The Crew

This game was definitely one of the driving games of all time. Poor physics, repulsive dialogue and story, unimpressive sound and visual design, and, to my memory, no radio soundtrack. But driving around a miniature model of the entire US with a couple of buddies in mostly your choice of car was pretty damn fun either way.

Legitimately a fun game. Physics and sounds are incredibly mid but the map is a lot of fun to drive around especially in the faster cars. The story mode will leave you cringing more often than not but it's fun to laugh at. But still, again, just a fun game to drive around in, there's some cool cars blah blah blah.

The reason I give this a 0.5 is because Ubisoft decided to nuke the game. It's an always online game and the servers have since been shut down, so everyone who bought this game now only has access to the main menu. That's it. That's what I paid $70 for. A main menu. And that is BY DESIGN, not a glitch.

How this isn't robbery is beyond me. I literally don't have access to this game anymore despite me "buying" a copy of it.

Sigh. Modern gaming I guess.

EDIT:
ignore the block of text, game is dead anyway.
I launched it today (30th March) before the servers are shut down and I managed to play 6 PVP matches and grind some drag Summit. man was this game so good
bumping it to 5, the review below is irrelevant tho.
NEVER DRIVE ALONE!

I don't get the rating.
A good arcade racing game is supposed to be dragged from reality. FH franchise if anything is way closer to being a simarc than a true arcade racer. I rarely encounter hate for older NFS series while their driving model is very far from being even proper. And here comes The Crew.

Everyone knows about its gigantic map, it's the U.S.A. after all. The cars included are likely to find everyone's liking due to a great balance between JDM, American & European manufacturers. Furthermore, the balance in PvP (or regular gaming) is great and you mustn't limit yourself to one specific car to overtake and gloriously win the races (yeah Unbound, I'm pointing at you and the havoc caused by Regera). The customization is alright but nothing outstanding.

The story is pretty mediocre as others have been pointing out. There are several types of racing and the more you go to the left the "faster" or more varied the racing becomes - from street through off-road, performance, dirt to finally circuit. The progression is satisfying to a certain extent, but ultimately the after-story is what pays off. Getting the full version combined with all the DLCs is nowadays really cheap, I would not go to lengths and state outright that the game is a bang for the buck. After you get rid of the whole cringe police narrative, many various possibilities open. After maxing out certain cars the game becomes so much fun. The Wild Run DLC allows for some serious fun with monster trucks, dragsters and drift cars (although the last is certainly among the worst aspects of the game). Calling All Units gives you a choice: you either run from a cop or become one and is perhaps the most active part of the game now with numerous notifications of police chases being shown one after another while free-running. PvP offers a great palette of tracks with options to further modify your experience. Hence, it's a comforting title if either you're looking to invest much of your precious time into it or you've got some company alongside (even with an alleged lack of time). The Crew is a blast when played with friends - the multiplayer missions, DLCs and enormous map speak for themselves. Because what is more fun than cruising around Florida swamps, the Grand Canyon with some good company?

Speaking of company, the summit included within Wild Run DLC is perhaps the greatest aspect of the game and is what had so many players hooked on the game, just like pulled by a magnet. The concept is fairly simple and revolves around having a couple of varying events in which you either play alone or with friends and then score ranks. But what matters at the end of the day is creativity. The Crew is known for its notorious drafting, yet it can be turned into something beneficial for multiplayer rides. The skills in summit can be completed with the use of dragsters, monster trucks or the basic variety of cars (from Street to Circuit) and the processes behind record times and top places are often so complex it gets crazy.

And now, the icing on the cake: the driving model. I could easily write a longish paragraph on this matter, but I believe a shorter statement will suffice. I have around 1000 hours in the game and over 600 PvP games with all the tracks completed. I often have scored top20 in summits in TC glory days. It can be hard to master, but once you get the hang of it the game becomes a completely new experience. The moment you buy RT-35 and get it for off-road and then compare it to your starting off-road car, you'll know what I mean.

I dislike the system of achievements. It's too hard and requires a monotone grind, I never paid much attention to it.

