Get a load of this. In The Crew, you travel around a vast expanse of terrain for the shear joy of it, which means it’s not really a “game” at all. It’s one of those dumb ‘walking simulators’, only one in which you move quicker than in, say, Proteus. Still, Ubisoft continue to scrabble desperately to convince us that their artsy-exploration project is worth covering, most recently with this trailer touting its “social” features. Speedwalking with friends? Ugh.



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This time the terrain you’ll be exploring isn’t some flower-covered dirtmound or gloomy Hebridean island, but instead an abstract metaphor for capitalism and gaudy excess in the form of a shrunken, greatest-hits version of the United States. As if that wasn’t all indie-trendy enough, I even bet parts of the countryside you travel through on your journeys from Las Vegas to New York are procedurally generated in order to keep down file size down in its install. Typical.

In fairness, it at least looks better than Ubisoft’s last attempt at wheelbound ambulation, which combined its (st)rolling with the biggest of all ‘art-game’ clichés by having the player character be inside a coma. Ugh ugh ugh! We’ll have some hands-on time with The Crew next week to confirm which Steam tag you should append to it come its November 11th/14th release.