Just as an addition to the last post, while driving to the new base camp I had a hint of why some people – especially reviewers – might not get on with Fuel. For the first time, I had a real goal and a real deadline. The goal was to reach the new camp, the deadline was the time I had to leave for work. When I started the drive, all was fine. I went back and got stacks of barrels that I’d missed. I took a little detour to grab a livery. All that normal stuff.

However, I then noticed I wasn’t making progress as quickly as I needed to. I had to reach the base camp by 8:15am. So, while I still enjoyed myself, there was a slight, creeping annoyance. Instead of laughing when I slammed into a tree, I got annoyed with the couple of second wait before my bike respawned. I saw barrels aplenty, but didn’t want to waste time going to grab them. Other interesting things popped up to my left and right, but I had to keep moving. The GPS was leading me down winding paths that, I’m sure, would have been excellent fun to drive down, but the terrain was fairly flat, so I could just go in a straight line across the countryside, so I did.

Everything was about getting across the country as quickly as possible, without it actually being a race. There was no reward at the other end – at any time I could have selected the base camp from the menu to appear there. And it’s in that context that the free roaming seems to be pointless, even counter-productive. If you have very limited time and a set goal, the game pretty much falls apart. The joy of the thing, of sliding, driving and crashing across America, of getting distracted by jumps and barrels and little green dots on your GPS, all that falls away. It becomes meaningless, even an annoyance.

And that, I reckon, is why the reviews of Fuel haven’t been as good as they probably should be. Fuel should be treated as you’d treat a long soak in the bath with a good book, reviewers only have time for a quick shower.