The TDU series is a lifestyle simulator where you go from having a 🤬 job to having the most impressive car collection bar Leno and the Sultan of Brunei and the most impressive houses short of Donald Trump. You can show off your lack of taste by inviting people to your apartment or just meet them wherever you find them in the open world. It's about teleporting yourself to an alternate universe where you're actually going to make it in life.
The Crew is a driving game. All you can spend your money on is cars. Aside from driving cars, all you can do is take them to an upgrade shop or swap bits around in the garage. Any social interactions or events take place on the road, wherever that may be. The garage has no real purpose other than storing your cars, which also can be quite a lot. IT LIVES AND BREATHES CARS.
I don't mind the TDU games. The problem with a new release these days is it'll have to go head to head with the likes of GTA. Really, take the guns out of GTA and you have TDU. Yes, the latter category described above is dominated by the Forza Horizon series, but, for political reasons, that'll only ever reach half its potential customer base.
DISCLAIMER: I am not asking anyone to do anything. I’m just speaking for myself.
Some four years ago, The Crew was announced at E3 2013. It got released a year and a half later, and has had two expansions released so far: Wild Run in November 2015, and Calling All Units in late November 2016. And The Crew 2 got announced May 16. For some reason that I haven’t figured out and thus can’t explain, I believe I have nothing to do with this. But I'll look at the announcement from three angles, and do my best to explain what I'm looking for as far as each of those angles go. Or, at the very least, what I would like to see.
1. THE CREW 2 AS AN MMORPG
The Crew, although not the best MMORPG by far, is the go-to console game that comes to me head whenever I think about a racing MMO. Instead of using swords, spears, magic, and other assorted weaponry to fight to the death, you’re driving cars along a set route in...well, what do you think?
Key things in an MMO that I would like to see in The Crew 2:
Open world environment that allows for instance-based events, and interactions with other players and NPCs in the world. I’ll get into these more as this post continues, and it technically ties into local events.
An actual leveling system that goes well past level 60 so I can better tell exactly how long people have been playing this game. Getting to level 60 doesn’t take very long, I’ve noticed as I was able to complete all the story missions within a couple days after first playing it at the very end of 2014.
Rich customization of player characters, or your car collection in this case. But I think that could be extended to player characters as well. Then again, non-MMO racing games have customization of cars as well. There’s just so much variations you have, depending on how you want to mix-and-match various body parts, spoilers, hoods, paint jobs, liveries, license plates...the only things you can’t do are create your own custom design from scratch, add underglow to the car, paint your car a unique color (there goes that lavender pink Cadillac lowrider I wanted to make), or go to car shows with it.
Crew vs. Crew, with better matchmaking, could give The Crew 2 a little bit of MOBA as well. It doesn’t matter if it stays 4v4 or expands beyond that to 5v5, 6v6, 8v8, and so on. This would mean that general PvP lobby sizes would have to increase as well to accommodate the increase in the amount of players you can have in one crew at a time. So if 16 was the maximum at once, you could do a CvC head-to-head battle with up to 32 people. Call it a MMO crossed with a MOBA crossed with NFSMW05.
Better loot, or improved Smart Loot at the very least if it’s not going to be removed.
And a few other things that would give more life to the half-full sandbox that is this game.
I believe I mentioned Guild Wars 2 somewhere in there, and how the need for strengthened netcode would give way to larger sessions, which would give way to sizable car meets and larger crews. So after five years, why is there no “Guild Wars 3” announcement from ArenaNet? Because there's no doubt that Guild Wars fans would buy GW2 when it was released in August 2012, but even more than that, it was critically acclaimed as a marvel in MMO development. It packed its world with content, quests, campaigns and without the need for a monthly fee as an added bonus. The following quotes are from a GamesRadar interview from April 2007, in response to how the planned experience would differ from what the original could do...
