"The Crew" is supposed to be advertised as this revolutionary "Always-Online" MMO car racing game that many people have been sitting around for years to be made. It delivers an exciting experience when read on paper, however when actually excuted makes for a sloppily made game which show obvious signs of outdated programming, and included with it an even archaic attempt to jump into the racing genre a few years too late.

The ideas presented for this game are fantastic, an always online MMO where people can join crews and race against each other representing their gang, crew or team. (Basically whatever you want to call it.)

The main problem lies in the focus that the game progression system, driving mechanics, progression system and general programming are flawed in so many ways it makes me wonder what year they drafted this game in before they took it to the crafting table.

Design wise, the game's success is at the core of it's pitch. The "Always online racing MMO car game that thrives while you are offline" with a "Progression system of great detail and complete customization". The game focuses hard on trying to give users a feeling that the world moves on without them, and you can visibly see this in (what should be) other players actively driving around the map going objective to mission points while in active traffic along side you.

Theme wise, it catches the feel of Detroit decent well, but sadly seems more or less like a rip-off towards other racing games themes that tend to stick with the south-central LA area and Detroit (Generic East Coast Theme.) There's no variation in location until the later portion of the game, and for the most part you will only see major shift changes in the locale when you move away from Detroit when you move across central USA, the dirty south, the pacific northwest, and the southwest.

The map's design is heavily (and for the most part completely) based on the idea of the whole USA as a driveable entity. It's lacking point however is that there's little to no detail outside the area of Detroit, and similarly detailed areas tend to stay grouped up within each other leaving huge spans of empty road between the different regions. (Example : Central US, Between Detroit and Florida).

Progression wise, the game tries to give users a sense of calm as progression unlocks aren't solely limited to "street races". Other goals lead to stunt jumps, checkpoint races and time attack objectives. These types of objectives spark the inner racer within all of us who prefer to beat personal times, which is great for some users. However, because progression is done with small objectives in mind to "Level" up your car to qualify for specific races, you'll spend more time driving frustratingly difficult time attack, check point, and stunt jump objectives due to the lack of responsive and "actually useable" car handling.

Car handling is heavily tied to progression as the cars at early levels drive akin to that of an ice cube sliding on the ground. The cars when driven at their base level tend to be very unresponsive at the least, and you're more then likely to spin out regardless of whether or not you slow down at a corner properly or use the emergency breaks. Early game progression unlocks help ease this problem, however like I said before, you will spend a huge amount of time on small unlocks to truly level up your car to it's max potential. The pitch for this is that higher level cars are more responsive, and thus drive better.

Mechanically speaking, the game runs well for what we've seen of it's previously noted issues. (Previously in beta, the animations were directly tied to the frames of the game data). Now that full 60fps support is "Unlocked" in the options, the lack of speed that users claimed to have in the beta is completely gone. You now have a complete sense of speed when you throttle your car above 100mph. *(160kh/m for you other homies out there.)* However, optimization in this game and it's calculation of physics and other players tend to take the game's performance below the 60fps region when in heavy traffic, but never drops below 30fps. *Hint hint* None the less, setting the graphics down in this game will tend to ease the wrath of traffic, of the obvious drawback of image quality. In addition, there are still flaws with the animation which obviously give away the fact the game was from the start developed with 30fps in mind. (Which isn't entirely a big problem, however when you play games like this which rely on user input, the resonsiveness and feeling the user gets while playing is the biggest selling point in how the game performs on a face level.)

**Plot**
I'm not going to say much, so far from what I've experienced the story seems akin to most standard street race movies.
You are the brother to the leader of an infamous street racing gang called the 510. One day he needs you to follow him to a meet up, brother is shot and you get framed as the murderer. Fast forward five years, in an effort to clear your name and find your brothers killer, and the crooked cop who framed you for the murder, you proceed to work for the FBI to rise the ranks and bring justice back to the streets.

Simply put, not exactly the best writing, character development for the lead character is non-existent and the progression of the prologue goes by so fast I honestly thought there was another beginning section I had skipped beforehand.

Multiplayer wise, you're more likely to have more fun playing with the CPU then you do with actual players. Missions introduced throughout the game have two options for execution. You have the ability for solo gameplay which allows you to compete against computer opponents and progress through the game. (The only real MMO online element begins here.)

For actual multiplayer, lobbies are formed via missions when you select the option to "race online" for that specific mission. Users are then paged, and/or formed based on who are currently doing the mission and are gathered from that method. Users past that area, or users who have not progressed to that specific portion of the game typically do not respond or bother to play online due to the lack of users because of inconsistency with progression. Half the time you will spend it again, with the CPU racing offline. With a majority of your online experiences happening at the higher levels where non-mandatory race missions are more freqent and people will be fully utilizing the "Crew" feature more.

Overall, the game is a fun chuckle. It has it's flaws, and could be a great game with fixes. Due to it's limited playability however, and it's very difficult progression system combined with a linearly designed multiplayer it falls short on the expectations created for it at it's announcement. Did Ubisoft deliver what they promised? Partly.

The game however is far from complete. For this, I have to give it a thumbs down. A game in general should be well fleshed out especially past it's multiple alpha, and beta stages which had the ability for vast numbers of user input. At this point in time it should be moderately well developed enough to not show this many flaws.

