15 Severely Underrated Xbox 360 Games That Deserve A Second Chance
4. FUEL
Chances are you've heard of Codemasters if you're at all interested in console racers, but whether or not you've heard of Fuel is an entirely different matter altogether. Released in 2009 after the successes of DiRT and GRID, FUEL aimed to take the off-road experience to a whole other level by creating a fully living and breathing environment - the largest open world to ever feature in a console game to this day. Situated in a world ravaged by global warming and climate change, Codemasters' underappreciated racer certainly held a unique premise, but it did lack a certain vitality to it. This doesn't stop FUEL from looking gorgeous at all however, as the fully-realised world is stocked to the brim with beautiful vista points to marvel at and natural disasters to behold. The Mad Max-esque vehicles are also a lot of fun to drive around in, with each handling in their own unique manner. It may not match up to the realistic experiences provided by GRID and DiRT, but FUEL certainly deserves recognition for attempting to do something a little bit different to the genre's norm.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
