Just few days ago, Ubisoft gave the world a small glimpse of their upcoming racing game as the beta went live for only 24 hours last Wednesday. As a result, people have now seen that The Crew just might have a more layers than you perhaps have thought of. If you missed your opportunity to take The Crew for a test drive, let us tell you what to look for when The Crew enters stores.
For those who haven’t heard about Ubisoft’s upcoming racing title, The Crew hopes to set itself as ” The World of Warcraft of Racing Games”. It is an upcoming racing video game set in an open world environment with online multiplayer, extensive car customization and next-gen open world engine.
Find your own style of playing the game
Starting from the first moments you’ll know that you’ll be playing a racing game that actually has a story mode to finish. You play the game as a street racer name Alex Taylor who has been framed for murder of his brother. Alex goes from wanting to join his brother’s organization – infamous street racing gang called 501s – all the way to helping the FBI bring it down.
You’ll be doing this by creating a reputation for yourself by driving through missions such as Go To, Collect, Get Away, Follow, Takedown, Outrun and that familiar Race. These missions might sound simple at heart, but will require quite a lot of skill if the terrain is unfamiliar for you. With good variety in the mission types, The Crew should be able to please players with different play styles.
In addition to the missions, players will be able to participate in mini-games called skills that are peppered across the world. These challenges are triggered when a player drives through them and it involves completing challenges such as weaving through gates and staying as close to a racing line for a period of time. Players’ scores are automatically saved so friends can try and beat their scores. Fans of the Need For Speed series should feel right at home as it reminds how Need For Speed’s Autolog works in games of the Need for Speed franchise.
The Crew promises extensive customization of your cars. As normal MMO’s offer heavy customization of your characters, in The Crew, your cars can be seen as the characters. You’ll be able to edit the cosmetic and performance related aspects of your licensed vehicles. You can also strip the car right down to the chassis and built it back up to suit your chosen play style.
You can choose tuning specs for your car and they work a bit similarly like character classes. You’re also free to choose between them. So if you feel like going for “Dirt” option, that is as valid as “Performance” which are machines built to compete with speed.
If you are worrying about the limit of cars that you can have, you can rest assured as The Crew has huge garage limit and one of every car can fit in.
Players can also build cars with a tie-in app for iOS and Android.
Never drive alone
Even though the game has a single-player powered story, it is not a separate experience from the multiplayer. Just like we’ve seen in many Ubisoft’s previous titles, missions can be played alone, with friends, or with online co-op matchmaking. The downside of this is that The Crew will need that always-online connection that still causes a lot of terror in many gamers. On the other hand, you’ll be joining a world of car enthusiasts, where you can always have someone ready to take challenges with OR against you.
And that is exactly what The Crew aims to be: An open-world racing game that is all about social gameplay. It is as easy to partner with a pair of strangers as it is with your carefully chosen Crew, then speed through a variety of missions or challenges in the game’s seamless open world. It doesn’t’ matter if it is just you and your car, other games will be passing by as you drive across The Crew’s America.
While we do not know can The Crew make a significant dent in Need For Speed’s dominance in arcade action racing, it sure seems like Ubisoft’s latest attempt just might be a worthy contender. Stay tuned for a review.
The Crew will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC on December 2.
Those hungry for The Crew screenshots and images head over here.