When we first heard about Fuel, we were super-cynical — not just about the lofty technological claims, but also whether such an enormous space could be filled with interesting things to do. After all, plenty of Fallout 3 is spent wandering the empty wastes, and Fuel has vastly more real estate to fill. Fortunately, Codemasters has promised that you won’t be driving for more than a few minutes before something of interest appears on the HUD, whether it’s a challenge event or an unlockable such as new liveries, vehicles, or extra clothing for your driver. A Test Drive Unlimited–inspired online portion means that if you’re connected to Xbox Live, the world will also be populated with 16 other players to ensure there’s always some traffic to tussle with.

The other reassuring promise Codemasters has made is also, funnily enough, a big number. While most of the world is procedurally generated, it’ll include a whopping 75 career races — spanning all of the different climates — each hand-crafted to offer an exciting experience. These races will be battered by the most extreme forces of nature, such as towering tornados and huge sandstorms. If you just want to play Fuel like a straight racer, you can.
Playing alpha code, we were already able to ramble around vast swathes of the open world. Perhaps most impressive is the draw distance. We drove to a huge snow-capped mountain simply by pointing our buggy at it and watching as it grew larger on the horizon. This setup really does wonders for emphasizing the vastness and coherency of the world. There are also brilliant moments of impromptu discovery, such as bursting out of a forest and finding a stunning hidden valley. When you do stumble upon an amazing place, you’ll be able to build a race route with up to 30 checkpoints and then challenge the A.I. or share it with your friends online.
 

Having finally played Fuel for ourselves, we’re now far more confident that Asobo and Codemasters can pull off those outlandishly ambitious promises they were making at the game’s Leipzig unveiling, while using the massive geographic space in a way that’ll encourage player exploration. If you’ll excuse the dreadful pun, we’re getting pretty pumped for Fuel…