The Crew 2 (2018)

Thb, because of the openworld nature of the game, this feels closer to a GTA game than to the racing games I'm used to.

I usually prefer racing games that I can play with a steering wheel with some sort of realistic driving and force feedback.
This one is not it. Definitely designed for gamepad.

Free roam is where I found most fun in this game.
There's a big map with a diverse variety of cool landscapes and places to see, so I'm still enjoying it, it's closer to "Death Stranding" or "Euro Truck Simulator" for me, where I play to unwind and relax.

You get forests:

Desert:

Boat racing along the city:

Also there's mountains, mountain bikes, planes, monster trucks.

There's also enough "chill" content that doesn't require you to race or rush somewhere.
For example, there is a "stories" feature, where you just look for some places on a map, using a photo and general directions as a reference. And each of these places goes along with a bit of storytelling.

The way the map can be seamlessly zoomed from a 2d map of an entire continent to viewing a single person sitting on a bench is just wow. I spent plenty of time just scrolling the 3d map to see all of the biomes.

Minus one star for trying to make this an MMO game, overloading the game with popups and notifications, lootboxes, countless upgrade parts with random stats (as in some RPG), achievements given for everything you do and other annoyances that the microtransactions bring.
For me it's just too much noise with all those flashy "reward" animations, I'd rather have 3x less cars, 10x less parts, 100x less achievements and a progression system that doesn't feel like a something out of a mobile game.

That being said, those downsides are easily ignorable, and you can just boot up the game, roam the map and ignore 50% of activities that don't interest you, because there's just a lot of different stuff you can do.

First of, this game is a much better game than the first game in the series. The world is beautiful graphically and the roster of vehicles is impressive. At first I didn't think I'd care for the boats and planes, but these are well implemented are a blast to control. They obviously handle differently. Jetsprint for example, is a tough control set to master but once you do, boy is it fun speeding through the Everglades constantly making sharp turns. Certain cars however seem to handle questionably and you can experience problems which the AI does not seem impacted by at all. For example, Alpha GP racing feels very stiff and understeer seems to be a problem in long fast bends, I have to lift (and break in some cases), whereas the AI blasts straight past. In order to win, I found myself having to drive dirty. Its frustrating to say the least. There are also seems to be a problem with Aerobatics where the Close Call skill doesn't always register, this too can be frustrating however its relatively minor so it doesn't impact the experience that much.

You can also switch between car, plane and boat any time and this makes for some very fun and silly antics. Why not fly high above New York and switch to a boat mid-air and land on a skyscraper? Its crazy and I like it. Or you can be more sensible, fly low across a long strip and then casually switch to a GT car.

The story mode is dull and uninteresting and the dialogue is cringe-worthy but at the end of the day who plays a racing game for the story? So I'll let this slide. The race events are categorised nicely and there is a good amount per discipline, not only that they vary in difficulty so for every event you can x3, which provides hours of gameplay.

As I've said, the game is beautiful and a lot of the time I'll find myself switching to a Harley or Lamborghini and taking a leisurely tour around the vast areas the game has to offer. You can even join a convoy and travel in a large group. This feels very special and definitely puts a smile on my face. This is the best game I have played where you can do this. Forza Horizon maps are just too small to offer the same experience, the only other game that comes close is Test Drive Unlimited (another favourite of mine).

The reason for three stars? Quite simply is microtransactions. This would be a 4/5 for me, but microtransactions really get in the way. I said the game has a large roster of vehicles, and yes you can earn money to pay with bucks (in game currency - you cannot buy this) however doing so is very slow and really only designed to frustrate players into buying credits (premium currency - you can buy with real world cash). Its a shame really, but this is one of the problems that plague modern games. To not be too discouraged though, while you may struggle to buy additional vehicles, buying one vehicle of each discipline is easily do-able and you won't need to grind heavily to progress through the game.

Here's hoping for the third game to be set in Europe where we can drive from Paris to Berlin. Please Ubisoft that would be amazing!

I didn't expect the Crew to get a sequel. I thought it was considered a rather average racer that didn't really drum up much interest. I enjoyed the Crew though and I'm glad it got a sequel.

They dropped the heavy story focus this time, for the best. Instead of a gritty tale of street gangs and revenge that the first one attempted and failed at, this one is more lighthearted and fun. You're just a rookie driver who is working your way up through the extreme sports circuit. Each discipline, street racing, freestyle, offroad, and pro circuit have a mix of three events and a boss that you beat after gaining so much "fame".

My favorite events were the Freestyle and Offroad events. Mostly because they weren't full of races, because the races in this game are difficult. It could be that I'm just too casual of a racing fan, but seriously in most tracks one mess up and you were better off restarting because the AI drivers were freaking godlike. I also always drove classic American muscle cars for most events and without a lot of upgrades, they are just too outclassed by the modern rides.
And speaking of the upgrade system, it's based around collecting loot that makes your car number bigger. You get this loot from completing races or finding crates in the wilds of America. The problem is when you unlock a new event or buy a new vehicle for an event type, it's base stats are usually under the required level for a race, meaning you'll get absolutely smoked. So you have to go hunting in the free roam for several crates just to get your car/bike/plane/boat competitive, which I reckon encourages exploration.

And that's my favorite part of The Crew series, before I even really thought about completing the story races, I just took a road trip across the map, which is a condensed continental USA. I drove through the Midwest in my '67 Impala, took an Indian motorcycle across the West like a modern day Peter Fonda, and flew over the East coast in my P51 Mustang. Most all the locations from the 1st Crew are here with some more varied buildings for each city, town, and such. There's a few new places, but for the most part the map's the same, which while it's fun to see America again, it would've been nice to see more towns added. They did add side challenges in this game that gives you credit for going sightseeing. You gain experience for taking pictures of landmarks and neat occurrences.

The music selection in this game was much better and more varied. There's channels dedicated to rock, pop, rap, world, or country. Course, each station only seems to have 5 songs, so listening to one on a cross country trip means hearing a lot of repeats. I ended up creating a Spotify playlist of driving songs.

All in all, if you're a fan of the Crew or the idea of the great American road trip, I'd say give the Crew 2 a try. Lots more cars and it's neat to have boats and planes included. Just don't expect a lot of new things beyond that.