The Crew Reviews
The Crew is an overenthusiastic attempt at marrying racing gameplay and multiplayer to a massive open-world driving map. Unfortunately, repetitive missions, cheap AI, and poor balancing hold the game back from greatness despite its impressive and detailed world.
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 had an amazing game on their hands until they ruined it with the must win condition.
It's clear to see that The Crew had potential, but the promises it made just simply aren't realised in the final product. While the thought of a digital America to drive across is certainly exciting, The Crew does a very bad job of executing on it and building an interesting environment to drive around in and discover. And when the bland world is combined with an easily forgettable storyline and the worst car handling we have ever experienced in a videogame, it's easy to understand why we did not have any fun with the game. The levelling up system and car customisation are the two good things among an otherwise hugely disappointing feature set. The Crew promised so much, but delivered so little.
The mission design is sometimes inconsistent, with some missions only playable solo and others very difficult unless playing as part of a crew
When the great void of the map greeted me for that final time, I just shrugged my shoulders and mouthed "why," before turning the console off. I've never been so happy to be able to move onto something else in my life.
The Crew is not a bad game but one targeted at a very specific group of gamers. Not quite the pure race and unlock gameplay offered by other car titles and not enough of the usual trappings us twisted MMO fans look for to find a long term home on my hard drive. In short, it's a fun distraction for the short term but unless this is the kind of meal you'd like to eat three times a day for the next twenty five years, you are going to find yourself not quite sated by what The Crew has to offer.
The Crew is a reasonable racing game with tons of gameplay modes and an absolutely massive world, however its bland story dents the experience.
I realize now that I wish that this game could make me feel like an outsider in a strange town: That feeling is America. And The Crew has none of the licentious anticipation for the fictional pile-up, nor any of the guilty pleasure of rubbernecking—American pastimes, both. The missions never just say "Get to Wyoming," and then let me plot my own foolhardy, American route there. They don't even let you look at the map. Just trust the waypoints and go.
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.
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.
If you are a die hard racing fan with some friends who are playing this you MIGHT enjoy The Crew. Sadly though this is a classic case of biting off more than you can chew. The idea was great but they needed more time to polish up and add things to it. This road trip is one you can skip out on.
The Crew has a fantastic open world to explore and some decent ideas, but the rest of the game falters with every rev of the engine.
There's a game here that wants to be played. It's just buried beneath a game that wants nothing to do with you.
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?
A title like The Crew has to be more than a glorified "Google Earth" simulator or a VOIP chat client - especially if it's advertised as a "revolutionary action car and driving game".
Not terrible – just so very disappointing.
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.
I wanted to like The Crew.
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.