ArenaNet Founder Jeff Strain
...In Guild Wars, we were able to tell very specific and very grand stories through the use of our instancing technology and the way we structured the campaigns. Each campaign had a big epic story and we were really able to cast you as the hero of that story. In Guild Wars 2, we want to retain our ability to do that, but rather than telling one big monolithic story our goal is to pursue story arcs and story bubbles - that players can choose to take their characters into a story arc and maybe there a several missions and persistent areas that'll tie that together.
...and when asked about how no one at the time was following in their footsteps in using a subscription-free model.
Guild Wars Lead Designer Ben Miller
In order to support the unique business model that Guild Wars has, you need the technology to back it up. And I think that's something that in past maybe we haven't talked enough about, but the client server architecture of Guild Wars is so efficient that it is entirely cost-effective and profitable to run the game and the service without charging a subscription. A lot of companies I think are interested in that, but they don't have the technology to support it.
Fast-forward: A lot of MMOs have come out and they have a subscription-free model, although in their quest for money, that didn't stop them from making up for that by charging for microtransactions, The Crew included. And I believe Guild Wars 2 served as a wake-up call for the entire genre, it's first-week success serving as a reminder that the monthly subscription was on its way to becoming a thing of the past. Will microtransactions become a thing of the past? And if they do, could monthly subscriptions make a return? I doubt it, but I'm just speculating here.
So November 2016 comes around, Calling All Units is released. We got 10 short (and, by my own admission, very easy) quests, and some cars. There’s one thing that I think Ivory Tower horribly underestimated when they made this expansion...and that is how much effort went into what they used as a base for the Wild Run (at least, according to BlackPanthaa). Do you want to know how much effort went into World of Warcraft? Simple: https://www.thegamereviews.com/article-1515-World-of-Warcraft-by-the-Numbers.html
NOTE: All statistics are valid as of September 18, 2009, meaning they're heavily outdated today. Even if you were to guess what those numbers have risen to as of now, I will still not deny that even for 2009, that is dedication to a product.
It's so hard, after looking at this information, to deny the sheer amount of effort, man power, and support that has gone into WoW. Even if I like it (which I don't), I still get the hard work constantly poured into it, even to this day. Another franchise that constant gets hard work poured into it? The Legend of Zelda - and they've been doing it for over three decades, and their newest outing, "Breath of the Wild" could be considered a single-player only version of an MMO a la Skyrim. In both The Crew and BotW, you have one goal:
The Crew: Avenge the death of your older brother (who formed a street racing group called the 5-10 Motor Club, which the protagonist joins as part of an undercover FBI operation) and have a corrupt agent and the current V8 (whom since has turned the 5-10s into a countrywide gang network) arrested.
BotW: Defeat Ganon. Do you see how simple and iconicthis goal is?
In both games, if you see something or somewhere on the map, you can go right there immediately. In The Crew, you can achieve your goal, but you have to complete a specific set of quests in your first zone order to progress the story. There are five zones, and once you finish all the quests in one zone, you can move on to the next. Finish all quests in all five zones, and you're done with whatever story this game had. The crew members you get serve little to no purpose in the story proper, and are just there to provide you with perks. These can be either discounts on cars and parts, or upgrades to how much money you can make and how fast you can go. In BotW, you can ignore all of those quests, explore as much of the world as you please, and go after Ganon any time you want, however you want. (Doing so right out of the box is extremely ill-advised.) That info proves that while The Crew may be intuitive to a very limited extent (and the goals you get for each quest are not flexible at all. But to be fair, they're not meant to be because you really have only one objective in a race: Win it.), BotW is amazing in how intuitive it is, and while you don't have to do every single quest, completing what is considered the "main" quests will give Link some allies who help him in the final battle against Ganon. OK, so your crew members talk to you during The Crew's final battle with Shiv (or whatever his name was), but they don't really do anything useful. Not just during the final battle, throughout the entire game - and all this with the exception of Zoe, the FBI agent chick that busts you out of prison at the start of the game. Apart from you, she does more work than any other character throughout the entire campaign.
