1. Gameplay
The Crew is one of those ideas that is great on paper but the execution falls far short. The game includes deeply ingrained cooperative elements, an arsenal of customizable vehicles with drastically different strengths and weaknesses, and a fully explorable open world that sets players in an expansive version of the entire United States. These should all be a recipe for an exciting and different type of racing game, but in the end I was simply left frustrated and wondering how the design team could have missed so many inherent flaws and issues. While I have plenty of problems with this game, the environment and locations are absolutely stunning. It’s worth playing the game just to see the difference between the northeast, the south, and the west coast. One time my friend and I went on a cannonball run from Miami to Los Angeles. It was amazing to see how the scenery changed from location to location. The differences were staggering, so much so that you could quickly and easily tell which location you were in, but the transitions were also very well done. It’s clear that the majority of development was put into making the environment and locations look and feel unique, a feat that was pulled off perfectly. Unfortunately I wish that time had been spent on making the gameplay more fun. The game hampers the player by requiring grinding. The player will have to repeat small challenges and tasks in order to unlock better parts. Each vehicle “spec” (something I’ll discuss in a moment) has to have a part unlocked. So if you want the best engine in the game for every spec, you’ll need to unlock it five times (once for each spec). This wouldn’t be so horrible if it weren’t for the fact that the developers expect you to repeat the races and tasks multiple times and crank up the difficulty full blast in order to keep you from getting gold. It’s frustrating when the AI opponents are constantly on your bumper, waiting for you to make even the tiniest mistake before overtaking you. It’s even more frustrating when you manage to beat all of your opponents only to discover you’ve only earned a bronze medal. You can win a race and get a bronze. Conversely, you can lose a race and technically get gold (although I’m not sure how that would be possible really). This is because the medals are awarded based on the amount of points that you earn in a match. Your position in a race is not included in the point system. Your race time and percentage in first place are the deciding factors for medals. This isn’t a huge deal except that you get much better parts for getting gold. Want gold? You need better parts first. And it’s not like the game is short to begin with. It took my friend and I a good hour or two to cross the entire map, and we took a pretty direct route. There are plenty of challenges and collectibles along the way, enough content for easily more than 60 hours of gameplay. But the mechanics of the game boost this to over 100 hours for those that aren’t running perfect races every single time. As I mentioned, the game includes a good number of different cars and trucks. Yes, I said trucks. You can drive a Ford F-150, and holy crap is it awesome to see. It may not handle very well and it doesn’t have very good speed, but it can go toe-to-toe with any other car. Unfortunately, I never bought any of these cars. Money was so scarce that I never got far above the first 1 million credits. Want a Lamborghini? Sorry, that’ll be 1.3 million credits. So even after beating the game I could buy one of the high-end cars. If you mess up and pick a car you don’t like? Too bad, that’s the car you get. So I stuck with the default car and a McLaren. Both were enough to get me through the end of the game and neither required any extra money. I was let down by the customization too. There are five different “specs”, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Circuit spec is designed for on-road racing only, Raid spec is designed for off-road racing, and Street spec is a perfect balance. Dirt spec and Perf spec? They’re the “inbetweeners” that are really only good until you unlock their more extreme counterparts. But the game forces you to use these specs for certain races. It isn’t a recommendation, it’s a requirement. Spend the past five hours unlocking the best parts for your Circuit spec and want to use it in this next street race? Too bad, you have to use the perf spec that you haven’t spent any time with. Other than for the cosmetics, why even bother with specs? Why not just let me get a bunch of different cars and customize each one to my own specifications? Why couldn’t I have an F-150 Dirt/Raid hybrid for offroad and a tricked out Lamborghini for my Circuit/Perf/Street races? If the spec doesn’t work, I’ll tweak it and learn from the experience. I could go on for another page or two with more details. In short, this game is far too rigid for its own good. Next time, forget “specs”, let the money flow freely, and stop making the AI so freakin difficult. But seriously, nice job with the environment.
If you can stomach the grind, this game has a ton to do. I clocked in around 22 hours to complete the campaign and there was still a lot left after that. There are plenty of cooperative and competitive races in the worldspace and over one hundred different skills to try. There are hidden cars to find, platinum medals to achieve, and tons of high-level multiplayer matches. If you like the game, there’s more than enough here to do.
I thought about giving up on this game so many times. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who completed about 75% of the game with me, but even that couldn’t really make this game entertaining. It was tolerable, but I’d much rather be playing the Need for Speed games. If you really need more details, just re-read the “Overall Fun” section. 2. Parental Notices
There’s only two times when violence becomes a factor in this game. The first is during any chase or target event. In the target events, the player will have to take down an enemy vehicle by ramming it repeatedly. In the chase events, the player will have to get away (sometimes from police, sometimes from gang members). In either of these cases, the violence is purely car-on-car action. The only time when people are actually seen injured is in a very early cutscene. In it, the main character’s brother (who is, at the time, leader of the 510s) is shot and killed by a gangster named “Shiv”. Blood is not a factor in the event. There are civilians in the worldspace that the player can technically hit, but these people don’t actually react to being hit. They just dive out of the way of the cars.
The women in the game tend to wear some very tight clothing that shows off their midsections and cleavage. This is only ever seen in a select few cutscenes though.
I was never able to completely determine if the “illegal contraband” the 510s move around the country included narcotics. Therefore, substances are not a factor in this game.
There are a number of races where gambling is mentioned. While the player can never actively bet on a particular race, a few of the characters will place bets on the outcomes of races. This usually involves betting somewhat ridiculous sums of money (or the pinkslip to a car). It’s not very common and it’s only mentioned in the conversations though. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for the game.
There are some locations in the worldspace that include crosses. This is the only visible reference to religion included in the game.
This is a game about illegal street racing, so anti-law does play a prominent presence, but it’s so strange sometimes that it’s difficult to pin down precisely. The player joins an illegal street racing gang that is known for smuggling illegal car parts and other goods from one end of the US to the other. There are police officers in the game, but they don’t seem to care about the player at all. The player can be driving 200 mph down the wrong side of a busy freeway and the cops will never make a move to bring him down. The only crime the cops do seem to care about is property damage (which they fight against with near-lethal force). Even if the player doesn’t try to attract the attention of the cops, there are a few missions that will require the player to evade police.
While this game maintains an always online presence, the multiplayer portions of this game focus almost entirely on semi-competitive cooperative gameplay. By this, I mean that players are put into races together against AI opponents. If one of the human players wins the race, all of the human players are treated as though they won the race. They don’t all get the same reward (a serious issue to the viability of the cooperative elements), but the design makes it so that players treat each other with civility. There are competitive elements as well, but these are minor end-game elements that only cater to the most dedicated players.
Extreme sports is by far the most obvious factor in this game. Considering the game is about street racing, extreme sports should sort of be a given. The player will race at speeds up to and over 200 mph across freeways, highways, and city streets. Offroading is included too. It’s easier in the cars designed for offroading, but it’s technically possible to do in any vehicle. In some places the extreme nature of the sports goes a bit over the top. For example, there’s a place where the player can drive down a ski-jump and get some pretty insane air.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
There are no additional factors in this game.
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