Release Date: 29/06/2018
Played On: PS4
Available On: PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 33h 58m
Progress: All events complete + Most activities
Developer: Ivory Tower
Publisher: Ubisoft
What could make an open world racing game featuring multiple disciplines and a pretty big map even better? If you answered: boats, planes, hovercraft, and motorbikes; then have I got news for you. Not only is The Crew 2 packed with more content than its predecessor, but there's more variety than ever before!
Okay, that's a real cheesy marketing pile of garbage to open the conversation about The Crew 2, but believe me it fits. While there's a fun enough game to be had under the hood, your time in this ambitious racing game will never be far from some advertising and marketing. In fact, the entire experience feels like it should have come with a big "FOR SALE" sticker slapped on every surface.
When this sequel was announced at E3, we saw visions of races taking place on impossibly folded landscapes, just like that scene from Inception. Cars zoomed along, before launching onto a river as they morphed into power boats. The landscape shifted again, but those boats morphed into planes and suddenly we're racing through the clouds. This was a magical world of racing and variety that we would be free to explore and marvel at its wonders.
After the middling success of the relatively bland The Crew, this sequel looked like it would be turning everything up to eleven. Considering I enjoyed my time in the first game, I was ready to go completely bonkers in this new warping landscape. It was flashy and weird, but over the top and exciting.
Sadly though, it was not meant to be. Within the first few hours of playing The Crew 2, it becomes painfully apparent that all the insane warping and vehicle switching was nothing more than a glossy piece of marketing. Instead, most of your time spent in this game would feel almost exactly the same as it did in the first. Unfortunately that translates to a fairly mundane racing game experience.
I went on record a while ago that I'm not exactly the most skilled racing game player out there. More often than not, I'll be racing on lower difficulty settings because I have a lot of fun driving fast in games, but I lack the skills to really dive into the challenge. So when I say that I managed to coast through every event in The Crew 2 without issue, there's little doubt to how casual-friendly the challenge (or lack thereof) actually is.
Although, there are harder difficulty settings for each event, which probably evens it out a bit more, but I was surprised at how easy the 'normal' setting was. It seemed that the challenge was tied more closely to your vehicle and upgrading their parts, than your skill as a driver.
As with the first game, the entire experience can be broken down into events and activities that are scattered across map. Again, it's a weird reproduction of America and some key cities and locations, as most seem to be out of place and smaller than you'd expect. However, I'm not too familiar with US geography, so I'm only guessing that it takes longer than 15 minutes to drive across the country.
Having said that though, the inaccuracies of the map didn't bother me at all. I don't care if the Grand Canyon isn't in the right spot, or if Niagara Falls is about a tenth the size of the real version. At the end of the day, The Crew 2 has a big map to explore that's filled with cities, landmarks, and diverse environments. It's an interesting place to drive around in, and there's lots of space to roam.
The problem is that using the map can often be a chore. Events are distributed at key locations across the country, but getting from one to the next without fast travel is boring. There's nothing to do along the way and after you've seen each area, navigating the impassable rocks and windy roadways is a pain.
Never fear though, as there are activities along the way to change things up and engage you with the open world around you. While driving through a city you might happen upon a 'speed trap' that asks you to drive over a certain speed. Chances are you'll probably be going over the required limit anyway, so within seconds you'll have driven through the speed trap and completed it without a second thought.
Alternatively there are slalom courses, which task you with weaving between strategically placed markers. Or escape runs that have you driving away from a location as fast as you can before an expanding circle catches up with you. There are other activities as well, but when you've done a couple, you've basically done them all.
Thus, eventually I gave up on the open world-ness of it all and used the in-game menu to select an event and fast-travel straight to the starting line. It's nice that they include this method of getting into the action, but it only highlights how boring the open world nature of the game can be.
The real selling point that hooked me into the first game, was that this was a world inhabited by other real people. You could be driving through a remote corner of America, and run into another player who's ready to race. It sounded like the car racing equivalent of World of Warcraft, where you'd constantly be meeting new people and throwing down against them on the mean streets.
Despite this idea, the first game felt incredibly un-populated, and The Crew 2 sticks to the formula. The most people I saw in-game at the same time was three or four, and each of them were distant white highlights on the map. Rarely did I run into another player in the course of my open world roaming, and when I did it was usually thanks to a twenty minute trek across country toward their blip on the radar.
At the same time though, I have to admit that I don't even mind the emptiness of the world all that much. I'm happy to amuse myself in big open worlds and have been known to plod along quite happily as I travel from place to place. What really strikes me as odd, is why none of this multiplayer element made its way into the actual racing part of the game.
