A Honest review of this game.

[ustaritz]

I can't post a review in the Steam Review section because my game is activated on uPlay only.
But i still wanted to tell my opinion and maybe have a debate between gentlemen.

This game was a great letdown, but still a satisfying purchase. ( For the 35€ i paid for it i'm okay. I'd feel a little bitter if i had paid a full price, especially since i was planning on getting the expansions etc. )

I'm gonna try to organize this a little



- What i was hoping for.

One of my favorite racing games, at least the one i had spent more time on. Is probably Forza 4, but the second one is most likely Test Drive Unlimited 1. I bled that game. And still today, sometimes i go back to this game for a cruise. The Crew wasn't my top upcoming game of 2014 but i was still waiting for it hoping it would be as satisfying as TDU.
What made TDU so good ? ( and much better than TDU2 as well )
TDU was a game without fuss. No rubbish cutscenes. No races disguised as "missions". No bad voice acting. It was a straight forward driving game. Tons and tons of races, enough to cover nearly the whole road network of the Island. With the added secondary events like Deliveries with timer and without etc. All this, making you money in a balanced way. Allowing to gradually build a big collection. Without it being too easy, or too hard. Just the right progression.
there was many many interesting cars. Some classics, some luxury saloons to cruise with, some hatchbacks, entry level sportscars, up to the hypercars. Just enough for every mood and taste.
It lacked customisation. But it wasn't really a top feature of the game.

This was what i hoped for. A driving game. For anyone who enjoys driving. Alone or with friends. The Crew was advertised as a game featuring customization. I hoped it would allow me to create nice paintjobs like in Forza. Making my own custom cars with my style. Setting up cars the best way, tuning camber, gears, diffs and dampers to have the best drifters and racers possible.


What i liked about what we got with The Crew.


There's no argument here. The map is immense. Generally good looking. Coherent. It's not overwhelmingly big. The countryside isn't boring at all. The cities are rather detailed. Varied, and the urban design is mostly good. An entirely satisfying map. It only has some gltiches here and there, like the invisible pothole in NYC tunnel between Manhattan and NJ. And some sharp edges in the geography in some places that can be a problem in Raid.

It's graphicaly nice. And runs very well on my PC, which is a W7 64bit. Running on a i5 4460 3.2. 8Gb RAM and a EVGA GTX 750Ti 2G.


What i disliked about this game.


( It gets interesting here )

1 ) Nobody needs a story.

This is a racing game. And there's nothing more stupid and annoying than a storyline in a racing game. Nobody needs it. It's irrelevant. And generally cheesy ( TDU 2 ) or just generic and uninteresting. It gets in the way of the actual RACING. For some reason Alex seems to be unable to drive in a civilised manner at all points of the game. When racing i agree he should put his foot down of course. But Alex doesn't need to drive like a maniac, doing burnouts, drifting, and running over pedestrians when he's coming out of his garage or just chilling in a cutscene. This just looks ridiculous and awkward. Alex must be living his whole life a 180mph and it doesn't seem to bother the cops. Or himself for that matter. I'd probably be sick all the time.

2 ) The Progression

So the whole racing in this game, is the "missions". Missions that are just a disguise for either a race, a cop run, a smashing run, or a timed course. Sure. But instead of having say... 200 or 300 events throughout the game like in TDU. You get maybe 6 or 7 events in each region before moving to the next.
All the rest is the skill tests. Skill tests are pretty cool. But races are just better and more challenging. My point is. There's not enough actual racing and too much faffing around the map doing skill tests and running away from the cops.
None of the events award any kind of decent money. the only events that do, take between 30 minutes and 1 or 2 hours maybe more. ( Faction missions you guessed it ). And these missions, are of limited number.
So how do you buy cars you like ? You use Crew credits. you either pay for it via microtransaction, or use the 100k you get at the beggining. Enough for one single mid range perf car. or a couple rubbish cars. Point is, you won't have enough when cars get really expensive.
Bucks. Only factions missions award decent bucks. So you're gonna be farming maybe two or three missions for hours to build your fortune. Very interesting....

This is the only point of having money. Buying cars. What about upgrades ?

