Gamersledge PS4 Review: The Crew

by John O’ Callaghan/NewGithiun

Introduction:

The crew takes your basic arcade racer game and throws you into an interactive cooperative format. Go at it alone or team up with random players or your premade group; the game supports either play style.

Gameplay:

There feels like an emphasis on team play; either general co-op or your premade crew without any real advantage to do so. The social aspect adds another level of fun and excitement but sometimes takes away from the competitiveness of the races. If you don’t have a premade crew there is an easy-to-use match making system but it does a poor job of matching similar level players together. You’ll commonly run into one person that has a significant advantage over you within the match making service. This won’t cause an issue in your gaming progress but can take away from the thrill of the competition and win.

I found that running a mission with your crew can actually make the mission more difficult at times. Counter intuitive, I know, but because it’s difficult to see what the others are doing you tend to cause accidents making the mission objectives harder to complete. There’s nothing like almost overtaking the first person with one of your best full-throttle slides around a corner with the perfect blend of control, speed and drifting; just to be slammed into a parked car by your buddy who thinks they’re in the crash derby.

They did a great job of allowing the player to choose their play style; from taking the long scenic drive between mission hubs or allowing for many different types of fast travel. Many games are obvious with how they want you to play but with The Crew there isn’t a linear path you are required to follow in a given time frame. Realistically, you can sink a lot of hours into just beefing up your car(s) and earning money to buy new rides. I really like how they connect many of the games modes to the character level and not strictly on the progression of the story. Ultimately, if the extras, exploration and collecting is what drives you; the story is just an afterthought.

The overall difficulty of the story missions is one of the things that bothered me the most with this game. Not only is it difficult to complete story missions on the first try, this is even more apparent with ‘take down’ missions, but it’s nearly impossible to get gold. Even at twice the recommended car level you can still lose the mission with a single bad turn or a slight tap to your bumper being rocketed down the wrong street.

Plusses: Easy mission access for those who want to fast travel but a HUGE map for those who want the scenic drives. The game is not directly linear and allows the player to choose how they want to move forward. If you’re the type that likes to complete everything and collect everything there is to collect; there is no end to the things you can do.

Minuses: PVP match making is horrible and matches you with people that are way out of your class and it is impossible to win. The difficulty level of the missions is sometimes extremely unbalanced and can cause you to attempt a mission multiple times before being able to complete and forget trying to gold it unless you’re 2-3 times the recommended level. There is a serious lack of consistency of what wrecks you in the environment. Things you would expect to cause serious damage you blow through without a scratch but a curb is like slamming into a brick wall.

Presentation:
The Crew misses the mark on their presentation. Although the environments and details are extremely pleasant, creative, and fun; the overall quality of the graphics are slightly outdated. I’d expect this level of graphics from a Grand Theft Auto game from 5 years ago and not today’s standards that we see on NextGen Consoles. The pre-rendered story mission cut scenes are beautiful and very well made but their attempts at a more realistic graphic quality falls flat.

If you pay attention, there are small details that you’ll pick up on that are really cool and add realism to the game. For an example, if you just sit at an intersection watching the pedestrians they will have random interactions and events like one guys sneezed twice before moving on his way.

The level of detail added to the game is good but just not consistent. An example; on one hand they have pedestrians sneezing and on the other the simulated damage of our cars is unrealistic and very repetitive. I just plowed into a telephone pole doing 147 MPH, I think I would have a bit more than a scratch on my hood that looks like my neighbors cat just used it as a scratching post. Or how about running over a small baby tree and having it flatten. Then as soon as you drive off of it the sapling magically bounces back up to its original position.

Plusses: The environment is so creative, beautifully thoughtful and always fresh. The level of detail with the surroundings is amazing, from computer characters sneezing to seeing drivers use the shifter and steering wheel.

Minuses: The overall quality of the graphics are out of date compared to what’s available in todays market, this wouldn’t be so bad if the game was more consistent. The damage done to your vehicle isn’t proportionate to the object you hit. You’re able to cause prolonged “damage” your car and repair your vehicle as you sustain more damage but there doesn’t seem to be a reflection of this in your cars appearance.

Story:
I know…you don’t play a game like The Crew and expect an award winning story but I honestly couldn’t have guessed it would be this bad. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, not that it’s possible really to spoil it. It took some time and a little group collaboration to pin-point exactly what the story reminded me of but at the end of the day we figured it out. How does a story that blends Son’s of Anarchy and Fast & Furious together, remove everything good about those two plots and throw Gordon Freeman behind the wheel, you have The Crew.

From the first mission on it fails grab your attention with it’s overly cliché storyline. I hoped that it would ramp up and offer me something that I could grab onto and drive me to want more story missions but each new character introduced is as boring as the last or just plain annoying.

Plusses: You don’t have to do much of the story missions to unlock some of the better features of the game. Some story missions are pretty short and offer really good experience. Fast way to level your character level.

Minuses: The story is cliché and boring.

Summary and Verdict:
Overall this game is actually pretty fun and after a few hours of gameplay new game modes open that really add to the games fun. The Crew is even more entertaining if you can find a couple buddies to roll with and do race missions. Let’s be honest, it’s fun to be the crash derby guy and intentionally put your buddy into the wall. You can’t go wrong playing The Crew if you are looking for something that’s just simple and fun. The largest fault is the many inconsistencies that you’ll begin to notice after only a few minutes of playing.

I’m giving the game a 6/10 for the faults in story, graphics and inconsistency.