The Crew 2 is the sequel to Ubisoft’s The Crew, which released in 2014 and was their first open-world-racing title. While the original title’s basic mechanics were solid, it didn’t manage to leave a lasting impression on players. Ubisoft tries to rectify that by further expanding the racing playground to the air and sea in The Crew 2.
Transform and roll out
Unlike almost every other racing game, The Crew 2 gives you the ability to switch to either a car, boat or airplane on the fly and participate in all types of races. When I say on the fly, I mean it. With a simple press of a button, you can change your plane into your favorite car and drop down on the ground and continue that way. There are even some races that switch between different types of transport while you’re participating. One part you have to cross a river with tight corners, the other you have to instantly switch to an airplane to reach the next set of checkpoints. These races are easily the best part of The Crew 2 but for some reason, there aren’t that many of them. Most of the races in the game are centered around one type of vehicle. These races are fine, but it begs the question why Ubisoft didn’t create more of the clearly superior ‘transformation’ races. After all, why would they go through the hassle of creating the instant vehicle switch mechanic if they wouldn’t use it that much? Sure, you can free-roam the gigantic map while constantly transforming your car into a boat or plane, but that gets old pretty fast. Maybe they’ll release more ‘transformation’ races in those free updates they talked about a while back, but if that’s the case then it would make the release version of The Crew 2 come off as an unfinished product.
Pick your style
It may look like I started this review on a negative note, but the transformation mechanic is what Ubisoft showed off the most in their marketing, so I wanted to make things clear on that part right from the start. Now, as I said before, the regular races are fine. There’s a variety of vehicle types and track designs to play around with for quite some time. There are dirt bike races, monster truck stunt courses, aerial acrobatics and naval showdowns. My favorite competitions were those where you have to drive a jet sprint boat and rush through narrow corridors and tight corners on the water. All these different types of races and courses make it easy to find something that fits closest to your desired playstyle. Want to drive as fast as you can? Pick the F1 events. Want to show off your control over your vehicle? Drive through the snow in a big SUV without slipping. In other words, there’s something for everyone in The Crew 2.
Open-world limitations
Like the original The Crew, the sequel puts you in an open-world map that is modeled after the entire United States. It’s (obviously) not an exact copy, but it takes memorable locations and puts them together on the map. The large open world makes it possible to just cruise on your own pace through the States and enjoy the vistas. But like the first title, the open world doesn’t add that much to the gameplay experience. You can use it to practice your drifting or shifting, but this could easily be replaced with a simple practice mode should it drop the open world aspect. It also holds back the track design. Instead of creating tracks in their entirety and thus having complete control over what type of race it should accommodate to, the developers are tied to the real-life design of the open-world map. They can only place checkpoints and ramps to try to make the tracks as exciting as they can, but this doesn’t always work. You can compare it to Forza Horizon 3. While it’s a solid game, the open-world aspect held back the course design, until they released the Hot Wheels expansion that implemented the crazy track designs the toys have. The expansion showed that the developers could now design tracks like they wanted to, without limitations. The Crew 2 suffers from the same problem and could use an expansion like that. Maybe it will get something similar in the future, but that doesn’t solve the issue it currently has.
Grinding loot
Another mechanic that returns from the original The Crew is the upgrade system for your vehicle, although in a different way. In The Crew 2, completing races and challenges will reward you with loot. This loot has to be picked up and displays all kinds of colors to indicate its ‘rarity’. You can then install the loot on your vehicle to enhance its performance. While I’m already not a fan of upgrade systems like this, I must say that The Crew 2 is one of the worst I have played with. The parts you’ll get from loot are always just slightly better than the parts you’ve currently installed. This makes installing new parts never noticeable in terms of gameplay since the increased stat numbers don’t make that much of a difference. All it does is create an excuse to spend countless hours playing the game to grind loot in hopes of upgrading your vehicle in a noticeable way. To make things worse, loot can be purchased with real money. Well, not directly, that is. You first have to buy the in-game currency and then use that currency to buy loot. Practices like this turn a game into a pay-to-win product, which is never a good thing.
Visual downgrade
The visuals in The Crew 2 have gotten a noticeable downgrade, compared to the first game. The shadows are weaker, the textures have a lower resolution and the damage system on the vehicles never makes a wrecked car look like it wouldn’t work anymore in real-life situations. Ubisoft has mentioned this issue before and says that the lower visual quality was made out of necessity. See, the transformation mechanic has its drawbacks. When you’re driving a car through a city and switch to a plane, then the game has to render a lot more objects since your line of sight has increased a lot by being in the air. That’s why there’s also a lot, I repeat, A LOT of texture pop-in in The Crew 2. It’s all because of the transformation mechanic. Now, in my opinion, this would have been a justifiable trade-off if Ubisoft actually utilized this mechanic in their races more like I said earlier. But since that isn’t the case, the lower visual quality and texture pop-in is a detriment to the gameplay’s overall experience.
Conclusion
The Crew 2 is at its core a solid racing game. However, it suffers from a number of flaws. The biggest being the loot system, but also the low amount of races that make use of the transformation mechanic and the downgraded visual quality. Like the original The Crew, The Crew 2 will probably not leave a lasting impression on people. A shame, really, since with some tweaking it could be a worthy racing game to stand beside titles like Forza or Gran Turismo. My suggestion would be to at least wait for the announced free updates to drop before picking this up.
