The Crew Reviews
It feels like no one at Ubisoft played the game. No one stopped and asked if the game was fun. Or if they did, they knew what they had on their hands and released it anyway in hopes of recouping some of the money spent developing it. It's hard to imagine how a game could go through so many beta tests and still be lacking in so many ways. If a second iteration comes along, as it most surely will, it might be a fun game if they have time to build off the working core. But who's going to play it?
For years developers have been hunting the white whale of being the biggest and the best. Like Captain Ahab's fabled story, this hunt can often lead to ruination. Sure you've done a lot of things along the way and certainly have some stories to tell, but The Crew sits as an empty shell, capable of housing so much more.
The Crew does a lot of things right. Not only does it give you a huge game world to explore, but the ability to change up the whole experience by tuning your car differently is an excellent addition to Ivory Tower's ambitious racer, allowing you to take one car and do so much more than just a mere race. Apart from the microtransactions you cannot go wrong here by jumping behind the dashboard of your favourite car and taking off into the sunset across the desert. Giving you the ability to drive from coast to coast across the USA with tons of goodies in between is what makes The Crew a dream world to explore.
I know many people have been skeptical of The Crew, and after playing it, I have no issues. Just exploring the world was a blast for me. My time spent with the game was very enjoyable, and with some friends it is even more fun. It has a few issues, but The Crew is a fun game with an action movie story that I think many will enjoy especially in co-op.
It pains me to say it seeing as I had such high hopes but The Crew missed its mark by a long shot and just barely chugs over the starting line.
Ubisoft's ambitious open-world racer offers you a whole continent to explore, but struggles to make it really live
The Crew is a game filled with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. The promises hammered upon during development fell short in almost every way, with the exception of the car creation. On top of that, the story found within The Crew is embarrassing and provides more laughs than it does drama. Ubisoft took a huge swing and missed by a car length, it is time for them to put The Crew back in the garage for an overhaul.
The Crew is breathtaking in scope, it's just a shame the game isn't very good-looking and filled with broken and unfair AI
I wanted to like The Crew.
The Crew attempts to take the United States by storm, but ends feeling more like a drag than an actual race.
A decent enough racer slowed down by microtransactions and an awful story
The Crew is quite the ambitious undertaking by a brand-new development studio that offers some fresh ideas for racing games, but it hits a few bumps and roadblocks along the way.
I really want to love The Crew. The in game world is absolutely huge and it's filled with a great deal of content – it looks brilliant at times too. Although the handling takes some time getting used to it does feel natural as the game begins to open up. Despite that, the driver AI can be infuriating at times, as with the traffic placement which I refuse to believe is a coincidence. The online doesn't feel well integrated either and the story is uninspiring. If you know that you have friends playing The Crew it could turn out to be a great arcade racer, but if you're playing solo for the majority of it, it will no doubt start to feel lifeless and lacking a bit of soul.
In all, The Crew can be enjoyable for some casual cross-country joy rides, especially if you have some friends to drive along. However, it comes up entirely short of most of its goals, and makes a wreck of car handling and competition for the sake of lackluster MMO mechanics.
The Crew offers you the entire countryside to explore solo or with friends (or strangers), plenty of cars, customization options, and a narrative that extends a purpose beyond "being the best" to get your motor running. Ubisoft's familiar structural pitfalls like microtransactions, online-only play, and other trappings hinder rather than enhance, but those things have become par for the course by now. Thankfully, they don't mar the overall experience, and that was an overtly positive one for me. I don't need a crew to cruise downtown Chicago or the west coast. I was just fine going it alone. And if you settle in for a few hours and let the game take you, I surmise you will be, too.
Ambition is both The Crew's greatest asset and greatest downfall. Somewhere buried in The Crew, beneath the bloated content and the MMO shenanigans, is a competent racer featuring the perfect road trip. But for a game whose primary strength is freedom, there should have been more objectives and more incentives to explore its world with friends, instead of copy-and-pasted skill challenges and missions tangled in a confounding plot that's hard to forget for all the wrong reasons.
The Crew is a vast, expansive driving game that packs a solid story mode and tons of things to do. However, much of its endgame content feels like repetitive filler.
The Crew's big wins are buried under a mound of frustrations
The Crew has a lot of missions and environments to explore, but there are myriad issues that get in the way of its positive aspects.
I am nominally interested in all of The Crew's parts, but none of them hold my attention