The Crew Beta

So for my second post I will be talking about The Crew. The Crew is a new racing game that is being developed by Ubisoft. It is being released on all platforms with a release date of December 2nd, 2014. It was originally slated to be released on November 11th but was pushed back to the 2nd.

Now let's get to the game itself. I was lucky enough to receive a beta code to try out the game. I have to admit, even for a beta, the game looks amazing. The map in The Crew is massive. It's been said that you can drive from New York to LA. With a map that large one has to wonder just how they are going to tackle that large of a project that doesn't include load times going from one area to another. i think that the devs at Ubisoft helped to solve this problem by not making it as realistic as possible. While playing the beta I had driven through a few locations which started in Detroit, and ended up with me in New York. The scenery while it might not include every little turn or building is amazing and they have done an amazing job with their design.

The Crew is broken up into different sections that encompass the United States. The map consists of 5 different areas. The West Coast, Mountain States, Midwest, The South, and of course the East Coast. As I've only visited a few areas I can't say for sure that there will only be select cities included in the game and this is just the beta and we have yet to know just exactly how much Ubisoft is trying to incorporate into the game.

The biggest thing that I think initially differentiates The Crew from other racing games is that it actually has a story line to it. Yes other racing games had a minor story implemented into the game like Need for Speed but The Crew has an actual story with cut scenes included. I won't get to into the story only to say that it starts out with your brother being killed. It then takes off from there and really had me wanting to do more. One of my biggest things for games is that it has to have a good story line. Racing games I always felt didn't really need this but the fact that Ubisoft incorporated a story into the Crew actually had me wanting to play more to progress further. The beta only allowed you to go up to level 10 and at a certain point you do get stopped as the game does require you to be certain levels to progress through the different story missions.

While the story did have me hooked as I am a sucker for a good story we do need to move on. The controls. I do feel like the controls are a bit to tight. For instance I would have to move the analog sticks pretty far to get the car to turn. I also felt that some of the physics could have been improved upon. For all the playing that I did, I found it extremely difficult to do any sort of a drift around turns in this game. Although throughout the game you can spec out your car for different types of races. I found that running through the games dirt spec made it somewhat easier to pull off drifts but the street specs were extremely difficult.

The Crew also boasts a unique feature of making up 4 man crews to run races against the AI in the story mode and to even set up races against other crews. While I didn't exactly get the opportunity to experience these aspects of the game they do seem interesting in and of themselves. As becoming the trend with a lot of games that are being released the Crew does require you to be online. I have yet to see an option to play the game in an offline mode.

The Crew is shaping up to be possibly one of the next great racing game. I myself will most definitely be purchasing this game when it is released in December and for racing enthusiasts who like a game with a decent story I would recommend picking this up as well.