Running Wild

This is the second in a series of posts that will happen in rapid succession before i settle back in to a more regular posting pattern. I hope you enjoy.

Today we will talk about a subject near and dear to me, namely the Crew. Back in November the game got it´s first major content injections with the Wild Run expansion. With this came three so called extreme specs in the form of Drag, Drift and Monster truck. It also featured a new event called the Summit. This is a set of PvP and PvE challenges themed around things such as a place on the map, a car brand or a nationality. The idea is to compete on a server wide leaderboard and win parts, extreme car kits crew credits or exclusive cars. It is set up in such a way that there are a series of qualifying events throughout the month leading up to each summit. Score at least an overall bronze medal in three qualifiers and you get to enter the summit. This is not hard any anyone one want to can get their medals.

The event has a set list of game modes but the tracks change from event to event. But there will always be one event each for the new extreme specs and two time attack races.  One is open to any car of the corresponding spec and the other is locked to a specific brand of car or bike. Yes bikes have come to the Crew and they use the regular specs such a street or dirt. Each event also have a crew and a regular PvP event. And don´t worry if you do not have a garage rivaling Jay Leno, the game lends you a car for any event that you lack a car for and the PvP event put all players in equally good cars to make things even.

So all in all the Wild Run have given the Crew players something to do once they reach max level. It is still the same game but now at least there is that element of competition that the old PvP system did not deliver. They have also made it easier to connect to a PvP game, something I complained about in my original review.

But all is not sunshine and puppies, a fair number of players who bought the gold edition or the season pass felt that the Wild Run expansion should have been included in the season pass and that the fact that there is now content locked behind a paywall is something unsightly in this day and age. There has also been complaints that the bikes and the drag spec make the game pay to win since a good player can use these to gain an advantage in some races(bikes) and decimate some skills challenges (drag and bike). While this does have merit there is no actual reward beyond recognition topping these things. The final thing that get under peoples skin is the ever current presence of cheaters, previously easy to avoid and with very little impact in the game at large. The new addition of a competitive leaderboard in combination with actual prices for to top players have had them coming out of the woodwork. Ubisoft claims to be working on the issue but only time will tell. For most people the impact is minimal and only the very top percent will ever really run the risk of losing anything from these “players”.

So to cap things off the Wild Run have injected a much needed purpose in to the Crew and with the promise of more varied qualifier tracks and challenges in combination with the continued effort to introduce more cars and ways to customize them the future looks really bright for this game. 

I run with The Crew again.

So as some people know the Crew from Ubisoft have been released and despite losing out on some sweet pre-order loot (who can say no to free cars in a car game) I did not do the whole dance and song of buying a game sight unseen. Especially as my experience during the beta was less than stellar in the driving department and lacked some serious online presence… Not very good thing for an online racing game… Add to that the whole embargo on reviews until the game was released and it was pretty much impossible for me to dip before.

But at its core the game was still fun and the PC beta was some good months before release. Much did happen. Especially the improvements to the early cars and how they handle. So I picked it up as my early Christmas gift to myself (ain´t being adult grand) and have sunk a few hours, getting myself up to level ten and finding my first hidden car. Now the game still lack a bunch in the online department and calling it a MMO is using the widest definition of the term as it is very limited in the amount of people you can see and interact with. It also have bugs… But what the fuck does not these days so I am not going to bother with that. If they are not fixed in a month I might consider climbing the barricade.

 

still very much carporn

Now most of what I said in my preview post  about The Crew still stands, the game is still very nice looking and the relaxed feeling of taking your favorite car on a cross country trip with no other goal then to drive is... relaxing and well perhaps not fun in the traditional sense but it give you a sense of freedom that few other racing games do. It is also very fun in its blatant disregard for realism and well often laws of physics. Taking your car and parking it at the top of Pikes Peak… Taking in the scenery… And then put the pedal to the medal down the Cliffside with no other goal then to see how fast you get to the bottom if liberating. The music range from great to passable depending on your taste in music buuut on does miss the talk shows from the GTA series. A minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things.

Now the game is not without flaws, the controls are still a bit squirrely and it is easy to overcorrect. Also this game is a console port… Do not event think of trying to play the game without at least a controller. It is simply not doable in my opinion. The content is also a problem, as varied as it is both in task and difficulty… It gets old fast. Now this is not much the games fault, it is a competent arcade racer and had it not tried to be something more I would not even bring it up here. But with the overarching goal of being a MMO of some type it would have needed something more, maybe some more wacky or instanced “cinematic“ sets?

