FUMES Review (PC)

In what feels like the crossfire of a well-oiled synergy between Mad Max and Cel Damage, FUMES breaks free from the gasket to ignite the flamboyance of vehicular combat with its own strand of petrol-plastered carnage and frivolous rebellion. It’s between those cel-shaded cartoon visuals and that bitterly cruel post-apocalyptic wasteland that I find my place behind the wheel of yet another bucket of bolts. In this instance, however, there are no highwaymen to prevent from pillaging the last-remaining bastions of humanity, nor are there vehicle parts that have an unfortunate tendency to shatter at the mere mention of a speed bump. Instead, what I have is a vibrant open world with no other online combatants to bash heads with other than the AI-driven bots who flesh out the outer boroughs of a carnivorous sandbox. It’s lonely — but boy is it hectic.

The reason why I brought Cel Damage to the table was because, speaking from a visual and performance standpoint, FUMES pretty much fosters a lot of the same basic ingredients. From the cartoon-like canvas of a world to the unorthodox vehicular design and all the bullet-brazen gadgets and gizmos that harness them — FUMES does, in fact, cater to a familiar design. It’s an old design, and it’s certainly one that we’ve seen span countless iterations over the past two or three decades, give or take. But it’s also a winning formula—a concept that has been trialed and tested, and has amassed universal credit for all the right reasons.

So, is FUMES better than its vast kin, or is it a mere stain on the legacy of vehicular combat? Let’s jump behind the wheel and find out.

If in Doubt, Flat Out

FUMES is a single-player third-person vehicular combat game in which you, the driver of an old bag of bolts and brake pads, navigate a steaming wasteland of intangible objects, barren terrain, and monolithic bosses on wheels. An ode to classic arcade combat games at heart, FUMES doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its mechanics or its primordial fodder; it instead opts to pay tribute to the likes of Twisted Metal with a simple “nut up and shut up” approach that comes across as both a breath of fresh air and a time capsule for the elder generation to unpack and gracefully marvel at while coddling their dust-riddled consoles.

There isn’t much of a storyline for you to bite into here. Rather, it’s more of a contextless ordeal that jumps straight to the brunt of the experience. With a fairly sizable open world to dive into, a relatively useless vessel to arm to the teeth with weapons, armor, and other cell-shaded gadgets, and a series of wasteland-centric challenges and boss battles to romp through, FUMES wastes no time in providing you with the tools to delve headfirst into a ruthless pit of sweltering combat and automatic warfare. It doesn’t lay the groundwork for anything spectacular, but it does make a genuine effort to bypass the jargon and capitalize on the most important thing: generating a stupidly thrilling moment that’s quick and simple to slip into gear.

Effectively Timeless

FUMES is all about one thing, and that’s wreaking havoc on an open playing field whilst simultaneously unlocking credits to purchase better weapons, gear, and other sturdy contraptions to help keep your vessel afloat. To that end, there isn’t a lot for you to learn; in fact, the game makes it so easy to roll with, that you need only slip behind the wheel and drive into the sunset. There’s a lot of shooting, which is essentially a free-for-all bullet hell that doesn’t generate much outside of a barrel of laughs and a trajectory of rusted carbon components and loose wheels. There’s also a great deal of challenges to overcome, too, with several unique boss battles to throw yourself into in a pretty meaty single-player campaign. I can’t complain about any of that.

Of course, the element that drives FUMES is the vehicle customization. True to its word, the game has a solid collection of upgradable components. Granted, it doesn’t feature the same level of detail as an A-list racing game, given that it excludes crucial parts like chassis design and other notable features in favor of ballistic weaponry. But even without a full range of parts to sift through, FUMES does manage to offer enough bite-sized incentives to keep you plugging away and unlocking new vehicles to drive.

As it’s still early days, I’d like to imagine that FUMES will keep to its promise of fulfilling its roadmap—a list that touches base on features like a storyline, “special” skills, and a general overhaul of the game’s primary customization suite, for example. If it can capture all of that, then I have nothing but high hopes for the game’s future as a sincere love letter to the golden age of arcade brawlers.

Verdict

FUMES’ faithful slip back into the depths of chaotic vehicular combat gaming is one that I can’t help but admire. Thankfully, even without a full-fledged storyline and a litter of special add-ons to call its own, it still finds enough time to fill its gasket with all of that same mindless rage and contextless violence that we’ve come to appreciate from love letters to the era of arcade crash ‘em ups. With any luck, it’ll eventually go on to earn its racing stripes with a few more nuts and bolts (and the treasure trove of roadmap fixtures that it initially set out to capture), too.

While we’ve still a few miles left to go before FUMES finally capitalizes on that opportunity to bring the full checkered flag to the asphalt, so to speak, I could still think of plenty of good reasons why you should give it some attention. For the sake of bypassing all of the nonsense, though, we’ll leave it at this: if you’re truly grasping for something that vaguely resembles the likes of Twisted Metal or Cel Damage, then you needn’t search any further than FUMES’ anarchic ode to a beloved and timeless era.