3 ) The Upgrades and customisation

Customisation in this game is limited. i'd go as far as saying it's "very poor"

There's a good bunch of unbranded rims. That's good.
You can't set the size of the rim ? sure okay...
For each of the very little number of cars in the game. There's maybe 5-8 different bumpers, rear an front, same for fenders, spoilers, and skirts. No headlights, no extra air intakes...
To make it short not much to do. Most of the changes to the cars and through specs. which doesn't give you any kind of customising choice. Some specs don't even have custom parts to put on. Like Raid. ( i'm not sure but i haven't seen any part to buy for my Silverado ).

Reguarding the performance. This was probably the biggest letdown here.
There's no performance customisation. The biggest part of customisign a car. Is visuals ( as i said earlier, not much, and not even a paintjob editor ) and the other big part is performance tuning. It's about working and earning money to buy parts, a big turbo, camshaft, engine block, gearboxes whatever. you buy this, you see your stats go up, and enjoy your new, faster ride. It rewarding work. It's getting the rights parts, and tune them up, to get the best out of it. Making your car your own. ( Remember NFSU2 ? ) In the crew. there's none of that.
You do skill tests and missions, to earn a "Suspension, level bla bla, with a bonus of bla bla..."

So you essentially have no choice of what part you get. You spend no money for it. You have no idea what impact it has. Apart from a random number called car level. But you have no idea how much BHP it gives, how much it enhances handling and whatnot. and for some reason every part gives a random bonus to some other stat that has sometimes nothing to do with the part itself. Adding unaccoutable randomness to this system. that is already unclear. Performance in The Crew is about farming all skill tests with a car, getting as much gold medals. And then having a car that feels a little better. Seems like a good gameplay idea at first. But it's not. It doesn't make the game more balanced. And it doesn't feel rewarding in any way. It's boring.
On top of not being able to really tune the visual look of my car, this performance system makes my car feel even less like my own. How can you enjoy a racing game when you can't feel like driving your own car. And how can you call that customisation ?

4 ) The Driving model

It's useless.

I'm okay with arcady driving. I started racing games as a kid playing Burnout. NFSU, ToCA Race Driver ( the former GRID ), and also semi-sim games like GT3 GT4, and later Forza 2 to 4. Inc. Horizon. My last purchase being Assetto Corsa. Being one of the most accurate driving model in sim games right now. I'm more into sim physics. It's hard to master. But it's rewarding, and more enjoyable to my mind. Allows you drift like pro if you can do it. Makes everything more interesting. And makes driving truly skill based.
I wasn't expecting a sim or even a semi sim handling in The Crew. But what i got here is just bad. It's not even enjoyable like NFS where you can just go fast and "drift" all the time for fun.
It's heavy, and it's super sloppy and inaccurate. I literally find it easier to run a full lap around the Nordschleife, in a Ferrari with no traction control or ESP in a sim game than to drive properly in this game. The camera doesn't help being accurate either.

The non sim players might find it good. I'm okay with that opinion. I'm a sim player and therefore kind of picky with physics. But this driving model doesn't even let you drift. If The Crew had a decent driving model. All the drifters, drag racers of the Forza, GT community, could have joined the Crew to race and drift on this awesoem map. But we can't. Drifting in this game is out of the question. Without custom perfofmance and tuning, Drag races are irrelevant. It's a massive playground for fans of street racing that is wasted. Forza Horizon does that better. But it's smaller. Xbox Exclusive and doesn't retain the tuning and precise physics ofr the Original forza. So right now, there's no open world game for the street racing fans and motorheads. Like me, who have been waiting forever for a game that would give a enjoyable, skill based, rewarding, street racing experience. Something like a game that lets you fine tune your GTR, to make it a RWD, twin turbo 1800bhp monster, make it run drag races on the highway at night. And drift in the mountans with a Silvia, in a fancy paintjob. Meet random people in a car park during the day, and show off your custom paintjob, on your Lexus with stupid camber... that kind of thing. A mix between Forza 4, Tokyo Highway challenge, Midnight club, NFSU2, and This.

