[Review] The Crew 2 – Just You And Your Car In An Open World

The Crew 2 is a racing game by Ubisoft that was released back in June 29th, 2018. Available on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, it features beautiful graphics and a ton of vehicle additions into the game compared to its predecessor, The Crew. However, The Crew 2 still retains the aesthetics of 2014’s The Crew as an open world, role-playing multiplayer racing game with multiple ways to race.

Check out our gameplay of The Crew 2 below:

The Game

Though The Crew 2 supposedly features multiplayerbility, it did not come with the game at launch. Apparently, Ubisoft will roll out that feature in the coming update which seemed kind of weird as you can’t race with your friends or other players in a racing game. Though the game has racing missions on some places of the map, those are just missions to earn you parts for your upgrade.

Sure you can play with 3 of your other friends and set-up as a Crew to play together, co-operatively, in a mission. But you still don’t get to race against your friends, at all! Though you see other players driving around in the city, appearing on your screen, they are there but you can’t join them or race with them. That’s a feature that not available in a racing game, yet.

However, if you love single-player racing, well that’s a whole different story. The game does offer plenty because if you’re not racing or doing those missions available on the map, you will not obtain new parts for your car. Like an MMORPG, you need to get new parts to increase the power of your character (or car in this case) to be able to race against the big boys. The parts you get are random and they have their own rarity too. So that means, you will have to keep racing until a good one actually drops. An MMORPG indeed, but, you are role-playing as a car…

But what is a game that revolves around cars if there’s no customization? Though, there are not much to customize on the parts of your car as all you have to do is equip the higher scored part (which translates better than your old junk) and you’re done! The only thing that’s really customizable in the game is the outlook of your car or any other vehicle.

At the very least, The Crew 2 does have a new feature in their races where your mode of transport would automatically turn from car to a boat, into an airplane and back into a car – depending on the race. You can also interchange your vehicles when you’re out in the open world. Let’s say, you want to go from L.A. to L.V., you can fly there instead of driving all the way there! Or, just take the fast travel because we just don’t have the time to travel over 400 Kilometers on the virtual map.

Other than that, at least the graphics are pretty. There’s a photo mode as well as the power to control the weather to allow you to take pictures in the beautiful environment you like. No matter what happens, your car will be and stay pretty anyway. Go ahead and try it. Smash your car through walls and hit those street lamps. They won’t leave a dent at all on your car, except scratches. Uh-oh, scratches are my sole weakness! Oh, but give it a few seconds and the scratches would just “heal” up, looking good as new! Phew~!

Though the cars do look really good, but the buildings and the people in the game – not so much. The people’s appearances look pretty much the same and the buildings have not much detail at all. It made it seemed like the developers had put their focus only on the cars and their environment but couldn’t care less about the little details on buildings and people. Maybe it’s a job too difficult? Budget issues maybe? Or the lack of understanding what the game actually needs right now as a sequel to The Crew.

The Story

Now, the story is pretty realistic if I must say. You start off as a “nobody” and you are looking to gain fame in the racing community – so you race. But what better way to gain popularity than recording your races and uploading it on social media? The more you race, win races or perform stunts in a race, you gain more Followers on your social media! Oh, by the way, Followers in the game is the equivalent to Experience Points.

There’s not much of a story in The Crew 2. You basically play as a character that’s just looking for fame on the social media. There’s no depth in the story at all. It made The Crew’s plot far more interesting which gives you an aim as you seek revenge against a nationwide gang – through racing.

The Verdict

Overall, it is a racing game with no capability to race with your friends except for co-op missions. The story has no depth and it’s pretty much a grind for better parts for your car. It may be fun for a new player but not a veteran player who has played other racing games which are actually fun like Crash Team Racing, Super Mario Kart – or some serious racing like Need For Speed and Forza Motorsports.

The great thing about this game is that the cars look great and will always look great. The map is pretty huge and will probably be filled with more missions in the near future and the variety of vehicles that you can play with along with the different types of races. For now, its greatest downfall is the multiplayerbility to race against your friends and not some ghost for some highscore.

The Crew 2 is fun, only after a few patches of updates that’s coming later in September, the coming Winter of 2018 and Spring of 2019. The PvP mode, presumably the race-against-players mode, will come somewhere in Winter 2018. So if you like racing against your friends, I’d say wait it out. Otherwise, enjoy the single player mode until the patches roll in.

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