[Review] The Crew 2

[Gadgetguy]

*A Uplay key was provided by the developer to review this game.*

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Computer Specs
Windows 10, AMD FX-8350, 2x SLI GTX 660 TI, 16 GB RAM

Rating
7/10

Pros:
Tons of content variety
Amazing Graphics
Fun, Arcade Racing Gameplay

Pro & Con:
Lots of varied content, none of which is especially deep
Odd loot system

Cons:
No vehicle damage
Hard to tell what can be crashed through and what will immediately stop a car
Story is pretty much non-existent

Overview

“The Crew 2” is a fun but flawed arcade racer. There is a ton of different content available, but the fact that there aren’t a lot of the race types means that I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the one race type that became my favorite. The player is instead forced to play a lot of other content to gain more “Experience” in the form of followers. This isn’t an especially satisfying leveling system and could definitely have been improved. It feels too much like an arbitrary gate to more content instead of showing the progress I have made as a racer. The graphics and sound design are great, human models aren’t as high quality as the cars though. Performance is fine but this game is gpu heavy and I would recommend this to someone who has a rig with a strong gpu.

Game Breakdown

Gameplay:

Controls and Car Types
This game is an arcade racer, so don’t expect a realistic driving experience. A wheel can be added in the options menu if a player has one. Cars and other vehicles will generally control the same despite the fact that they are designed with different terrain in mind. Speed racing cars have a huge amount of speed when going straight, but they have difficulty taking tight turns and they will require the player to use the handbrake often. Drifting cars take turns way better but if a player turns too far one way they will lose grip and start to drift. Boats drive just like a car, but the player must tilt the left stick backwards to get the most speed. These simple controls are excellent for someone like myself who enjoys an arcade style racer, but I think that someone who wants lots of differences in controls will be disappointed. Something that did disappoint me is the fact that cars aren’t destructible.

Car and Environment Destructibility
Cars in this game are static entities that don’t get damaged. While there will be some cosmetic damage such as a scrape of paint, running straight into a house at over 200 miles per hour should leave more than just a dent in my car. Since this is an arcade racer, it can be overlooked, but I would have certainly enjoyed more consistency when it comes to environment destructibility. The player is able to take out light posts, power lines, and many fences. Trees and certain other fences aren’t destructible. This makes it difficult to find the shortcuts scattered around each race track because I don’t know what I can drive through. After crashing into a building, sometimes the game will reset the player while others will stop the player, requiring the player to back up and turn around. They could also reset their race. There is quite a bit of varied content though, which I found refreshing.

Disciplines
Disciplines is the name given to the many different motor sports available in the game. The three main vehicle types in the game are cars, planes, and boats. The events available to them also varies depending upon the vehicle. Cars have events like drifting, street racing, rally racing, and hyper car. Hyper car is an interesting event that focuses on the strongest cars. Boats mainly only have races. Planes can have races, but they also have aerobatics. This event has the player performing a variety of tricks to score points. Planes quickly became one of my favorite disciplines. There are still some vehicles that aren’t as prominently advertised by the games. Motorcycle and motocross racing are both excellent events to play. Motorcycles are much more responsive than cars and motocross racing allows players to make huge jumps. Official events aren’t the only content to enjoy.

Challenges
Scattered throughout the world are various challenges. If a player is looking at the map, they will need to zoom in a little bit to see them. These short events will often be situated around city centers and are unique in the fact that many different vehicles can be used to complete the challenge instead of focusing on a certain class of vehicle like disciplines. These challenges can range anywhere from slaloms where a player must past either left or right around multiple posts successfully to speed challenges that require a player to beat a certain speed. These challenges also have ghosts of npcs and other players to beat. There are also areas around the world that have challenges that players can beat and hold such as top speed. These are world records. Some of my favorite content that also mixes many vehicles are multi-discipline races.