[Frost]

nice review,was going to buy this but i guess i'll just buy elite:dangerous

[ustaritz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Frost:

nice review,was going to buy this but i guess i'll just buy elite:dangerous

Don't take this as a " this game is all bad "
I'm kind of hipster racer. If you're not so interested in going in depth with the performance and visuals, and are not looking for a realistic driving experience. It's still very good. With a pretty good life expectancy. But i know Elite, and i'm sure it's a better choice haha. Unfair competition.

[Fat Boo Bear]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Nicolae Ceaușescu:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Frost:

nice review,was going to buy this but i guess i'll just buy elite:dangerous

Don't take this as a " this game is all bad "
I'm kind of hipster racer. If you're not so interested in going in depth with the performance and visuals, and are not looking for a realistic driving experience. It's still very good. With a pretty good life expectancy. But i know Elite, and i'm sure it's a better choice haha. Unfair competition.

youre a hipster. but yeah im with you on this one. im gonna get elite as well. where can i find elite on steam?

[SirKan]

so TDU is better then this? I'm looking for a good racing game street style but that has engine performance customization.

[whofarted]

Nice review.

[Barricade]

Doesn't need a story? LMAO. If there was no story, there'd be heaps of threads wondering why they didn't put some kind of story line in. I for one am glad they implemented it, or else the game would've gotten stale real quick doing nothing but broken pvp and skill challenges...

[Dog_in_Car]

did you turn the assists off? I have no problem sliding around as much as I want. I love assetto corsa but sometimes its nice to play something not quite as serious.

[ustaritz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af nsdewitt:

did you turn the assists off? I have no problem sliding around as much as I want. I love assetto corsa but sometimes its nice to play something not quite as serious.

Yes i'm in "Hardcore". But there's some TCS and ESP enabled even in hardcore. Would be a whole different if it was really all off

[Jalo]

i bought the game blindly only to find that the game needs a key, how long will i have to wait

[bothersome]

See that's my opinion on these games too.

People want to play them with xbox pad controllers and expect expert performance out of the game. Get a friggin force feedback wheel for God's sake. Play the game as it's meant to be played and you'll get the full experience of it.

Turn off all that assist driving and you might actually have a decent game experience.

[76561198157166631]

good game

[Garrett Aelito]

Oprindeligt skrevet af bothersome:

See that's my opinion on these games too.

People want to play them with xbox pad controllers and expect expert performance out of the game. Get a friggin force feedback wheel for God's sake. Play the game as it's meant to be played and you'll get the full experience of it.

Turn off all that assist driving and you might actually have a decent game experience.

Pfft, if you aren't spending at least $4,000 USD* every month on your Force-Feedback™ Super-Precision™ Unbelievably-Awesome™ Super-Ultra™ Omega-Giga™ Ultra-HD™ Racing Video Game Simulation Chair™ ® just to START with as a thing to add thosands of whisting bells and dinging whistles to, then you're just a filthy casual playing with a toy for nUbz! I mean seriously, GOML, amirite? YOLO! #yolo #hashtag #goml #foodbabyarm #gomlgate #nubz #thishashtaghaswaytoomanycharacterstorealisticallybeusedontwiiterinreallifeforthemostpartlolz #realgamerzzz #vidyagames !

*($4,000 USD is approximately 3,204.49 Euros, 218,964 Rubles, 470,198 Yen, or 60,400 Nakfa)

[/noparse][/noparse]Yes, I did have fun typing this out. Yes, I do say all of this in good fun. Yes, this comment does look like nonsense in plain-text bafore Steam parses it. Yes, that is intentional. No, there is no advantage to making comments this unnecessarily-complex. Yes, it is mildly amusing nonetheless.

[hrolkrug]

drifting works just fine if you turn off all driving assists

[bothersome]

I agree with what Camron Bro said above.

But seriously, if your rig isn't measured in kilowatts, you're just playing on weak hardware.

[ustaritz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af bothersome:

I agree with what Camron Bro said above.

But seriously, if your rig isn't measured in kilowatts, you're just playing on weak hardware.

Yeah. It's like Binding of Isaac you need at least two chinese bitcoin mining warehouses to play it decently lol