The Crew 2 Review

Ubisoft studio Ivory Tower is back with their latest racing title, The Crew 2, an ambitious racer spanning the whole of North America. 

The Crew 2 follows the career progression of a rookie driver, as they try and make a name for themselves in the racing world, by simply winning races. They are able to do this via racing production company LIVE, who broadcast every second to the public.

In the opening scene the game shows a transformed New York City, as cars hurtle round the tight streets, boats race along the Hudson, and planes soar above. It’s a little unbelievable, but a good way to quickly get acquainted with the simplistic controls. The problem is that the game’s tone jumps all over the place, poorly explaining why anything is happening to the player, and just uses ‘get famous’ as the driving factor. This unfortunately continues throughout the game, as the player is able to turn into a plane on the fly, drive up to lootboxes containing car parts, and can do death-defying stunts, yet is brought back down to ‘reality’ during cutscenes.

The Crew 2 ignores its predecessor, shifting from crime and instead focusing on an extreme sports show theme. This would work well, but as said above, the game fluctuates in tone constantly and also seems to solely rely on the need to obtain followers for the backbone of the story. Ivory Tower have crafted an interesting world with not much to it, resulting in few reasons to explore the map independently, strengthened by the fact that you are able to fast travel straight away to complete races. Even if you choose not to fast travel and instead set a waypoint, it’s completely pointless as the navigation system doesn’t provide the fastest/best route there, simply drawing a straight line to the destination, like you’re supposed to catch the train.

The gameplay as a whole is solid, allowing players to easily control exotic cars, bikes, speedboats, and even planes, with large varieties in locale. Races can be intense, whether they take part in crowded city streets or on open water, and tricks can be fun to do and master, though the feeling that something is missing is inescapable whilst playing.

The Crew 2 is mainly split up into street racing, off-roading, flying, and boat racing, with LIVE Xtreme events combining all forms into one big race. Favourites include boat racing through Las Vegas, drifting (which is super cool) around Central Park, and just motocross in general. These types of races would be epic with online players, and not just in single player or with up to 3 other crew members.

Throughout the story the player is able to participate in events set up all across Ivory Tower’s rendition of the States, with these events being organised by 4 motorsporting families. These families include Off-Road HQ (Monument Valley), Freestyle HQ (Lake Mead), Street Racing HQ (L.A.), and Pro Racing HQ (New York). There are 4 disciplines that each crew specialise in. Street Racing HQ, for example, has street race, drift, drag race and hyper car events, whereas other families have things like powerboat racing and aerobatics. Each discipline unlocks a new activity to complete and new vehicles for your collection. When not at the track, the player can customise these vehicles at home (Miami), as well as fine tune other customisation options, like outfits.

Getting away from the campaign and gameplay, the graphics, while looking good at times, are slightly outdated for 2018, and playing on a PS4 Pro I wasn’t blown away. It would have been nice to also see more damage to vehicles that crash at 200mph, instead of just a scratch that fades away after 30 seconds. Voice acting is another area where the game stutters, as the simple story, combined with awkward delivery, makes cutscenes easily skipable.

Racing online can only be done if players are in a crew, and even then it’s against the AI instead of other players. This unfortunately means no racing strangers that you meet in the world, which is very unusual, and is a missing feature in the game. This results in online play being very limited, with the best moments coming from simple, unofficial street drag races between friends. Microtransactions are present, and act as a way to unlock content faster. There is also a season pass, with some content, such as vehicles and outfits locked away, which only holders can access.

Free roam can be fun, swapping from land to air to sea vehicles on the fly, however, the content here is lacking, and gives no real reason for exploration. The game feels like GTA here but without the third-person combat or interesting missions. Back on the track however, it is more comparable to recently reviewed arcade racer Gravel, especially during off-road sections.

Ubisoft, who have displayed time and time again that they can faithfully recreate real-world cities in games such as Watch Dogs and The Division, have done it again here in The Crew 2, though it has flaws. The game’s map, the entirety of North America, sums up The Crew 2 perfectly. On the surface it’s expansive and detailed, with tons to do and explore, though the pitfalls become apparent when driving in free-roam, and when playing through the story.

Final Thoughts

On the surface, The Crew 2 feels packed with content, due to its array of vehicles, as well as its country-spanning race events. However, lift up the hood and there isn’t much there. The story, which could’ve been great, combining a new up-and-comer’s desire to get famous with competing teams, and having the player choose where to race, and building the world from there. The reality though, is a generic and uninspired paint by numbers experience, which gets old, fast.

The Crew 2 just doesn’t know what it wants to be, and suffers for it. It lacks the all-out crazy fun of games like Burnout, the realism of Forza, and the story elements of titles such as Need for Speed. If The Crew 2 had more of a narrative focus, on how a rookie rises up, making choices along the way, instead of just “get followers”, then it would have been able to stand out more, instead of just being another racing game in a crowded space.

The game will be of interest to racing game enthusiasts and petrol-heads alike, however, if like me you were on the fence, maybe consider staying there. Overall The Crew 2 is a solid racing game with small issues, but those wanting something more may have to look elsewhere to get their fix of burning rubber.

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