Multi-Discipline Races
These are special races that include multiple vehicles and mind boggling graphical effects. Multi-discipline races can have a player racing as a car, then a plane, and finally a boat, all within the same race. These transitions are smooth and don’t detract from a player’s progress if they are in first. The transition usually occurs by hitting a jump. Mid jump, the player’s vehicle will change to the one that is part of the next event. If then setting for the next part of the event is too far away, the world will warp and bend into a large ring until the player can see where they will head next and then they will teleport there. It is an amazing graphic that I really enjoyed seeing, though it didn’t have much use, similar to the follower system.

Followers Leveling System
This is a leveling system that coincides with the story snippets that tell the player about how they were once a newbie and they are trying to become the biggest sports star in the entirety of North America. Unlike other leveling systems though, I didn’t really feel like a player was truly gaining much from leveling up. There aren’t any perks or skill points to allocate, the player is just allowed to play more content. This system is really important too, since it determines what part of the game the player is able play, but it unfortunately feels quite useless. This system is one of the game’s greatest flaws. Something that isn’t useless is the loot.

Loot
After each race the player will be given a pile of loot. These are parts for vehicles so their performance can be improved. Each vehicle has about six parts in it that can be customized. Parts will increase stats such as top speed and distance required to stop through braking. Loot coincides with the levels of races and their performance ratings. Races that have extremely high performance ratings will contain NPC cars with extremely good loot parts, so the player will have to use pure skill if they are going to beat them. If a player gains some more parts through easier races and meets the recommended level, the race will become easier overall. Loot also comes with special effects once the player gets some rare blue pieces of equipment. One effect that I thought was useful was an increase in the effectiveness of drafting behind other cars. A player doesn’t have to play the entire game solo though.

Multiplayer
Some races allow a player to invite a companion. The host can invite another player to their crew and when they start a multiplayer race, the crew will all join the race. This allows players to have a bit of fun together. From my experience, the net code worked well and I didn’t have any noticeable dips in performance or extreme lag.

In-game Purchases
This game has in game currency in the form of “Crew Credits”. These allow the player to buy vehicles way faster, but the player was not able to buy loot with the currency. All of the cars in game are accessible and I had no issue affording them because the large amount of content is always throwing tons of in-game currency at the player to buy new cars.

Overall:
Overall, this is a fun arcade racer with a ton of content. I would recommend this to someone who is looking for a racer with a ton of variety to refresh them.


Story:
The stories of the disciplines themselves are fine and are a nice backstory as to why such a sport exists in the world. The rival stories are where the story has issues. Rivals don’t interact with the player much, and they are too one-dimensional. Their aspirations are either to be the best and beat the player or to beat the player because they disagree with the player’s ideology. Neither of these make the rivals anything more than NPCs with a name.

Sound:
The car sound design is excellent. Cars sound satisfyingly powerful, and revving an engine has never sounded better. It is enjoyable to race constantly so that a player can hear the engine of any of their cars. The voice acting is done well and the performances are convincing. I personally enjoyed the street racing manager’s performance as he really made me feel like I was a part of a world he wanted to change.

Graphics:
The graphics use a realistic style. The graphics for all of the vehicles look excellent. The light plays off of the metallic paint and the day/night cycle allows a player to see how their car will look under various degrees of lighting. The graphics for the human models isn’t quite as high quality as the cars. This makes the cutscenes a bit strange to watch because the cars look absolutely amazing next to the less detailed human models. It is likely that the human models are less detailed because they aren’t used as often. The environments look great and I liked looking at the landmarks that I passed by. The map that is played on is a compressed version of the US. All of the landmarks that Americans are used to will not be available sadly.

Performance:
The performance is just fine. As long as “The Crew 2” is my only game open I had no issue getting 60 FPS. The game is especially GPU heavy, so make sure that your graphics card can handle this game before you purchase it. I didn’t notice any bugs or issues with the gameplay or the crazy world bending graphical effects that occur during multi discipline races.

[Gadgetguy]

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