Another lesson that can be learned from BotW: The Crew 2's story shouldn't take up that much, let alone any importance value of the overall game itself. But you should be able to do anything at any time, right after you finish/skip the tutorial on how to play the game, use the features, and/or tune your car. And what about all the activities you can do and the locations that you can visit, especially the little things that make the whole experience that much more lively? If you come across a place where you can set up an HQ for all your operations, you can go there. If you come across a car dealership, you can go to said dealership, test drive a car and buy it if it suits you. If you come across a spot where you can add body modifications, visual modifications, performance parts, police equipment, lowrider hydraulics, or a personalized paint job to your car, you can go to that place and get those parts applied. If you're parked on the side of the road in an open enough space, you can start a car meet there, (and likewise, join a car meet if you see one in a nearby parking lot.) If you're driving something that looks really cool or flashy, and you hear that a car show is happening, you can enter into it. If you see a group of players up the road and they’re all travelling as one group and at speed, you either have the option of joining them or letting them go about their business. And if you see a Pokémon on the side of the road, you can take out a Pokéball and catch it! All of this would definitely be possible, but the real challenge, to me, is to actually pull it off and make it work.
If The Crew were to shut down at any time after The Crew 2's launch as TDU did, how long would Ivory Tower be able to sustain it, or can they sustain it with Ubisoft's help? One of two things is possible in this scenario, and moving to another region isn't one of them as the game's servers are already global. So that leaves shutting it down for good, as re-licensing the game to another publisher would probably cost Ubisoft a lot of time and effort that they could be spending wasting our time with their other announced outings (Far Cry 5 being one of them). Then again, I can only see The Crew 2 lasting longer than its predecessor. Being able to support and maintain any game of this size will require hundreds, if not thousands of people to help. Ubisoft has already commented that they’re going to give long-term support to The Crew, but I don’t know if they were talking about the game “The Crew”, or the franchise “The Crew”. I don't know if Ivory Tower has the resources to accomplish the daunting task of keeping the game afloat by 2019, but I guess we'll find that out in due time.
2. THE CREW 2 AS A RACING GAME
I'll begin with the short version: It was fun for the first 200 hours, then I felt like it needed a trip to the pencil sharpener. (I've been playing GTA Online for the past four months, and although that game's not an MMO, it certainly has several elements used in MMOs - a level cap of 8,000 being one of them.)
Competitiveness in an important aspect in a racing game, but I felt it didn’t bring that element to this table. As far as story missions go, I believe that they were just there to exist. The faction missions are supposed to be nice little things you can do between or after story missions, and we don't even get any kind of ranking system for those. The Summit, introduced in Wild Run, rectified that by giving you a position on the leaderboard based on the time that you got, instead of some arbitrary point-scoring system. I would like The Crew 2 to do away with "points" entirely, and just give us leaderboards for all the story and faction missions, ranked based on who got the fastest time on the route. This is how it has been done for over half a decade now (based on my own experience), so I see no reason why Ivory Tower and Ubisoft shouldn't get with the program, said program being the need for real-time PvP competition. It's that one extra thing that gives us the drive to succeed even more, and place higher than we already have, and The Crew 2 needs it out of the box.
That said, I can still say all of this:
The Crew had cockpit view, (something GRID 2 didn't do, even though Codemasters had the technology to do it 5 years before AND a year later, with Race Driver: GRID and GRID Autosport respectively. And all of this on a last-gen console.)
...adjusting FFB wasn't a mess, (Project CARS did this, unfortunately. The menu used for FFB adjustment made me long for the days of when the Ferrari 458's biochemistry was off the charts. That, and simpler menus with few options.)
...and Michael Bay wasn’t involved with the production. (like how he was involved with Need For Speed: The Run)
Arcade or Simulator, as far as a serious racing game goes, at least they got some of the basics. And seeing as it’s a racing game with a similar idea that helped give way to games like this, I guess I should compare this to Test Drive Unlimited as well. I’ve never played it...
...and probably never will.