Then it is the “story”… The legacy the games carry from more traditional racers. Not only are we hard locked in to the whitest dude since sliced toast. Thik what would happen if Freeman from Half-Life had a lovechild with Walter White from Breaking Bad… Now feed that child a steady diet of the Fast n Furious… Presto… It is so predictable I expect Michelle Rodrigues to pop up and try to screw me over. But I guess it does a passable to job to explain what could have been done with a normal tutorial. This does sort of lead me to the in my mind biggest flaw.

Customization.

Not only can you not change who you “are”… Because no matter how muc I like to I am not going to see myself as a car… I leave the up to Pixar.  But the car itself seriously lack in the customization department. Certain looks are tied to the games “class” system and other are simply not there for one arbitrary reason or other such as some paints and decals. For a game that says the car will be a reflection of me… They lock a good amount behind weird walls, I can understand that my dune racer need beefier suspension and wheels… but why not let me go a bit crazy with what I put on it...? The cynic in me say that it is because they need to put something in the cash shop.

Now one nice thing was that if one have 100 UPlay points you get a free Dodge Viper... that unlike 99% of Dodge Vipers in games do not suck. It is actually really fun. But the down side is ofc that you need UPlay to play the game. Ubisofts own little game platform still need some love and is not the most efficient snippet of code. But it is getting better.

So to sum things up. Ubisoft do have a really good core with The Crew but now it is up to task if they manages to keep the game updated on a regular basis and can keep the content flowing. If not this will be a very sad and short-lived attempt by Ubisoft to muscle in on the online scene.

My run with The crew

So I just wrapped up my run in the closed beta of the new online racer from Ubisoft and Ivory Tower The Crew. I will be giving a quick summary of my experience with the game first and then go in to detail over a few subjects. 

 

Image courtesy of Ubisoft

The Crew does on many ways remind me of the old Test drive and Need for speed games and that is perhaps not all that strange since the team them self are a crew of racing game devs brought together to produce the next big thing. And that is kind of the problem. The game does remind you of a lot of other and in my opinion better games you could be playing. Now this is as I said a closed beta and there is still room over the next couple of months to polish this game up to a very good experience. The core of the Crew is a fairly standard “crook with a heart of gold”-story that have you, a street racer and Gordon Freeman like white dude working under cover with a government agency to take down a corrupt federal agent. Since the beta was limited to level 10 I have no clue how that part of the game pans out.

This single player part of the game is seamlessly married to an always online mode and a open world that let you drive in a compacted version of the united states. You can drive from coast to coast without any visible loading screens and see other players that also play the game, the world is also very good looking with a smooth transition from day to night and different weather. This way the game remains open and less repetitive as you can if you get bored of the regular races and challenges either just set yourself a goal or challenge some random person you meat to see who has the best car.

That brings me to the cars. Each car is fully licensed… No Gnord or Snubmarus here... and they look very good with a good level of detail even at lower settings. Each car can be upgraded both in the traditional way of putting in better engines and tires but also by kitting it with what is called a “spec” turning your car from a everyday supercar un to a track machine or a dune crawler ready for Paris-Dakar… And since I have seen a Ferrari in some of the promo material they could end up looking awesome. You also get a slew of visual parts tied and themed to each kit.

So if you are looking for something to scratch that TestDrive:Unlimited itch or just need a change from the latest Criterion offering the Crew could be a good alternative and if you pre-order right now you get some extra kits and a very cool Cooper Mini that might or might not be exclusive to the preorder deal. But at 50 euro retail my advice is that you take a look at the videos players have recorded to get a better idea if this game is for you.

So now let me get up close and personal with the Crew. 

Image courtesy of Ubisoft

Gameplay

As I said before this game is a weird mix of a single player and a mmo game that at strongly remind me about the old TDU games. Now the population was low, most likely because of it being a closed beta so it was hard to get any feel for how the co-op and PvP parts of the game will work. The single player racing follows the traditional structure of you starting out with a “crap” car.. if you can call a Ford Mustang, a Nissan 370Z or a ´14 Charger crap… But they are bone stock regular cars and behave like soaped erasers once you push them past 60 mph. Once you get to the first kit, street it gets a bit better and by then you have also learnt to adapt to how the game has its general physics set up. But yes your early races are going to be a lot of cursing and hitting retry as tiny mistakes avalanche in to what is in essence a lost race. Especially as many races are either timed or have you finishing first in order to advance. But if you muscle through it things will gradually get better and that same setup makes going off-road very fun as planning is wasted and you drive by instinct and measured insanity. So in this regard it is very much a MMO and a really unforgiving one at that.

