2441: That Racing Game I Always Wanted

The more I play The Crew, the more I like it, and the more I’m surprised that it only got middling reviews which, consequently, led to it being one of Ubisoft’s lesser-known, less popular games. (Actually, I’m not at all surprised about middling reviews, because we all know how (in)accurate reviews are these days, and how meaningless scores are.)

Fortunately, Ubisoft doesn’t appear to have taken these middling reviews to heart and neither does the player base, as there always seem to be plenty of people online when I boot up The Crew, and its second expansion Calling All Units is due to hit in November.

The Crew is pretty much everything I’ve come to want from a racing game over the years, and very few games have successfully provided for these wants so comprehensively. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that The Crew is probably the only racing game I’ve played that ticks pretty much every single one of the boxes in my imaginary checklist for my “dream racing game”.

First up, let’s talk about the open world. I’ve been fascinated with the idea of open world driving games ever since I played Test Drive II on the Atari ST and wished that I could go off the predefined routes to explore. I never got to play it, but I was particularly enamoured with the idea of Test Drive III’s move to open environments, as primitive as they were with their early untextured 3D polygons. Then open world racing games actually became a thing with the Midnight Club and Need for Speed Underground series — the latter of which set in place a formula for the series that it hasn’t deviated from ever since.

The Club takes the concept of an open world racing game to an extreme level, offering a world that represents the entire United States. Unlike a full-on simulator, this depiction isn’t entirely true to life and is scaled down somewhat — you can drive from Key West to Miami in two minutes — but this makes sense for the purposes of fun. Real driving isn’t fun, largely because it still takes a very long time to get anywhere; video game driving, however, needs to be fun to keep people interested, and to this end The Crew provides an open world that is manageable in size but packed with enough hidden bits and pieces to make it well worth exploring rather than just proceeding from mission to mission.

The best thing about The Crew’s use of a miniaturised United States as its open-world setting is that it allows for a hugely diverse landscape. There’s the wasteland of Arizona. There’s the swampland of the Deep South. There’s the twisting, turning, tree-clad mountain roads of the central mountain states. And, of course, there are the various cities, each of which have numerous landmarks present and correct. It’s a delight to drive around and a pleasure to explore in search of data uplinks and hidden car parts.

So open-world driving is one box that The Crew ticks. What else do I want from a racing game? Well, as much as I’ve tried to enjoy the Gran Turismos and Forza Motorsports over the years, I came to the conclusion a while back that I’m just not a driving sim kinda guy. My taste lies with arcade-style handling a la Ridge Racer, in which it’s possible to slide sideways around a corner with just a hint of a tap on the brakes.

The Crew very much delivers in this department, and with some variety, too. Each car you get in the game can be specced out with different “classes” ranging from full stock (the basic model, no modifications) through “street” (tuned for street racing), “dirt” (more suited for rallying), “perf” (high-performance, particularly suited for street and circuit racing) and “raid” (super-strong and eminently suitable for complete offroading). Each of these specs feels very different to drive, too. The perf spec cars are fast and can pull off some impressive drifts, but don’t get much air if you fly off a jump and do not do at all well if you leave the tarmac. The raid cars sit high off the ground but provide an enjoyably bumpy ride as you ignore all the roads on the map and just leap over hills at every opportunity. The dirt cars get convincingly filthy and throw up dust clouds as you power them around unpaved roads, sliding sideways around corners like a pro.

It’s not at all realistic, in other words, but at no point is it trying to be. It wants to be fun, and by God it succeeds at that. I love driving in The Crew. It’s just fun to drive around the map, even without a mission. Throw in the fact that the missions are accompanied by dialogue and dramatic, cinematic-style music and you have an absolutely thrilling game.

Which brings us on to the story aspect. The Crew’s storyline is cheesy and stupid, just like The Fast and the Furious, but it’s entertaining and does its job. It has some good characters including some loathsome villains, and the protagonist (played by the ever-popular Troy Baker) does a good job of deadpanning his way through some genuinely amusing lines.

I’ve been hungry for a “driving game with a plot” ever since I learned of the existence of Racing Lagoon on the PS1, and endured the subsequent disappointment that it never got localised. (I understand that it was supposedly not that good in the first place, but I would have liked the opportunity to judge for myself.) Various games over the years have toyed with adding a plot — most notably EA’s Need for Speed series — but they always seem incredibly half-hearted, all but abandoning any attempt at storytelling once the game gets going.

The Crew is different, though. It keeps its plot flowing at a good pace, and you feel like you’re taking part in a Fast and Furious movie. As I say, it’s dumb and stupid, but it’s good dumb and stupid — the sort of summer blockbuster fare that would get you munching on your popcorn as if your life depended on it. It draws you in and makes you interested, and rewards progress through the game with satisfying (and impressively realistic) cutscenes.

Finally, there’s the “RPG” aspect of the game. The one thing I always liked about Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo was the part where you earned money and bolted bits on to your car to make it better. Where that part fell down for me was in the tuning aspect, where the game expected you to understand how cars worked in order to fine-tune all the settings to their optimal levels. Fine for true petrolheads; less good for people like me who just want to power around a course and feel cool while doing it.

The Crew adopts an almost Diablo-esque loot system in which every event you complete in the game, big or small, rewards you with a part that you can either stock or equip on the car you’re currently driving. Parts come in bronze, silver and gold variants, with the gold versions naturally being considerably better than the bronze.

You don’t need to know what a “differential” is in order to enjoy this system, though, much as you don’t need to know exactly what the purpose of each piece of armour is in a loot-whoring RPG. Instead, each part simply affects one of your car’s core performance stats — acceleration, top speed, braking and grip — and contributes to an overall “level” for the car. The higher your car’s level, the better it is — and you can leave it at that if you so desire, or you can further customise and specialise your car by mixing and matching parts in order to emphasise a particular stat if you so desire. It’s a simple but effective system that allows even non-mechanically minded people to enjoy a feeling of progress and advancement without ever having to touch a gear ratio menu.

The Crew is marketed as an MMO but I must confess I haven’t dipped my toes into the multiplayer at all as yet. The story is enjoyable enough in single player — and feels like it’s been designed with single player in mind, with the possible exception of the “takedown” events, which would doubtless be much easier with four people — but it looks as if there will be more than enough things left to do in multiplayer once you reach the end of the story. It has its own “endgame”, if you will, which I can’t comment on with any authority just yet, but I’m interested to explore, particularly the “Summit” events that were introduced with the Wild Run expansion.

If you haven’t yet grabbed your free copy of The Crew from Ubisoft, you’ve got until October 11 to do so — head on over here to do so. What have you got to lose? And if you are already playing, do feel free to add me as a friend via UPlay — my tag there is “AngryJedi” — and send me a message if you want to try any aspect of the game’s multiplayer; I’m keen to give it a go!