But from what I can tell just by going through this thread, the cars each had a sense of individuality - each one felt unique to drive, almost as if all of the cars had different handling models. Or, if they all have the same handling model, someone at the former Eden Games must have put a lot of work into making sure that each car felt different: That no two cars accelerated at the same pace, handled the same way, had the same top speed (down to the hundredth of a mile), or had the same aerodynamics. How is all of that possible? I’ll never know, but I do know that whatever TDU accomplished in 2006 is 100% achievable in today’s era. My problem, as far as being able to do so goes, is that no arcade racing developer seems like they’re willing to put that much effort into a racing game today like they did between 1994 and 2006.
Or, in other words...
Not my exact sentiment on the matter, but you get the idea.
Then TDU2 happened, and I picked an unfortunate time to jump in.
Don’t worry, that one’s for my 2011 self.
Not much I’ll say about that one, but I remember it being sub-par at its worst, and a pretty good open world racing game at its best. One thing I didn’t like about it was the way the cars all felt similar, as if the Test Drive franchise had lost some, but not all of what made the first TDU so unique that I completely missed out on it. There was still some sense of individuality in TDU2, but The Crew took away that individuality even more and left a withered, old man where TDU used to be. I felt like the specs had their own handling models, but most of the cars in each spec felt a little bit too similar to one another. I played it for the gameplay, and I thought it was OK for a while in 2016...
...but at the very same time, do people watch sports for the game? If the 2004 World Series is any indication, no. Why? Because it was the first time the Boston Red Sox had won the World Series since 1918, ending what was called the “Curse of the Bambino” - it was the only way to lift the curse, even though they had already beaten the Yankees in the playoffs that year to make it in. The drama in their locker room, I feel, had to be so intense that people - even those who weren’t into baseball that much - were just watching to see if the Red Sox were going to beat the Cardinals. They didn’t just beat them, they shut them out 4-0 games to win it all. So, would that make The Crew a sports game? Since racing is a sport, then to me, that makes it somewhere between 1 and 4 parts sports game (out of 10 parts). But my point is, if there's no compelling story arc in this sports tournament, then why am I playing through it to see how intense it gets in the finals?
Getting back to The Crew, we did get a story. It just doesn’t suit the intended atmosphere at all; potentially hundreds of complete strangers, all gathering to improvise a meet-up as they prepare to ride together, and just generally cruise around an entire country on and off the road in a plethora of different types of vehicles. They compete in races against one another, help each other out when chased by the cops, never stand down, never slow down, and never drive alone. That’s what the E3 2013 trailer made it out to be like, but the story changed that feeling. I felt like helping this guy get his revenge instead, then I didn’t really feel like grouping with other players that often, because what can you really do as a pack of four--better question: What was TDU's story? And what’s my guess for The Crew 2’s storyline?
Test Drive Unlimited - You’re a guy or girl who takes an airplane to Hawaii. Get money, cars, big houses, cool clothes and swag.
The Crew 2 - My Guess is, you’re a guy or girl somewhere in wherever this game takes place. Get money, cars, travel points, friends, into a :censored:load of trouble with the cops/local gangs/the mafia/dirty racers, an art degree from Forza Motorsport University (if that’s even possible) and swag.
On a side note, those who’ve been keeping up with EA may have learned that after 16 years, their exclusive licensing deal with Porsche has ended. If The Crew 2 does not take advantage of that information and secure the rights to some Porsche vehicles for use here (you know, the same thing that Gran Turismo Sport and Forza Horizon 3 are doing), I don’t know what kind of future is in store for racing games in general if they’re just going to keep using RUF vehicles. If such is the case, then it may look bright, but it's not that in-tune or up-to-date, in terms of how well Ivory Tower or Ubisoft has been keeping up with the news outlets.
The Crew isn’t a total disaster on any account; not even the story is fascinatingly bad (I think it's direct-to-video fodder). But for the record, there’s not enough content here to keep me interested. I think it’s both borderline a decent game in its current state and (at least, for the first couple months I played it) the third worst racing game I’ve ever played (after GRID 2 and NASCAR 2011), but how can I say that? Because I’ve seen worse racing games than this, like this one, which is said to be a possible contender for being worse than Big Rigs based solely on how you have to "control" the "vehicles". I don’t think I need to say anything here, the game speaks for itself:
Alright...I'm not particularly a fan of multiplayer-centric games, and I agree with @TomBrady that games that rely upon a connection to a server will inevitably die and therefore offer limited value compared to a "permanent" physical game.