So outside the normal checkpoint races you have what is called skill challenges, these are specific tasks you find in free drive and are set up in such a way that you can often do them as you drive from one place to another. They can be stuff like keeping as high of a speed as you can along a dirt or to drive slalom down a freeway. My personal favourite are the jumping challenges. The goal is simple, drive fast and jump really far… If you fly far enough you earn a gold upgrade part.

Now since the map is fairly large, even the regions are fairly big and driving everywhere would be very annoying. The game let you fast travel to any... and I do literally mean any part of the map that you have already visited. This make it easy for you to take a break from the story mission to meet up with some friends or take on a specific skill challenge. It also let you take breaks and resume your exploration of the world. And explore it you should. Beyond the simple novelty of visiting some very famous landmarks and finding more skill challenges there are car wrecks placed at obvious and less obvious places (don’t worry they will show up on your radar when you get close. No need to fear missing one) collect 20 parts from these and you will build special kit cars like hotrods and other oddities.

Image courtesy of Gamespot

Graphics

This game is beautiful. There is no denying it and there is actually a fair bit of ambiance driving from New York to Miami and see the sun set, night pass and the sun start to rise as you roll down to the beach and park your car looking out over the water. And this on a very mid-spec computer. I had very few performance issues (insert Viagra joke here... preferably a funny one) and apart from some weird graphics glitches at one time the game ran smooth and did not look bad even at low settings. Each car is really nice looking and while magic repairs it over time mud, dust and a nice selection of body damage all work to make you feel like your car is actually in the world.

Now as I said there is no permanent body damage, your “life” is a green bar and any scratches, dings and full on wipe-outs all fade away over time. I would have like to see them stay until I repair but since the car can´t break down all the way, and by extension suffer total body demolition it is a thing I can live with. Better this then it stopping at some weird permanent half-wreck but still drivable.  

All UI elements are well laid out and easy to read and you should have no problems finding your way around the game.

The game support five different camera setting with the classic bumper, hood, driver’s seat (with fully modeled interior), right behind read bumper and a further back up third person cam. So no matter how you like your driving the game should satisfy on the account.

Input/Controller

I hope you have a gamepad… Or a steering wheel because this game does not like keyboards at all. As most things that are also to be released on console the game pretty much demands a controller. But once you have one plugged in it plays very good. All menu interactions are fluid and buttons are very well laid out and mapped. Did not have any issues at all with the gamepad. Then ofc it might help that I have a PC with windows and a corded X-Box 360 controller. Cannot speak for how off-brand controllers work. I also assume the game would work well with a steering wheel but I have not been able to test that… H would have looked VERY funny at me if I said I had to buy a steering wheel to test a game…

It is at this point unknown to me if the game will support rift/TrackIR but since it has a first person mode it could be done I guess.

Music/Audio

Music is good with several built in playlists in the by now standard radio station configuration. Ambient audio is good but sadly car audio is very lacking. In fact the Nissan was so high pitch it became annoying after a while and none of the muscle cars really had the grunt you expect. Now this might be more realistic but as it often is reality does not always match expectation. But I am sure it is something that could be tweaked before it goes live. And honestly if it really bothers me I guess I could just mess around in the equalizer for my headset. But it is an issue none the less.

Image courtesy of Ubisoft

Conclusion

The Crew has potential and while it does inherit some of the bad from its MMO roots such as the grind and the double power creep it will have a Pay2Skip option that let you simply plunk down some money and buy the cars and equipment you like for real world money. If that P2S turns in to P2W we will see once the game is released but with UBISOFT´s willingness for DLC and micro transaction I am sure that more the a few people will feel that the label is deserved. Me I reserve my judgement for a later date. I had a fun few days in the Crew but it has yet to fully convince me that it is the right fit for me. I am holding off on any pre-order and see what they do with the feedback they got from this beta session.

A solid 6/10. It is fun but still have a lot of room to grow. But at least it is not another Criterion Need for Speed.