Fuel is set in an alternate America where an environmental disaster has occurred. Citizens have carved out new living spaces for themselves away from the old cities and stomping grounds, which are now ravaged by storms, winds and bush fires.

While fossil fuels have been eschewed by the masses in favour of green energy, die-hard breeds of Mad Max style drivers take their gas-guzzling bikes, buggies and trucks out across the desolate landscape, racing each other.

You play the part of one of the people locked away in science labs, trying to invent a new form of renewable energy by completing green-themed word searches and jigsaws.

No. Of course you don't. You're one of the lunatic drivers out blazing a trail over the vast environment this game boasts. 5,000 virtual square miles of it, no less, divided up into various themed zones around which you can whizz in over 70 different vehicles.

The idea is that the player can explore the freeform world, coming across races to take on, challenge events and bonuses such as custom vehicles and paint jobs. Which sounds really cool, and to begin with off-roading through thick forests, weaving between trees, whipping along precipitous ridges while storm clouds flash lightning above, or dodging between burnt out trucks on the highway is much fun. While the visuals aren't particularly impressive in themselves, the apocalyptic feel of the landscape is certainly well captured.

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Trouble is, after a while you start to realise that Fuel's gigantic map is actually pretty sparsely populated. There aren't that many points of interest to discover, the graphics repeat themselves and exploration soon becomes something of a chore.

However, there are trucks which when found grant the convenience of being able to automatically discover a number of locations in one particular zone. You can then select challenge races directly from the menu, which is what we ended up doing much of the time, making the much-touted massive game world seem partially redundant.

When it comes to the racing itself, Fuel is unashamedly arcade in nature. The various vehicles drive quite differently, although their handling is generally pretty forgiving provided you can grasp the basics of power sliding around corners. Crashes are leniently administered too, as you're put straight back on the track immediately, only losing the time it takes to accelerate back up to speed. Not that there's anything wrong with this, as it keeps the game pleasingly accessible.

What isn't so great is the lack of variety in Fuel's events. There are standard races and time trials as expected, and a few interesting challenge ideas, such as a racing against a helicopter, or car chases where other vehicles have to be tagged. But only a few: these same ideas are repeated over and over again throughout the game's zones, and we expected to see more diversity on this front.

While playing Fuel, we just couldn't shake the continual feeling that the developer should have been working on adding more events and a tighter campaign design, instead of carving out this humungous and rather sparse world.

Fuel is good for a quick blast of arcade racing, but it's let down by a focus on quantity over quality, and a sense of repetitiveness which gradually creeps in.