Winning races yields stars to unlock more zones, but owning a particular class of vehicle is a prerequisite for entering. Strangely, having two wheels and handlebars doesn’t qualify a vehicle as a motorcycle, nor does a ramshackle Hummer count as an SUV, but the army-style Jeep does. You are simply out of luck if you happen to buy the wrong vehicle before the race. You can’t sell them back and the store doesn’t list a single classification. It’s one of many obvious oversights the game has in store. Similar types of vehicles aren’t grouped for easy stat comparison, some of the most expensive rides are performance nightmares, and not a single vehicle comes equipped with a rearview mirror. Perhaps the latter fact is to keep you from seeing the shenanigans behind you.

After five minutes of whipping around dusty roads, navigating through a raging forest fire, and sliding along the edges of ravines, I came in fourth place by a wide margin. I felt good though, and I thought I saw a few shortcuts on the previous run. Sure enough, I shaved off 30-seconds on the next try, and fell back to eighth place. That happened more than once, as did the questionable sight of opponents, equipped with the same vehicles, blasting ahead on straight-aways at unattainable speeds. Perhaps if the A.I. understood the concept of a shortcut it wouldn’t have to resort to cheating.

The only way to avoid such frustration is to set your own checkpoints with the Race Editor and head online for fair competition, but even that feature comes fully loaded with a recall-worthy problem. When you put more than one car on the mini-map, it becomes an indiscernible mass of oversized arrows. You can activate your GPS for onscreen assistance, but like the real thing, the GPS sticks passionately to the main roads, ruining the point of open-world, off-road racing.

Like a spiny armband of black ink needled in at the end of a bender, Fuel is the tragic result of spontaneity without foresight, and design without inspiration. Games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Burnout Paradise proved that open-world racing could be captivating even in the spaces between bouts. Fuel went for bigger and succeeded, but forgot to add anything that could be construed as better, or even equal, like a rearview mirror.