I've already spent my money, and I'll continue to play it to see how development progresses. At this current point and stage from it's inital release from CORE features that were already planned for the game and is executed in it's fullest, there's no telling what can happen.

tl;dr it's a rushed poor mans version of need for speed before EA became return of the sith

"The Crew" is supposed to be advertised as this revolutionary "Always-Online" MMO car racing game that many people have been sitting around for years to be made. It delivers an exciting experience when read on paper, however when actually excuted makes for a sloppily made game which show obvious signs of outdated programming, and included with it an even archaic attempt to jump into the racing genre a few years too late. The ideas presented for this game are fantastic, an always online MMO where people can join crews and race against each other representing their gang, crew or team. (Basically whatever you want to call it.) The main problem lies in the focus that the game progression system, driving mechanics, progression system and general programming are flawed in so many ways it makes me wonder what year they drafted this game in before they took it to the crafting table. Design wise, the game's success is at the core of it's pitch. The "Always online racing MMO car game that thrives while you are offline" with a "Progression system of great detail and complete customization". The game focuses hard on trying to give users a feeling that the world moves on without them, and you can visibly see this in (what should be) other players actively driving around the map going objective to mission points while in active traffic along side you. Theme wise, it catches the feel of Detroit decent well, but sadly seems more or less like a rip-off towards other racing games themes that tend to stick with the south-central LA area and Detroit (Generic East Coast Theme.) There's no variation in location until the later portion of the game, and for the most part you will only see major shift changes in the locale when you move away from Detroit when you move across central USA, the dirty south, the pacific northwest, and the southwest. The map's design is heavily (and for the most part completely) based on the idea of the whole USA as a driveable entity. It's lacking point however is that there's little to no detail outside the area of Detroit, and similarly detailed areas tend to stay grouped up within each other leaving huge spans of empty road between the different regions. (Example : Central US, Between Detroit and Florida). Progression wise, the game tries to give users a sense of calm as progression unlocks aren't solely limited to "street races". Other goals lead to stunt jumps, checkpoint races and time attack objectives. These types of objectives spark the inner racer within all of us who prefer to beat personal times, which is great for some users. However, because progression is done with small objectives in mind to "Level" up your car to qualify for specific races, you'll spend more time driving frustratingly difficult time attack, check point, and stunt jump objectives due to the lack of responsive and "actually useable" car handling. Car handling is heavily tied to progression as the cars at early levels drive akin to that of an ice cube sliding on the ground. The cars when driven at their base level tend to be very unresponsive at the least, and you're more then likely to spin out regardless of whether or not you slow down at a corner properly or use the emergency breaks. Early game progression unlocks help ease this problem, however like I said before, you will spend a huge amount of time on small unlocks to truly level up your car to it's max potential. The pitch for this is that higher level cars are more responsive, and thus drive better. Mechanically speaking, the game runs well for what we've seen of it's previously noted issues. (Previously in beta, the animations were directly tied to the frames of the game data). Now that full 60fps support is "Unlocked" in the options, the lack of speed that users claimed to have in the beta is completely gone. You now have a complete sense of speed when you throttle your car above 100mph. *(160kh/m for you other homies out there.)* However, optimization in this game and it's calculation of physics and other players tend to take the game's performance below the 60fps region when in heavy traffic, but never drops below 30fps. *Hint hint* None the less, setting the graphics down in this game will tend to ease the wrath of traffic, of the obvious drawback of image quality. In addition, there are still flaws with the animation which obviously give away the fact the game was from the start developed with 30fps in mind. (Which isn't entirely a big problem, however when you play games like this which rely on user input, the resonsiveness and feeling the user gets while playing is the biggest selling point in how the game performs on a face level.) **Plot** I'm not going to say much, so far from what I've experienced the story seems akin to most standard street race movies. You are the brother to the leader of an infamous street racing gang called the 510. One day he needs you to follow him to a meet up, brother is shot and you get framed as the murderer. Fast forward five years, in an effort to clear your name and find your brothers killer, and the crooked cop who framed you for the murder, you proceed to work for the FBI to rise the ranks and bring justice back to the streets. Simply put, not exactly the best writing, character development for the lead character is non-existent and the progression of the prologue goes by so fast I honestly thought there was another beginning section I had skipped beforehand. Multiplayer wise, you're more likely to have more fun playing with the CPU then you do with actual players. Missions introduced throughout the game have two options for execution. You have the ability for solo gameplay which allows you to compete against computer opponents and progress through the game. (The only real MMO online element begins here.) For actual multiplayer, lobbies are formed via missions when you select the option to "race online" for that specific mission. Users are then paged, and/or formed based on who are currently doing the mission and are gathered from that method. Users past that area, or users who have not progressed to that specific portion of the game typically do not respond or bother to play online due to the lack of users because of inconsistency with progression. Half the time you will spend it again, with the CPU racing offline. With a majority of your online experiences happening at the higher levels where non-mandatory race missions are more freqent and people will be fully utilizing the "Crew" feature more. Overall, the game is a fun chuckle. It has it's flaws, and could be a great game with fixes. Due to it's limited playability however, and it's very difficult progression system combined with a linearly designed multiplayer it falls short on the expectations created for it at it's announcement. Did Ubisoft deliver what they promised? Partly. The game however is far from complete. For this, I have to give it a thumbs down. A game in general should be well fleshed out especially past it's multiple alpha, and beta stages which had the ability for vast numbers of user input. At this point in time it should be moderately well developed enough to not show this many flaws. I've already spent my money, and I'll continue to play it to see how development progresses. At this current point and stage from it's inital release from CORE features that were already planned for the game and is executed in it's fullest, there's no telling what can happen. tl;dr it's a rushed poor mans version of need for speed before EA became return of the sith