It's also worth dwelling upon the memory of Evolution Studios' game - the first one anyway - because its track design clarifies a lot of FUEL's mistakes. MotorStorm may have been lap-based, but each of its few courses was carefully threaded with intertwining routes that rewarded experimentation and canny vehicle selection; FUEL's tracks are meandering sprawls that seldom reward either, whether you play the 70-plus pre-recorded options or mark out your own in the creator. The early promise of balancing the risk of filling your damage bar against the need for speed through a difficult corner also proves a red herring; even if you don't find yourself having to reset often (and thanks to a lot of deadly unmarked obstacles, you will), the AI is sufficiently inconsistent, gifting you race after "Expert" race for long periods and then savaging you for fun, to dilute its significance.
There's certainly a lot of content, at least - and with that much playground, devoted online off-roaders may be confident to write their own routes out of the mire. But all the same it seems unlikely. Of FUEL's many promises, too many are either broken or undermined by its handling, layouts, logic or interface shortcuts. There's no denying Asobo's achievement in building such a daring, beautiful landscape on such a vast scale, but the core of any good racing game is falling in love with its vehicles, the things you can do with them, and the places you can take them, and by that measure FUEL is distinctly average.
