The Crew is an open world racing game that really let's you explore America right from the countryside to the urban areas, is nothing like anything that has been seen before. You get a miniscale version of the map of United States with open driving of races from street cars, performance, circuits, or dirt.
The game is well better optimized than Ubisoft's previous releases this year and has beautiful visuals and a very detailed environment with a lot of functional NPC's and wildlife to see along the way.
The problem however is that The Crew is meant to be a racing game, and hence a bad driving experience is inexcusable. The Crew manages to deliver this poor performance because of two major issues, the sluggish and unresponsive control over the cars and poor AI. The driving experience does get better though, as you level up and get experience lowering the frequency of crashes. The leveling system does make the game seem like a bit of a grind as only at level 50 are you entitled to platinum car parts which are earned via a platinum medal in skills challenges and story missions.
Although being announced as a massively multiplayer online game, the game only has eight players in one session, which after trying for hours at a time I wasn't able to become part of such an event.
The game is also buggy and a bunch of glitches surface from time to time like driving through obstacles and cars randomly going off-track.
There is a lot of competitive play to look forward to with a player versus player mode and detailed leader boards and statistics for every kind of nerd itch you may have. The story is about 10+ hours long with decent storyline where you play as Alex Taylor infiltrating criminal groups.
One of the worst things about the game, especially for India is that the game requires an always on internet connection, with less than ideal server conditions. The lack of an Offline mode makes it a complete no for many gamers around the country. Even when online, the "Play with Friends" option is not reliable as its not always functional.
The crew has a small number of playable vehicles when compared to other games in the genre and many of them aren't the best. The fact that you need to own the season pass to be able to play the 12 cars every month they are adding, seems to give the message that they are trying to juice every bit of cash they can. To add to that the level of microtransactions present allows players to buy really expensive cars with real money giving them an unfair advantage.
All in all, the game delivers an average experience at best and does not manage to deliver to it's promise, at least as of now. Looking at it's current state, it may take a while and some money from you to be able to get this game to a decent state.
Rating: 5/10
Verdict: Average at best
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ivory Tower, Ubisoft Reflections
Genre: Racing
Platforms: PlayStation 4 &Xbox One- Rs 3,499, Xbox 360- Rs 2,999, Microsoft Windows- Rs 1,499
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