The Crew
The Crew, Ubisoft’s latest foray into the realm of open-word racing games, is an incredibly ambitious affair. The game-world spans the whole of the United States and whilst it’s not on a 1:1 scale, it is a sight to behold. You’ll find yourself tearing across the vast landmass with indigenous weather, landscape and vegetation racing past your windows and with 65 story missions at your fingertips, scale is undoubtedly what The Crew does best.
Whilst the plot might be a poor version of The Fast and the Furious, massively hammy and racing along at over 200mph, gameplay is reminiscent of Forza Horizon 2 or Test Drive Unlimited 2. Missions are broken down by what type of vehicle is required to compete and you’ll be playing across Street, Dirt, Raid, Performance or Circuit missions. To have a real chance of competing you’ll need to upgrade your car and luckily The Crew has one of the best driving game upgrade systems to date.
Each car has its own numerical rank that increases when you equip a part that you've purchased or won on a mission, or challenge. These challenges are mini-skill tests littered around the map and taking slaloms at speed or launching yourself off ramps are just the tip of the iceberg. Bag yourself at least a bronze medal and you’ll unlock a part. As you'd expect, each part has its own special property, whether that's increasing your acceleration, top speed, braking etc. Every time you put a higher-level part in your car, your numerical rank increases and the best bit of all is you don't have to return to the garage to fit them. Once a mission or challenge is complete you can just select the part and your car is instantly upgraded.
The main pull in any driving game is buying new cars and The Crew has a reasonable amount to choose from. The main issue here though is that exotic, desirable cars are prohibitively expensive, so much so that they feel like overt prompts to push you into paying more real world money through micro-transactions which left a very bitter taste in our mouths.
The Crew shines best when you’re racing against other people and you’re constantly cajoled into taking your game online and into a shared experience. The game bills itself as the MMO of driving games but it can be a little tricky to get people into your missions. Invitations time out if nobody accepts them and unfortunately that happens pretty frequently as you only have a short timeframe before they expire. Like many games, the most reliable way to play is to simply find a group of friends who’ll be invested in the game and go along for the ride.
Co-op particularly shines, as only one of your crew needs to beat the objective for all to win. Having a group of mates with you also levels the playing field against The Crew's massively overpowered AI. For example in Getaway missions you're tasked with outrunning the police or a gang of hitmen yet their cars always seem to be better than yours and they'll dodge your ramming attempts with psychic abilities whilst taking a ton of damage before you can put them out of action. You never feel like you can escape purely based on your driving skill.
Perhaps one of the biggest issues The Crew has is with its physics engine, which is essentially the brain of any racing game. Whilst upgrades help somewhat, the cars feel heavy, not realistically so but more cumbersome. Sometimes you’ll make it around corners with skill and finesse, the next time you try a similar corner with the same speed and technique you’ll smash into a wall. Whilst it’s a true wonder to be able to just drive through a sprawling game world you may feel as if you are wrestling with the handling of your vehicle more than you should be.
If you can see it, you can drive to it, and that’s really something to behold. Visually the game is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde, one moment you’ve got utterly beautiful vistas in front of you and then the next you've got almost last-generation visuals with ugly textures sticking out like a jagged sore thumb. For all of The Crew’s flaws though, it definitely has something endearing going on under the bonnet. Sure, you’ll find yourself getting frustrated at how your car handles or at the rubber band, godlike AI or how it’s actually a pain to get people to play with, but there’s something endearing about being able to just look into the distance and drive. You’ll find yourself getting attached to your car, going on adventures and seeing where the open road leads. It’s here that when The Crew gets it right, it really gets it right.