It's a 5 for me based on nostalgia & my experiences. However, modern The Crew doesn't stand close to what it was in its glory days. Playerbase is lackluster, PvP mode exists mostly on the weekends, bare anybody touches the game during weekdays. The summit doesn't change from year to year, that is each selected period of the year there are the exact events repeated. This entirely kills my motivation to play this otherwise spectacular game. -0.5 for that.

In my opinion, a good driving game is one where you feel like you need to fully concentrate at all times and skilfully navigate the road. You need to pick out the best racing line and utilise the correct speed in order to exit the corner at the correct angle whilst maintaining the highest speed you can.

However, a lot of the gameplay in The Crew is boring. The racing usually takes place in American streets, where roads are long and straight, and the handling in the game means you can often casually tap the brake and swing your car around the corner without much thought. Early on in the game, I felt it didn't seem to matter how badly I took the corner, but rather if I managed to not hit a car. This can come down to luck, given that a lot of the time, you cannot see around the corner until you have begun to turn.

Even if you do collide with a car, the impact it has is almost random. The physics in the game are severely wonky, so you often just jerk to the side and carry on, but you may lose a lot of speed. There was one instance where I got rammed in my left hand side, and my car flew high into the air, travelling in a south-west direction; completely the opposite direction it should have travelled.

The game takes place on a full map of the USA, although it's obviously not to scale. Once you have driven in a particular location, you can fast travel to that location at anytime, even selecting to play an event directly from the map screen. If you haven't visited that area before, then you must drive there.

The Crew tries to play like a MMORPG, where you can play as a group of players online and win races to earn rewards and level up your car. It wasn't very clear to me how the 'Crew' features worked though, and my attempts to play the story events with players were always turned down; so I stuck to the single player.

You play as Alex Taylor, a driver working undercover for the FBI. He is tasked to infiltrate a gang of street racers to get revenge for his brother's murder which he was framed for. He works his way up the ranks and travels across the USA in order to take on the leader; Shiv.

There's a variety of event types from races against many cars, time attacks, take-downs, follow the leader, and include both road and off-road courses. Completing these earns parts for your cars which improves their performance and 'car level'.

There's only a couple of events available at once and these require you to have a certain driver level before you can attempt them. Despite the game appearing to be open-world, you are basically dictated which events you can do, although sometimes you need to gain extra experience from the events scattered around the map. These include smashing targets, driving through gates, slaloms, driving as far as you can in a given time, jumps and more.

Since your car improves as you play, there's not much of an incentive to purchase new cars (not that there is a great selection anyway). Even when you unlock new race types and require a Street/Dirt/Performance/Raid/Circuit car etc., you can simply upgrade your current one to this new style.

If you do visit the stores, there will be cars listed that you have to purchase using real money. There's micro-transactions in other areas too, and can use real money to boost driver perks such as receiving more in game money when completing events, cheaper repair costs and more.

Graphically, it's okay but nothing remarkable. People walk about in the streets, although it's not exactly densely populated. You see different animals in different areas of the country which is a nice touch. You don't get the satisfaction of running them over though, since they jerk to the side like some of the car collisions.

The Crew is another example of a game that turned out to be 'jack of all trades; master of none'. The various mission types provide variety, but it didn't entertain me as much of a game that would specialise in racing. There's other games that take a similar approach to The Crew, but I don't really see anything here that makes The Crew a preferable choice. I didn't enjoy Burnout Paradise too much, but I think that was the more enjoyable game and came out several years earlier.

The world presented to you in The Crew is an outstanding technical archievement, i have no doubt about that, but so what, ultimatly it doesnt matter. Because the car control is so bad, and apparently you need to grind out money to upgrade your car to be even enjoyable to drive. This is something that absolutly makes no sense to me. The control feels like an even sluggish version of Need for Speed, with an unsatisfactory top speed and even worst road grip.

I get that in order for a progression to be enjoyable you need to start the game with low tier equipment at times. Devil May Cry and Dark Souls are two of my favourite games, and they can be accused of doing this. But in both of those cases, the starting equipment is already enjoyable to use, and you quickly start to upgrade it. I played the crew for a lot of hours and played a lot of missions, but i feel no difference in the car handling. The story is a cliche undercover cop story that gives me no sort of motivation to play any further.

Its a pretty bad racing game.