A unique, compulsive, expansive racing game, and the greatest road-trip simulator ever (with a respectful nod toward Euro Truck Simulator). The game's terrific fun to play with friends, but it can't come up with good enough reasons to bring the wider community together, and its online schema and interface are arcane and confusing. PVP options are weak - especially compared to Horizon 2's excellent 'road trip' playlists - and co-op isn't well incentivised. It's a grind, but a grind linked inherently to racking up mileage around that stupendous map, so it's a rewarding one - as well as a refreshing change within the racing genre.Īs an actual massively multiplayer game, though, The Crew doesn't gel. You'll only expand your garage of cars and "specs" (performance, circuit, dirt and so on) slowly, and you can't buy upgrades you have to get out there and earn them, like loot, from events in the world, including the fun driving skills that litter the map and fill out every point-to-point journey. You aren't just grinding out cash to splurge on buying cars and upgrading them at will.
The MMO influence lends the Crew a structure and economy that are quite distinct from the "CarPG" norm established by Gran Turismo. The Crew goes much further, taking TDU's map populated with other players and incorporating a grindy, granular system of car advancement that owes something to Diablo's randomised loot tables, as well as stabs at an endgame and "PVE" co-op content. The Crew is also an attempt to create the first real massively multiplayer online racing game - an idea flirted with by some of the same developers, under a different name, in the lovably eccentric Test Drive Unlimited games. Playing on Xbox One one year after launch, The Crew's community seems smallish, but far from lifeless. At once." Take it from someone who's been lucky enough to undertake a couple such trips in real life: he's dead right. Not one in particular, nor just the ones cherry-picked by Hollywood or Kerouac, but all of them. The less often you use fast travel, the better this game is.Īs Mike Channell wrote in our review last year: "The Crew is an ode to the great American road trip. The sheer size of it just allows for more texture, more variation, more time, and heightens the romance of the journey. It's at its best in its carefully elided transitions: you'll sweep through the clapboard churches, scrubland and oil jacks of Texas to the glossy towers of Dallas, or down from New England's smouldering woodland toward Manhattan, or from Miami's low-rise suburban sprawl into the swamps and spanish moss of the Louisiana bayou. Dense and atmospheric despite its grandiose scale, it conjures the soul as well as the sights of the American road.
The Crew's gigantic map of the entire continental USA must take a full hour to cross from coast to coast. It might be one of the greatest open worlds, full stop. This action sprawls in glorious plenty across what is without question the greatest open world in any racing game.
It's not technical, and the AI drivers stick to a pretty rigid script, but it's a good time. As a racing game, it's basic, broad, enjoyable: heavy handling, high speeds, focusing on judicious use of nitro boosts as much as anything else, with slippery dirt tracks and bouncy off-road rally raids in addition to every arrangement of tarmac you can think of. Complete Edition (includes original game's Season Pass) also available.Īn online, open-world driving game with the usual themes - the acquisition and customisation of sweet rides, wrapped up in a corny street-crime story - The Crew, by French studio Ivory Tower, is a great deal more than the sum of its unrefined parts. Availability: As an add-on or as part of The Crew: Wild Run Edition.
Plaform: Reviewed on Xbox One, also on PC and PS4 (not Xbox 360).