Is The Crew 2 a good game?
Remember The Crew, you know that game that looked so promising when it was announced, remember how disappointed you were when it actually came out.
The Crew 2 is actually quite a lot like its predecessor, it has the same physics system although tweaked to allow for planes and boats and most importantly drifting is now possible in a drift spec car without wildly sliding off the road. Be sure to check out the video review I made of The Crew 2 at the end of the article.
The Physics
Unfortunately The Crew 2 still suffers from the focus on arcade racing that the developers are trying to market it as, which as a result makes almost every car handle the same, for example one of my cars is a 02 Skyline GTR which as almost ever Gearhead knows is four wheel drive, so why can I do a burnout as if it was rear wheel drive. As a result on this arcade focus, some of the car races are extremely difficult, mostly because a lot of them are high speed races. The Crew 2's engine works well on the lower division races where your hardly go over 120 mph but once you start the races where you average 160 mph, it becomes carnage. Especially since the games AI racers will speed up and slow down depending on your speed, once I accidentally rammed a Fiat 500 Abarth of the road and into a building, which is fairly easy in this game and less than a minute later it flew by me at well over 200 mph. My best recommendation to improve it would be to call up Playground games, the guys who make the Forza Horizon games and ask nicely to use their engine, think about it, a map like the Crew 2 combined with the game engine from the Forza Horizon games, it would be the game that we had all hoped for in 2013. For the boats and planes, I don't have much to say about them, they did a good job on them, in fact the physics for flying planes are reminiscent of the Ace Combat games I would play as a kid.
The Graphics and Map
The Crew 2 also features the same graphics from the updated version of the original game but are slightly improved in several areas which I will be honest look amazing even as I’m playing this on my bog standard PS4 in 1080p, Sure I can see there are a few issues such as when I drive through fields, the crops are mostly see through and won't react to being driven over, but when you get a map well over twice the size of that in Forza Horizon 3 and Need for Speed Payback, it is a sacrifice you have to make or else i'm sure the game would be impossible to run on a modern game console, except there is one problem with the map, one big problem, being a sequel you need a whole new place, so where is it set, Europe, Africa, have we finaly got a open world racing game set in Japan? No, it's the same map, the exact same map, apart from a few small changes, the developers have gone all Saints Row 4 on us. Unfortunately it's not a accurate version of the United States, in fact it's more like a version created by a specialised group of map designers who flunked Geography. Take Alcatraz Island for example, its one of the works most famous prisons. In The Crew 2, it's a quaint little island with a few houses on it, or more noticeably, lets say your on a road trip for San Fran to Seattle stopping at all the major cities along the way, there’s Sacramento, and there’s, Seattle where’s Portland, turns out the developers have apart from the Cascades, completely failed to acknowledge the existence of Oregon.
"The developers have apart from the Cascades completely failed to acknowledge the existence of Oregon".
The Story
The problems don’t stop with the map. Remember the Wild Run DLC for the first game, well instead of making an in-depth yet cheesy story like the first one, they decided to expand the DLC into a full blown sequel, once again Saints Row 4 anyone. I won’t defend the first games story, it was terrible, but it took you on a great adventure across the USA. I always remember road tripping from Miami to Vegas on my first play through, the Crew 2 meanwhile puts every event so far away and then gives you the option to fast travel to them, even though you haven’t driven there and unlocked that part of the map before which makes the whole road trip concept useless.
The Crew 2’s story itself though, well if you thought the first one was lacklustre, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There are several story’s, one for each discipline which they call families because clearly the developers think all Gearheads are like Dominic Toretto, there are only three that really matter though, the rest are just screw around and do what you want, apart from the offroading one which I don't get, sometimes you're trying to be faster than this tree hugging hippie who loves off roading and drives an F150 Raptor and other times you're like best buddies. The main story is you trying to get popular on Live, a motorsports TV show, I think, they don't really explain that one, the Pro Racing, where your trying to dethrone this the uppity so and so who this he’s good because daddys got money. Last, the Street racing discipline, where you’re working with a dude in a wheelchair, whos name went completely by me so I simply refer to him as 'Wheels' and together you're trying to make your fellow racers go legit even though they're happy as they are now. with their street races that can sometimes involve jumping over buildings because realism.
The Cars
Finally a good part, credit where its due Ivory Tower have done an excellent job on the cars, they now actually sound like there real life counterparts and the customisation is on key. There's even a livery system very similar to that of the Forza games, meaning we can finally create our own custom paint jobs and cruise around America with them, this also meant that once I unlocked the rally cross discipline, I almost immediately bought a 1969 Dodge Charger and turned it into the General Lee and a Mazda RX7 which I can now drift as Keisuke Takahashi from Initial D. The photography mode makes a return from the previous game as well alongside a new replay mode with a free camera mode, meaning that although this isn't a full on director mode like in GTA 5, someone with talent could still create some pretty good videos ingame. However unfortunately there is still a bad part here, the price of the cars, although cars are stupidly expensive like they were in The Crew, (I still can't get over having to spend half a million bucks for a Mazda RX7), but they still aren't all that great, take this car for example, as its called in the game the 2018 Renault New Renault Megane RS, its 200k, who would spend 200 large on a hatchback. However if we look at the price in Crew Credits, which is the currency you get by dumping your own money in the game, its substantially cheaper. So it's very clear that Ubisoft are still having a 'Money makes the world go round' phase. However most game companies are like that right now so I won’t single them out, except I will, how could you Ubisoft, you used to make good games. Driver San Francisco, Assassins Creed Black Flag, remember those days. And don’t blame it on the developers because there the same guys who made TDU 2 which was awesome I don't care what anyone thinks.
"Who would spend 200 large on a hatchback. However if we look at the price in Crew Credits which is the currency you get by dumping your own money in the game its substantially cheaper".
Conclusion
So after all this is The Crew 2 a good game, in its own strange way, yeah it is, but its not a proper sequel. I would say it's more like The Crew 1.5 to be honest or a Forza Horizon for people who only own a PS4, mostly because of the map issues, if it was a fresh new map I’d be happy. I know they couldn’t really do a full scale replica of the States but we could have seen say an almost accurate Japan maybe, I’d love to see Japan in a racing game, we could visit the mountains like Haruna, Akagi, Myogi, have downhill races on them, and then head to the Tokyo Expressways and race at 200mph dodging traffic like we're in the Mid Night Club and for pro racing we could head down to Suzuka or Ebisu. Good Idea eh, if Ivory Tower are reading this article and thinking of a 3rd game, you can have that one on me. Would I spend full retail price on it though, no if I were you i'd wait until it gets cheaper in a few weeks and pick it up for about £20. Because It might not be the best racing game out there but it is certainly not the worst.
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Comments (4)
I am personally a bit of a fan of The Crew. Although I do agree with you on a lot of the things, whereas the map was too small (although it practically doubles once you figure out the glitch to drive under water) and the story line was more for a one season TV show. But because of some of the new customization features and new vehicles, I am looking forward to playing this sequel granted I am prepared for disappointments. But other than the obvious niggles, I'm glad you made this so I know a lot more about the game.
I can hear the dukes of hazzard music before I even open that last youtube post. Cheers Peter.
Great review very interesting
Nope