The Crew 2 Review - Photoblogger on Wheels (Topic)

In 2014, Ubisoft celebrated the release of The Crew, an arcade racing game. As is usually the case with a French publisher, the first pancake came out lumpy. The game was criticized for deranged car physics, faded graphics and a small amount of content. You have to manage to draw one of the biggest worlds in the history of racing games and not give the player enough reason to explore it! In the new race, the developers promised to fix all the flaws of the original game and make the second part 2 times larger, 2 times better, 2 times more interesting.

Whether Ubisoft coped with this task, read our review of The Crew 2.

Chasing fans

The original The Crew, for all its ambiguity, could provide several surprises at once for gamers who dared to buy the game. For example, a plot that tells another story from the world of underground street racing. The story was incredibly cliched, but it still served as a good motivation to keep playing and put up with clumsy irons on wheels.

So, what does The Crew 2 offer us? Instead of the worn-out theme of the hostility of street gangs, a new trend has come - video blogging and legal competitions! Just another variation on the theme of festivals from the Forza Horizon series, but with an important difference - you are a social media star, and therefore, in addition to winning prizes in sports competitions, you will need to delight fans with spectacular tricks and picturesque photographs.

For practice in the art of photography, an additional mechanic has been introduced in The Crew 2: we find a historical building, say, the Washington Monument, put our car in the background, a more fashionable filter and ... Voila, you are an Internet star! It's a pity that instead of developing the idea of the original The Crew and finalizing the plot, Ubisoft made it as simple as possible, which brought the game closer to the mass of other faceless arcade races.

Riding three elements

Well, well, in any race, the plot only serves as a small connecting element between the tracks and even a script from Chris Avellone could not save the dull rides on toy cans. Ubisoft understands this too, so The Crew 2 places a lot of emphasis on upfront content and entertainment for all riders of all preferences.

There are ground, surface and lethal vehicles at your choice. The amount of available equipment and types of competition in The Crew 2 is literally dazzling. Sprint, drift, or circuit races will be very different, even depending on the transport of the same category.

For example, SUVs will allow you to take part in grueling rally races, and sports cars will remind you of the Fast and the Furious movies and offer trips to urban areas and spectacular drifting. By the way, in the game The Crew 2 there is no more need to tear your teeth for the first place, the game has become more friendly to newcomers and many races will offer valuable prizes upon reaching the 3rd place.

Now, in the review of The Crew 2, it's time to move on to the game's most important innovation: surface and air transport. In general, in terms of the marketing campaign, they say "Hey, friends, only in our race there are cars, boats and planes!" is not a bad move. But for the player, the practical use of such a variety of iron "comrades" is rather doubtful, which was already noticeable in the beta of The Crew 2.

It's all about physics and a small amount of content that is offered for a sea and flying vehicle. Boats in The Crew 2 are only suitable for short competitive races, and planes are the best way to perform spectacular aerial pirouettes. But the number of vehicles and customization variations is much less than in ground vehicles, and the control leaves much to be desired.

Physics of boats from cars is practically no different, although in general it should, because there is a variable in the form of the current strength, but in practice it is invisible. As for the planes and helicopters, absolutely casual mechanics without any hints of aerodynamics causes only boredom and completely cuts off at least some hints of a sense of rivalry between participants in an air race.

The Perfect Time Washer

The Crew 2, like many other Ubsioft projects, is a game service that can captivate you for hundreds of hours, and so that you do not get tired of routine activities, it will always offer you to buy another loot box. You heard right, chests with a random set of items have now appeared in The Crew 2. They contain new elements for customization, such as paint, decals, decorative or technical parts for the car.

Moreover, unlike the first part, the player does not have the opportunity to make a real tank from BMW for all occasions, the number of settings has been significantly reduced, and for each type of race it is required to take a separate car. Each vehicle will have to be pumped and improved separately, which will require you to spend additional time and grind loot boxes. They are issued for passing the tracks or upon reaching the level, which, by the way, are as much as 10,000 thousand. Therefore, in theory, it could take years to complete The Crew 2.

But can the game hold for a few hundred hours? Hardly, and not least because of the dead and static world, which, as in the first part, has no desire to explore. 900 square kilometers, on which the developers have placed 50 American states, many ecosystems, cultural monuments, and then the resulting dish was tucked into a dynamic change of day and weather. Visually, and taking into account the sparing system requirements of The Crew 2 - there are no complaints, but the content screams about flaws.

Such a picturesque and detailed recreated America serves only as a testing ground for racing tracks. A minimum of traffic, random events or tasks that will serve as an incentive to press the gas pedal and, intoxicated with the spirit of freedom, go towards the horizon. It's so unfortunate that Ubisoft missed such an important moment and turned their pride - a detailed recreation of North America - into static scenery, without which, in principle, The Crew 2 would not have lost anything.

Verdict

Ubisoft really kept their promise and released a game that surpasses its predecessor in the amount of original content. But, unfortunately, quality suffered in favor of quantity, so we have a completely lifeless world, 3 types of vehicles, of which only cars and gameplay are still interesting, which in general is based on races along the same tracks with primitive physics.

Of course, everything is not so bad at all, and the co-op significantly revives the game. But honestly, when there is a Forza Horizon series in the world, which on all fronts overtakes the two parts of The Crew, the presence of a race from Ubisoft at this stage is somewhat pointless.

If The Crew 2 doesn't appeal to you, we recommend that you pay attention to the top 10 best arcade races, which have already become a real classic of the genre.

Download The Crew 2

The Topic of Article: The Crew 2 Review - Photoblogger on Wheels.
Author: Jake Pinkman