The Crew is a brand new racing game made by publisher Ubisoft and it is a truly great game. The Crew starts off with an adrenaline fuel chase where you are trying to escape the police. The player is dropped into the thick of it in an F-150 built for off road and then thrown all thought the country like area. After escaping the police the player is then told to go switch their car out for more of a street car and to get to the start of a street race that’s about to start. The player then drives a 1969 Chevy Camaro RS. You race through the streets of Detroit and then see where you land in your first crazy street race. Afterwards your brother asks you if you could drive him to meet another racer and if you could help put him back in his place. No spoilers here but that’s where everything starts to spiral downhill.

After all those actions unfold the player is told how the big street racing crew in the game work. They’re called the 5-10’s and every member has a tattoo on their neck that say 5-10 and a rank.  You can just be a 5-10 racer, you can be a V-2 racer, V-4 racer, V-6 racer, and last is the guy at the top the V-8. The V-2’s mostly each get a city to watch over and the V-4’s get a whole area. Then there are very few V-6’s and only one V-8 and of course as the player your goal is to rise to the top of this hierarchy.

This game is like a blast from the past. I think this game is really similar to the older racing game Midnight Club L.A. that was released back in 2008 by Rockstar. I really enjoyed that game but it got out dated pretty quickly.  This game is like a next gen version of it. The customization in this game is really in depth. The player can change most visual aspects of their car, anything from their bumpers and fenders to the color and material used in the interior. Then you can also change the internals of your car to make it better, faster, and stronger. You can also paint and decal your car to your own liking.

On top of customization to your car you can also get it in a specification.  There are five tuning specs, as they’re called in game, and they are street, dirt, raid, performance, and circuit. Each spec is specialized to do something better than the other. Street is specialized for straight races on streets, as the name applies. It’s not great at turning but it’s the most common spec in the game. Dirt is meant for off road and is much better at turning than straightaways and specifically made to keep their speed when not following a road. Raid is built just for hitting other cars;  they’re built with a ton of more health then other cars and deal way more damage. Performance is much like street only a bit better tuned and more for higher end cars. Lastly is circuit and they’re built like Nascar cars so to go fast and in circles.

The setting of this game is the whole U.S.A.  You can visit 48 out of 50 states at any time you want. The U.S. is condensed a bit and some things look a little off but it takes about an hour, in real time not in game time, to go from one end to the other end. That’s absolutely insane in my opinion to have such a huge open world map and it makes me marvel at how well this game is done. The storyline is surprisingly good for a racing game. most racing games fall short in story but this one has actually kept me invested.

The only downfall is the difficulty of the game. To upgrade your car you most achieve high point values in races or activites and to do that you need better parts. So in essence you need the better parts to get better parts and you’re stuck in a loop of losing without them. The races themselves seem to be really difficult every other car that’s ranked worse or the same as yours and they are way faster than your car and it’s almost impossible to actually win races with highpoints. Again this makes it hard to actually upgrade your car and progress.

Overall though this game is great if you can not flip out on the game for losing a ton of racing games. I would recommend this game to any fan of free roam racing games like Need for Speed, Forza Horizon, or Midnight Club L.A., also to anyone who like games where you can just relax and unwind and drive a Mustang GT coast to coast going an average of 150 miles per hour like I love to.