The astonishing cluelessness of The Crew 2

User reviews are equally harsh and about the same. Surprising as they are so often wildly divergent.

Yes you can. You just buy a new car and work your way from level 0 just like in the beginning. Heck you can unequip your old car’s upgrades and turn your max level car back to 0, if you want.

Tom, I’m not much of a car game person, but I do like open world games. If I were to try one car game, should it be The Crew?

Correction:
“the first game[’]s geographical progression”

If you’re interested in the open-world aspect, and you want to play a driving game instead of a racing game*, The Crew is absolutely the way to go. There’s nothing else like it, and it’s designed to appeal to MMO players and open-world enthusiasts.

-Tom

* This is a really important distinction! If you’re interested in a racing game, there are further questions about whether you want a precision racing game or more of a rough-and-tumble racing game. It’s a great time to be into the rough-and-tumble with Dirt 4 and Wreckfest, which are both head-and-shoulders better than anything else. For precision racing games, it’s a bit more competitive because too many precision racing games are so in love with the simulation that they don’t pay enough attention to the game.

This whole discussion has caused me to take The Crew off my Not Interested list in Steam and add it to my wishlist. Except… pauses to remember how to log into my uPlay account I already own it! From their giveaway years ago? Should I bother with the expansions, or is the base game enough?

The base game is enough, but the game will constantly rub the fact that you don’t own the expansions in your face. After every event.

That’ll get old quickly. I’m predicting that’s not going to have the effect on me they hoped for. Maybe they’ll get lucky and have a sale soon after I start playing.

Comment on Ars Technica called out Tom’s review for being so fabulously written.

Let’s not forget how Tom says the game doesn’t want you to explore its map when there are like 5 or 6 races that take you across the map in so many different routes.

Uplay is running a free weekend of this if anyone wants to try it.
I’ve just played a couple car races and an air event but it seems fine if you can tolerate the obnoxious follower stuff. The controls and physics for the cars seem a little better than the Crew 1 and otherwise it’s generally an iterative improvement with planes, bikes and boats attached. I’m at least very fond of the Test Drive option before buying cars that should be in every car game.
Like most Ubisoft games these days it just feels so bland. I actually watched the story cut scenes of the first Crew game because they were actually somewhat interesting to me. This doesn’t seem to have much story at all.

I was pleasantly surprised to to see that they added the overhead GPS from the first game in the last patch.

So I ended up buying this in the sale after the free weekend and the dynamic weather is kind of ridiculous.

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I am having more fun with the arcade planes than I expected especially the low altitude challenges (that draw distance to the bridge is kind of insane and maybe why they lowered the quality of some stuff)

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Some of the local photo opportunities are actually interesting and not just animal spotting :)

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The wave/wake simulation is the only fun part about the boats to me.
Regarding cars then I don’t really mind buying different ones for different events but that might change when I need to grind credits for a Hypercar.