Each event turns out to be a simple race between you and about six AI vehicles. Whether you're street racing, plane racing, or boat racing, you'll always be up against AI opponents. It seems terribly amiss that none of the races included other players, as it essentially negated the entire online nature of the game. I was expecting something a little more akin to Grand Theft Auto V, where racing other players is the norm instead of the exception. Instead, The Crew 2 feels more like a spiritual successor to the emptiness of Fuel, than the multiplayer madness of GTA.
To add insult to injury, most races only require you to finish in one of the top three positions. This would be a great way of creating races that combine players and AI, so that lower skilled players like myself could still pass the event, even if they're beaten by tougher opponents. The omission of just about any multiplayer features is a weird one to have in an always online open world game, but The Crew 2 would feel just about the same if all the online connectivity were removed entirely.
Nevertheless, I'm still not put off, as I'm the guy who'll play MMORPGs solo and grind away for hours if I'm having enough fun. The races must have been enjoyable enough to play all the way through, but I'm hesitant to say they're any good. In fact, the appealing part for me was the variety of disciplines available, even though none of them stand out on their own.
Most disciplines are variations on driving, such as street racing, drag racing, and drifting. There are a couple of variations on plane racing and boat racing, but most of the time you'll be driving a car of some sort. However, not a lot has changed since the first game and driving in The Crew 2 still feels a bit cumbersome and heavy.
It's almost as if the cars have been programmed to stick to the road more than they should. Even at top speeds the cars felt like rocks pushing their way over asphalt. There's no such thing as oversteer, as every vehicle apparently has its traction control engaged and you'll be fighting understeer through every tight corner.
Thankfully, the novelty of other vehicles manages to carry The Crew 2 a long way past its limit. The boats and planes are fun diversions and offer some alternative forms of excitement, but their events are easy and repetitive after a while. Plus, once again it's weird to be flying a plane alone to beat the clock, when you could be racing against other planes instead.
Remember the warping landscapes and exciting morphs from one vehicle to another? Well that's all in the game, but it's limited to a handful of special occasions. Rather than going nuts and turning everything up to eleven, you're given a few scripted events that unlock as you level up and complete events.
These special events feature three different disciplines, so you'll be transitioning from cars, to boats, to planes, on-the-fly, which is a lot of fun. However, there are only a couple of times where the world will fold in on itself and get all warped and weird, which is a big old disappointment indeed.
This is why the entire game feels like you're playing a commercial. There are promises and glimpses of exciting stuff to do. The online connectivity promises multiplayer fun and random encounters. The warping landscapes look like fun ways to confuse and disorient you mid-race, and switching between disciplines could be a real test of your skills.
Unfortunately the reality of The Crew 2 is that you rarely see other players, and the warping world only happens during a few scripted events. You can change vehicles at any time in the open world, but if you want to swap in and out of disciplines during a race, you're limited to the same few scripted events. The game promises that juicy looking burger picture in the menu, but what you get is the squashed, messy version instead.
Thankfully I really enjoy racing games, so I was happy to complete every event once. I suppose I should be happy that there are enough events to clock up the hours as well, but I would have been happy with fewer to complete overall. It's weird, but even though I completed every event on offer, I still wasn't satisfied when I finally put down my controller.
I guess the problem with The Crew 2 is that it promises so much, and fails to deliver in just about every aspect. What's worse is that everything that makes the game cool, is included in the game, it's just watered down to a bland and boring state.
There is multiplayer, but you never see anyone else, or race anyone else. There's cool warping world stuff, but it's limited to a few events. Same goes for the multi-discipline racing. The world is huge, but nothing's in the right place, and everything feels a little small. The game is full of ambition, but none of it reaches its potential.
Perhaps this will stand as a testament to the fact that the most disappointing games are the ones that have cool features, but never act on them. There's so much potential in The Crew 2, except it's never realised and it suffers greatly as a result.
Instead of a mad open world of fun multiplayer racing, this is a game of loneliness and boredom. Traversing the bland landscape of empty locations and racing lacklustre AI through relatively barren city streets, isn't the experience advertised.
If you're the kind of person who plays any racing game at all (like me), then you might get something out of The Crew 2. However, if you're looking for an exciting and diverse racing game experience, maybe look at Forza Horizons or the Dirt series instead. Hell, even GTA V has more interesting and diverse racing than this game does, and that's meant to be an entirely different genre.