, the closest thing is Test Drive: Unlimited, but that's an accurate re-creation of Oahu, Hawaii whereas this is a parallel universe planet Earth struck by the effects of global warming. Rain, fog, mist, tornados, floods, dust storms, FUEL has everything you don't want to see in a racing game, but somehow it's fun and addictive.

You start off the game with a couple of vehicles, and soon learn that in this wretched landscape FUEL is currency. As you win fuel in races & challenges and find fuel randomly around the map, you can purchase more cars. As you purchase the cars that allow you to win the races, you unlock more areas of the map. it's a simple format that as far as I can see doesn't get boring.

The graphics aren't exactly amazing, but considering the sheer size of the game and that you can go from one side of the map to the other without any loading, FUEL really is something spectacular. An annoying part is the loading time when it is setting up for a race or a challenge though. You have to wait for 15-25 seconds while the game loads.

All up, first impressions indicate FUEL is a game that has achieved everything it set out to do. It holds that Guinness World Record we reported a few weeks ago, and it puts gamers in an open-world environment where the sky is the limit. You can create your own races, or just screw around in free-roam with a friend.. the environments are practically endless.

I can't wait to see what sort of end-game cars are in FUEL, I hope they are much faster than the starting cars that only reach around 150KPH. Be sure to check up at Sliced for a review later on this week.