The Crew Beta Impressions

Yesterday, Ubisoft made the originally closed beta of The Crew open. We all can now get the chance to see for ourselves how does this promising driving game deliver? Is this an earth-shattering product as Ubisoft led us to believe? In my 3-4 hours playing The Crew (not counting the additional 5 it took for the game to finish downloading), I have come to the conclusion that I can describe The Crew in one word:


Disappointment.


Now to be fair, I do consider myself a casual driving/racing game. I only buy a racing game if I've played it and like it. So if you're a hardcore racing game fan you might want to hear the opinion of someone that's a little more hardcore in this genre. However, I'm here to give you my honest opinion about this game, and I can honestly say I don't like it. Yes I know, it's a beta not the full release, but I've played enough of The Crew to know this game isn't for me.


Before you can actually go out and explore the world, you must complete the prologue. Yes this game has a story, and boy is it bad. The small taste I got of this story shows me that it is going to be more than likely boring, uninteresting, and forgettable. It's filled with many clichés and uninteresting characters, something that is opposite of many recent Ubisoft games. Why does this game even need a story? I wouldn't be bothered if you just dropped me into a world and just told me to do whatever I would be fine with that. But unfortunately Ubisoft tries too hard, and ends up hurting my opinion of this game. It doesn't help that the game looks like it could have been from 2007 instead of 2014. I guess the only positive thing I can say is the character models in cutscenes look nice. Yay, the character models in your driving game look good! And whoever at Ubisoft is coming up with the radio songs in their games needs to be fired. First Watch Dogs radio has bad songs and now this? The game that actually needs to have a good radio? So in terms of presentation, The Crew stumbles at nearly every turn.


Okay, so The Crew doesn't have a good story, the graphics suck, and the songs are bad. That's not good, but hey the gameplay's going to be good right? WRONG. The driving mechanics are some of the worst I've ever seen in a game. They're so bad they make the driving mechanics in Grand Theft Auto IV look good. Controlling your car feels very awkward and it's very easy to wreck. No the controls don't feel bad, but the handling is terrible. And is there even a drift button in this game? I don't know, the game does a terrible job of telling you how to do anything, especially when you get into car customization. Now speaking of car customization, this is one of the few things I actually liked in The Crew. There's a ton of detail put into these cars and their parts. If you're a car fanatic you're going to love this. There is also a cool demo mode to check out how your car looks and you can even take it out for a test drive. Unfortunately though like I said, the game doesn't give you whole lot of explanation into upgrades and skills for your car.


There is one thing (other than car customization) that The Crew gets right that made me play it a little longer than I would have: the open world. Ubisoft hyped the game to have a big map and it does not disappoint. It covers the entire US (and by that I mean it's a condensed version, but it's still big). It took me just over 40 minutes to drive from New York to Los Angeles. There's a lot of things to see and that's great. Unfortunately though there isn't a lot to do in this big world. I found a few races, a couple speed challenges, and that's just about it. Really. It's a sandbox with no sand. After you explore the world that leaves barely anything to do. Granted this is a beta, but if there's a ton of stuff to do in the final game they really shot themselves in the foot with this one. Oh and remember how they hyped up the online component to be massive, with an entire city filled with multiple crews going around trying to dominate? Yeah, they lied. The most players I've seen in a particular area/region was 4. So that essentially makes this whole crew thing pointless. Another disappointment in this one.


It feels like The Crew is trying to be Ubisoft's answer to Need for Speed, but unfortunately it fails in nearly every category except car customization and exploration. The Crew had potential, but if what we've been shown in the beta is any indication of the final product, it is a disappointment. Many of the promises Ubisoft made don't seem to be fulfilled and therefore I can't really recommend that you purchase the full game at $60. Who knows, maybe the full game has a ton of content. But even then, I can't see this game being worth anything more than $20. So in this crazy holiday season filled with (too) many games, it seems you can cross The Crew off your list.


Have you played the beta of The Crew? What did you think? Will you be purchasing the full game? Let me know! And, as always, thanks for visiting 8-Bit Ape.


The Crew beta is up on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One through tomorrow, November 27. I played the beta on PlayStation 4. Experience may vary from platform to platform.
The Crew will officially launch on December 2, 2014 for PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC (no it is not going to be available for PlayStation 3)
You can pre-order The Crew (though I recommend you don't) at Amazon here.

Holiday Review Plan

I'm back!
Sorry for my lack of posts in October (or should I say, non-existent posts), I was very busy! But anyway, back to talking about games. Quick update on reviews

• Destiny review is cancelled, very sorry about that
• I will be reviewing the Driveclub PS Plus edition when it finally releases
• At this time other October games such as Alien Isolation, The Evil Within, Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, and NBA 2K15 will not be reviewed, but I may come back to them later (especially with Shadow of Mordor

So that was a quick update on current reviews. Looking ahead, there are a LOT of games coming out in November, too much in fact. Rather than rush through all these games, I've decided to take my time to get my best thoughts out of them and my full opinion. So I will be releasing these reviews around Christmas. I hope that they will be all out by the New Year, and then after that I will start doing my Top 10 list(s, possibly) and any other Look back on 2014 articles. So as of right now, here are the games I plan to review. Keep in mind this list is tentative, and I could add or remove games from this list. So in alphabetical order, the games are

• Assassin's Creed Unity
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
• Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Far Cry 4
• LittleBigPlanet 3
• Other possible candidates: Assassin's Creed Rogue, Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions, Grand Theft Auto V PS4, Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham, and The Crew
• Do not expect reviews for: Escape Dead Island, Super Smash Bros for Wii U, The Master Chief Collection, and WWE 2K15

If there are any games you would like me to review please let me know! And, as always, thanks for visiting 8-Bit Ape.