Review

Ever since the release date was announced, I had assumed that the biggest problem for The Crew would be that it arrives so soon after Forza Horizon 2. Turns out I was wrong. While Forza is unquestionably the better game, the biggest problem faced by The Crew is that it's not 2004 anymore!

The game begins in Detroit, and dumps you straight into a storyline taken from a bad 90's action movie. In gameplay terms, you'll spend the first two hours driving around the streets between races, adding upgrades to your car and visiting garages. It's like revisiting Need For Speed: Underground and Midnight Club, but not in a good way. It simply highlights how far the racing genre has come in the last decade. If I had written this review based on the first couple of hours, it's would have barely scraped a 4/10!

Fortunately, this is not a game that's being sold on it's dramatic content. This is a game that's all about the environment, or more specifically, the world you are given to explore. It's only when I started to ignore the story missions and do my own thing that I started to have any fun at all. The map is a huge facsimile of the United States, it's not an accurate recreation, instead offering the feel of the different cities and locations. Setting a waypoint to an unexplored corner of the map and driving there turns out to be the best thing about The Crew. You can just relax, drive and take in the sights. Driving from Detroit to Miami took about 45 minutes and there were plenty of potential distractions en route.

There are skill challenges and landmarks to find all over the map, and this being a UbiSoft open-world, there are satellite dishes to find that will uncover areas for you. I spent hours just driving around and exploring. Turning a corner and suddenly spotting Mount Rushmore in the distance was far more exciting than any chase missions or timed challenge. Unfortunately, you will eventually want to try out some more cars and this means you'll have to return to the story missions. I'd be lying if I said that there weren't some races that I found enjoyable, but they a hidden beneath the rest which vary in quality from average to terrible.

There's also the social side of the game where you are meant to form a Crew and invite other drivers to join you but as none of my friends were playing at the time of this review (and I have no interest of playing with strangers) this was pointless to me. What this means is that there are always other players roaming the world, but if you are just wanting to play on your own, the good news is that this didn't once interfere with my game. It did, however, throw up another problem: namely that the game needs to be connected for you to play. On a number of occasions the game simply couldn't connect to UbiSoft's servers and returned to the title screen. An option to play solo missions offline would have been a really good idea!

Ivory Tower's achievements in creating an open-world that you actually want to explore cannot go unrecognised but the game that they've dropped into the world is at times fun, but mostly boring. Maybe a few updates or a sequel would find the game reaching it's potential. In it's current state though, it's very hard to recommend.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox One

Developer

Ivory Tower

Publisher

UbiSoft

Released

2nd December 2014