The Crew (2014)

It's been nearly a decade since the release of The Crew, but I still found a lot to appreciate about this game.

The most impressive aspect of The Crew is the open world. A scaled down version of the entire USA, complete with landmarks for the most distinctive locations. As someone who's never been to the USA, taking a virtual road trip across the country was a breathtaking experience. The sparkling cities, the coastal roads, the snow-capped mountains, the rugged desert; the diversity I could see at different times was incredible. And I thought that was the best way to play the game: put on some of your own soundtrack, pick up a favorite car, and just admire the sights as you go from one corner of the map to the other.

But, The Crew isn't billed as a driving game; it's a racing game. And the races are... okay. Racing against another player is thrilling, but given the age of the game, PvP events are a little hard to come by. Story-based races are straightforward, and if you've spent any time with the skill challenges dotted around the map, you already have a vehicle that's so far advanced to leave everyone else in the dust.

Speaking of the story, The Crew involves a story about a wheelman going undercover to get revenge for the murder of his older brother. It's a little too dark and intense compared to the rest of the game, but it's serviceable. Then again, I have yet to see a racing game include a compelling story.

There are two main DLCs for the game: The Wild Run and Calling All Units. The Wild Run adds a monthly PvP event called The Summit, motorcycles and new classes of extreme vehicles (think monster trucks). Calling All Units adds the ability to play as a cop. I am yet to check out these expansions, so no comments on them for now.

A review for this game wouldn't be complete without mentioning this: The Crew has an always-online requirement. Fluctuating connectivity? Exit to desktop. Ubisoft servers not reachable? Exit to desktop. This requirement kind of makes sense with the multiplayer aspects of the game, but I would have appreciated the option to turn this off and just drive alone. I've raced with a few cool players here and there, and have also encountered some not-so-cool ones. It is the internet, so YMMV.

Well, that's the end of my review, so I'm going to go back to the game, pick up my Koenigsegg Agera and drive another lap around the United States of America.

Up until an unavoidable mission in the main storyline, i gave The Crew 3 stars. It has plenty of flaws, but it's nice to drive across the US and some of the racing is good. But in the last few missions things already took a turn for the worse.

Introduction

Ok, so The Crew is a dudebro racing game. The target audience is really really white college kids who loved Suicide Squad and who unironically would call someone "hombre". You play as Discount Gordon Freeman, i honestly don't know his name. Your stupid brother got shot because he was an idiot, and you want revenge. Bla bla. apparently it follows the plot of the Fast & Furious movies (smuggle stuff in fast cars), but i've never seen those.

All the "bro's" are "dope", all the "ladies" are "hot but needy and naggy". Nine out of ten times i found myself shouting "stfu bitch" it was because of a nagging female "character", it just can't be a coincidence. And trust me, this game makes you shout at it. The supporting cast constantly bothers you if you don't race fast enough. And many missions are failed because of a single mistake. Often because of terrible design choices or because the AI cheats.

Gameplay

You race in the streets, dodging traffic and trying not to run into solid objects which are often poorly indicated. Sometimes the exact same object (e.g. park benches) is destroyable in some instances and indestructible in others. You always have to win races, which is really annoying.

You can visit the entire US mainland but aside from the few cities it's fairly generic looking. Each region does have a nice feel to it and there's a couple of things to discover. Aside from missions you will find tricks and crates. Crates start police chases until you drop them at the destination. Tricks are things like going fast on a certain path, driving around/between poles and jumping. Some are awful, some are ok. Mostly it's just busywork. And if i wanted to do tricks for cash i'd become a sex worker.

You get money, parts and XP from these. As you progress through the storyline you unlock new skills from new NPCs. The skills are almost completely generic and awful, and whoever was involved in creating them should be deeply ashamed. Money can be spent on cars and car parts. Cars are very expensive and require grinding to buy, after which you still have to upgade them. Many cars can only be bought with real money, because you didn't already buy a €60 game, right? I got it when they gave it away for free, but it's still awful.

So yeah, notice how i said you have to level cars? You get randomly generated parts for missions, crates and tricks. You have to level every car to stay competitive. And you have to level every variation of each car. The vanilla game has 6 variations, the expansion adds another 4 or so. It's a terrible system and all progression should have come from character development instead of individual cars. Heck, it doesn't even make sense from a commercial point of view because the prospect of levelling cars bought for €/$ must scare off customers.

Conclusion aka why it fails

So i've mentioned how it fails on many levels. There's a grind, the rules are unclear, skills are boring, missions are unbalanced... Oh wait, i forgot that. There's no rhyme or reason to the difficulties they assign to stuff. Sometimes an Easy mission is really hard, sometimes a Normal mission is sleep-inducing. This goes for tricks too. The same goes for ratings. One time i finished just in front of the #2 and got a Gold medal, the other time i had a 20 second advantage and got a Silver medal. It's baffling.

Ok, before i come to the last part of my angry rant, i want to give a shout-out to the worst music in video games ever. The default radio station is so bad you couldn't even manage that if you tried. La La La by The Orwells is the worst song ever to appear in a video game. I'd rather listen to Mmbop by Hanson on repeat for an entire day than listen to this song even once.

Also, i want to point out that game designers should stop putting repetive clips in games. The Crew has two clips that play every time you enter a store and two clips when you exit. You have to press Escape to skip each one. Wow.

But here's where the game finally fails. The last few missions often have you snake your way up in the mountains. In one of them you drive your fast asphalt car on an ice road where it constantly slips. Since main story missions are mandatory to progress, i had to complete it. Took me 2-3 times, some earlier missions (especially takedowns) took more tries. The mission Burn Coburn i couldn't complete after 5+ tries. And i beat the AI by 20 seconds in a race right before this.

The first part is another snaking route which i failed once or twice but it's doable (you have to replay this part if you quit the second part). The other part is where i ragequit. They put you in a car you've never driven before (and you can't upgrade it). You're dropped into the worst mountain terrain yet. And you have to collect stupid crates. Yeah, it's not even a race. I just can't do it. You jump all over the place, vision is poor, the terrain unpredictable and they don't give you enough time. Up until this mission i got Gold medals (highest score before level 50) on half of them. Was this designed by a disgruntled employee or something? Why? Just... why?

This was another game I bought on the novel idea it sold. I am not a racing game fan, that is to say, I stink at racing games after they get pass the first few easy levels. I got The Crew because it's open world. It promised to be a game where you could free roam across a condensed America.

As someone who loves the tradition of the "Great American Road Trip" it was awesome to visit anywhere in the USA, at least the major locations. While they split the country up into West, East, Midwest, South every state is represented somehow. My home state had the Ohio Roadway Giants. I spent little time on the actual racing missions. Nope, I was traveling to St. Louis, Roswell, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and all the little small towns & big cities. I was also taking plenty of screenshots of my travels, just like those vacation slideshows no one wants to watch.

The country is well laid out too. It takes a while to get from the East to West or North to South, but not so long that it gets overly tedious. I found a trip from Miami to Chicago ended up having detours into Washington DC & Dixon, KY. The traffic also works in that cities are bumper to bumper where the open roads are scarcely populated and the East feels more congested where the West has vast expanses of emptiness.

Their car selection is decent. They all look pretty and shiny and they handle pretty well. You get lots of customization of performance and aesthetics, and you unlock more parts via completing challenges. I'll admit I don't know much about cars that aren't old muscle cars. That being said I immediately bought the '77 Chevy Impala, which I feel they added as a subtle gimmick to appeal to the Supernatural crowd.

As for the story, eh, ah, it's Troy Baker going undercover in a street gang for the FBI, blah, blah, blah. Not a crazy original plot.. at all.