The Crew 2
Open-world online racer fails to improve on its predecessor — but is a blast nonetheless.
PC, PS4, XO | $99.95 | THECREW-GAME.UBISOFT.COM
As is often the case with blockbuster online games, 2014’s The Crew had a disappointing launch but, over the years to come, blossomed into something great. Fingers crossed this is the trajectory for its sequel, because at launch, it’s a decent racing game but it lacks flair.
Ubisoft has wisely opted to avoid an edgy narrative this time around, choosing instead to layer a social media meta-game over the open world racing. As you travel this condensed United States, participating in races and tournaments, you’ll gather social media followers, and the more clout you have, the more access you’ll get to events and vehicle types. It’s shallow and dumb, but no more so than Forza Horizon’s festival conceit, and so long as you mute the execrable voiceover guy, it’s mostly unobtrusive.
With the removal of the Z-grade narrative and a fresh progression system to figure out, the opening hours are promising. In addition to road vehicles, you’ll be racing motorboats and planes, and switching between the three seamlessly while exploring the open world is genuinely thrilling. But things start to wear: as for that open world exploration, it’s redundant. This time around, you can simply select events on your map, eliminating any requirement to go out and explore the open roads. This serves to make The Crew 2 feel like a series of thematically incoherent races, rather than the road trip its predecessor often felt like.
And while we’re on the topic of the map: the UI in this game is clunky and confusing. On PS4 Pro, accessing the menu is excruciating thanks to long load times, and once you’ve done so, figuring out what races you’ve done and which are still open requires manual filtering. Easy enough, but tedious after a while, and it doesn’t help that the game boots you into a first-person garage environment that... kinda just doesn’t make any sense. Why are these vehicles, in particular, displayed? The driving is great fun but the AI is supernaturally adept at catching you up at the faintest error on the player’s part (rubber-banding, according to racing game connoisseurs), so races become less about pulling ahead of opponents, and more about not making a single minor error. When some major races run a total of 30 minutes, this can get stressful.
The Crew 2 isn’t a disaster, it’s actually really fun. But it doesn’t improve on its predecessor, and that’s possibly a sequel’s biggest crime. Updates will be forthcoming, and we’re confident The Crew 2 will become a much better game, but whether you jump in now or wait will depend on how patient you are.