Preview: The Crew

Recently, Stevivor had the chance to check out The Crew at a preview event at Ubisoft’s Sydney-based offices.

On paper, The Crew is shaping up to be a true next-generation racing title. It boasts a gigantic map — the size of North America to be exact — plus a wide selection of vehicles to choose from. There’s also a solid degree of customization to make your vehicle unique. As far as I’m concerned it offers everything you’d want in a racer. Getting into the game, the best way to describe The Crew is to compare it with Driver: San Francisco, and with Ubisoft Reflections behind it, its influences are clear.

One of the problems I had with Driver: SF was that the vehicles seemed to lack depth; it appears The Crew suffers from a similar problem. By this I don’t mean the cars feel weightless, and nor do they feel heavy, but it just seemed like the handling lacked a certain something. As I approached some corners a little too late, slammed the brakes and managed to make my way around, it was almost like a bit of that satisfaction was missing. Even when I finished the event there was no feeling of ‘yes I did it’, almost as if there was no risk so in-turn there was no reward.

The game features five different car specs, and these range from street (standard) to circuit, dirt to raid and then perf (short for ‘performance’). Each spec changes the look of your vehicle considerably which you can then further personalize with both interior and exterior modifications. Handling-wise, apart from some of the perf vehicles (which seemed to fishtail unnecessarily at high speeds making for sometimes uncontrollable racing), there was little that differentiated street from circuit or dirt from raid. This in-turn makes for pretty much pick-up-and-play mechanics, but I worry that it won’t be enough to keep racing fans engaged for the long haul.

Further to the similarities in handling, another aspect that The Crew gathers from Driver SF is its story, or more specifically, the cheesiness in its story. The first mission involved me driving my Nissan 370Z to the airport to deliver a package, and each time I’d hit another vehicle I’d get the same few lines from this unknown person in a disguised voice about how expensive this unknown package was. In further time trials I’d get other characters from within my team make remarks like “this is not the impression you want to make” whenever I was trailing behind. It just made for a lame story experience which ruined the mood somewhat.

Credit where credit is due however, The Crew does shine in its multiplayer, where inviting others to join your team and initiating missions together was a piece of cake. While the campaign makes for some less than engaging storytelling, racing in up to a group of four to win a race or complete a task does add a nice element to the game and it’s here that the complaints with the physics become essentially irrelevant. When working together only one player needs to win the event for the rest to pass, so comradery plays a great part all while still maintaining that sense of competition amongst one another to see who’s the best. This can be taken even further by having 4 on 4 races where the combined scores of each crew determines who wins.

The final point to make about The Crew is that it looks absolutely gorgeous. Interior views weren’t necessarily spectacular and lacked some detail in the instruments, but the exteriors of the vehicles were great and the cities themselves looked fantastic too. In a particular race to Las Vegas I came over a hill to see the bright lights of Las Vegas’ skyline for the first time and it was a sight to behold.

With so many other racing titles coming out soon I’m not too sure how The Crew will fare in comparison. It looks nice but plays average, and while it’s a great social game, I’m yet to be convinced that it’s a great racing one.