OK, some of you guys will know that I play The Crew a lot. I stream the game, I have posted dozens of videos about the game and I have defended it many times on both the official forums and on Reddit.

My Youtube videos are here: www.youtube.com/user/misterbellatrix

I have invested a good deal of time in this game. I have all the cars, all the specs, I have got platinum on every challenge and I have even held a couple of world records, so to say I am invested is an understatement. However, what I am going to try here is to be unbiased in this review. So here goes, after almost 60 hours of time sunk into the game, here comes my review for The Crew.

So what exactly is The Crew? This is a debate that has raged on forums and on reddit and there never really seems to be an adequate answer. I mean, its technically and MMO in a fairly loose sense of the word. After all, it has a big open world, you play on a server with thousands of other players, you upgrade your parts (read Gear) and it has PvP, so I guess, for all intents and purposes it is an MMO, but it is in this area where people get confused and where The Crew fails to deliver. Sure it has a huge open world, but its often left feeling somewhat sparse. Sure there are thousands of other players on the server, but due to limitations of hardware and software you can only actually see seven other people. Sure you can upgrade your parts, but once you get the load out you are after by grinding all day long you can just buy these parts for your other vehicles of the same spec. And sure, there is PvP, but it has a myriad of problems as well, most noticeable being its not actually a great deal of fun and possibly more importantly, outside of being an easy way to earn cash, its somewhat pointless.

You are Alex Taylor, and you will always be Alex Taylor as there is no character customisation options available here, but that’s not a problem, after all, the cars are the star here. Alex is somewhat forgettable as a lead, he could really be anyone or nobody. The story tried to bring you in to a Fast and the Furious style adventure about revenge and undercover police work. In fact, if you took the first two movies and mashed them together you would get something resembling the plot of The Crew. This tawdry plot drags you through Michigan, New York, Florida, California and the bit in the middle, but it does its job and it introduces each area and each specification of vehicle so it is solid if unremarkable.

The map itself is huge and access is granted almost immediately with no restrictions on where you can go. Wait… Whats this, a radio tower! UBISOFT!!! Yup, there are radio towers here too. As there are in almost every Ubisoft title in the last year or so and they work no differently, find them, activate them and unveil more of the map. The world itself is varied and certainly sizeable. From coast to coast will take you about an hour in your starter car and around 45 minutes in something with a bit more ooomph. It can take you from a bustling metropolis one minute to a sleepy farmyard town the next and Ivory Tower certainly deserve credit for making each area feel distinct.

But what use is a huge map if you don’t have the means to blast around it at breakneck speed? The cars in The Crew are very well modelled and look exactly like their real world counterparts. Interiors are modelled on ever vehicle and from what limited experience I have of seeing these cars in the real world they certainly seem to be accurate in that department as well. There is variety as well with 43 different vehicles represented, add on a couple of doubles due to special editions and a pair of custom hot rods and the number is closing in on 50 with more to come in the form of DLC each month.

There are some notable manufacturers missing however, with nothing from Fiat, Honda, Renault, Mazda, Subaru or Lotus all of which could stake a claim at being “iconic” brands in one form or another. However I can only speculate that it was due to licensing issues and hopefully in the months to come it can be worked around.

In terms of handling it is definitely aimed at the arcade side of the spectrum, with cars fishtailing around corners with ease. There does appear to be some work needed in certain aspects of the handling as all wheel drive vehicles have a far easier time getting the power down when boost is activated at high speed while FR or MR vehicles slide wildly as soon as the boost button is pushed. Overall however each car feels pretty unique in each of its available specs so credit is certainly due to the developers but with a bit of time spent balancing the grip issues they could make life easier for a great many players.

One area where the game is really lacking is in the sound of these beasts. I find myself behind the wheel of a five litre V8 with full performance spec upgrades and I want to hear a deep rumble, I want to hear a sound akin to two fat people wrestling in a well! What I got was, well, tame. So on this side of things it was a bit of a let down, so hopefully Ivory Tower can go away and work on this for a future update. Ambient sounds are present and correct, and while you cant run over any animals they do make some rather interesting noises when you clip them at the far side of two hundred!

The in game radio stations are a bit of a let down as well, of course its different strokes for different folks, but none of the stations really appeal to me and the number of songs is certainly on the low side so you will end up hearing the whole station by the time you go coast to coast. For me, the in game music gets muted and Deezer gets turned on.

Customisation options were another of the areas this game was expected to excel in and to a degree it does. However, as with many other areas of the game it falls down due to the inconsistencies within the options. Street cars can all be modified with a multitude of bumpers and wings but circuit and raid cars get nothing at all. Not to mention the pointless option that exists to change the front and rear arches, pointless because no car in the game has any parts for these areas. There are plenty of colours and stickers to choose from, but again, its let down by simple things, such as the inability to layer graphics, or even move them around on the car which is a feature that has existed for a decade or more in other games.

PVP is a rather interesting beast in and of itself. For each sector of the map has its own PVP lobby and each is dedicated to a specific car spec, Detroit is the home of street spec while Miami plays host to the perf spec lobby, but within each lobby are a couple of the other types of races. This makes PVP a bit of an odd mish mash and with no option to just join whatever lobby has space there are often long waits for players attempting to get into less popular lobbies. The PVP is also run via peer to peer connections instead of the more common and stable dedicated servers so you are often confronted with host migrations and waiting for player screens mid race. In a close battle where precision is key this can often make or break a race. Balancing of vehicles is also interesting and has raised numerous debates online. The developers have decided to try and balance all vehicles so that at the tuning level cap they should all perform on a similar level. This is great for players who can understand this but it can leave players who are new to the game looking confused as their Pagani is left in the dust by a Ford Focus.

Before drawing a conclusion on this game I do want to mention the bane of modern gaming, Micro Transactions. And yes, they are here as well. HOWEVER, they can be completely ignored. I have played for too many hours than I care to mention and I have never once been encouraged to buy Crew Credits. The option is there to buy cars, parts and stickers with Crew Credits however you earn money so quickly in this game that it should never be an issue if you have some patience.

There is an overall feeling that permeates the whole game, the feeling that the guys at Ivory Tower were getting on with things and Ubisoft turned up and said “We need this out the door pre Christmas” which incited a panic. I don’t want to say the game feels unfinished, but it is lacking in areas that I can imagine a dev team deciding were less important. I very much hope that Ivory Tower can push on and start rolling out the updates to this game as with a few tweaks here and there, a couple of changes to the basic settings it can be an excellent racing game, however, in its current state, I would be slightly distressed at paying a full £39.99 price for it.

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