I’m certain that from the very beginning, Ubisoft said what is now supposedly the first game was going to be an always-online ordeal. Yet what I’m aware of, is whenever a publisher makes that kind of announcement that a game will require an internet connection to play, it’s guaranteed to not go over very well. IMO, there’s no reason why any game should rely on an internet connection to function, let alone The Crew.
Despite the game showing you how to switch factions, no one thinks to or doesn't care to. And it's that mentality that led to the most one-sided battle I've seen in a while, with the Wolves winning the Faction Wars every month. I'd like to see Faction Wars gone, as that feature added nothing to the overall experience I had.
I remember wanting crew credits gone. They’re microtransactions in what was a full price game at release, making this a case of what some people tend to call (and in several respects, still is) a case of “Fee to Pay”: A full price game that further charges for microtransactions like a F2P mobile game would. It's called "Fee to Pay" because you've paid for a game, and then they try to charge you for this extra content that you don[t care about, which is mostly cosmetic or can just make progression quicker. The heavily inflated costs of some of the cars we got after release, in relation to their real-world prices when they were first announced on the market (whatever those numbers are), doesn’t help that cause.
I remember saying I wanted the ability to pick what kind of session we wish to play in. Those who’ve played GTA Online (myself included) can tell you that this is something that game does. You can either play by yourself, in an invite-only session, with your friends/fellow crew members, or in a public session with people who don’t care about you. However, extreme caution has to be taken with that last option. Why? Because those who play GTA Online that are unkind, uninformed, unrepentant, untiring and uncouth outnumber those who display benevolence, guidance, intensity, integrity and intelligence about a thousand to one. Also...
I think it's too much wishful thinking but, as some others have said, I'd love an offline mode. I don't want to be persistently connected and I've been wanting a game with a massive, open world to explore without internet connection.
Then again, as more and more content is packed into the game, another problem arises. That problem doesn't have to do with the quality of whatever's in production, but the quality of its competition. It shouldn't matter whether or not said competition is already available to me, either, because...
I get how these are similar. The only difference between them is that one is filled with people who just want to treat this game like every other FPS on the market that just happens to be part-racing game, and the other is just a really good lifestyle simulator that just happens to be part-racing game. The Crew 2, for example will have to go up against not just GTA, but also Gran Turismo Sport and the new NFS game at the very least, because of the one common thing they all share.
I still mean every word I said back in 2015. To me, these aren’t features that I believe would make The Crew stand out. These are features, apart from good physics, that would make any racing game stand out. But even with all that functionality, do these numerous options for personalization, sharing, communication, and creativity even matter if the physics are crap? Need I remind you of the visual beauty, but physical mess that I thought NFS 2015 was (FYI: I didn't write the Escapist article linked below, even though that's what I really think about that game)? And I haven’t sold my copy of the game yet, because there’ll come a day where I feel like popping it back in.
TL,DR: I'd like this game to have offline functionality, more freedom of choice as it relates to sessions, no more factions, and microtransactions to disappear into the void like tears in the rain.
So if the fact that it’s always online, the “micrewtransactions”, and the empty-feeling storyline didn’t stop me from playing this game, then what did? I’m going to come clean: I thought "Calling All Units" was below average, for two reasons. The first reason, being that I felt that there wasn’t enough content to keep me playing. And the second reason is that the arresting mechanic didn’t feel like I was busting a street racer for reckless endangerment at all. We got one new mechanic that has already been done better in the past, and I’m not talking about Most Wanted ‘05, I’m talking about this very game pre-CAU. It’s way too easy to get arrested with the current chase mechanics now, when I would just prefer having to bring the vehicle to a near-stop before starting the “BUSTED” countdown timer.
Not only was the first game darkly lit when it first came out, but it was in permanent drought mode. In some parts, I thought the game was being run through a brown photo filter. Not the kind of atmosphere you want for a game where the post-story premise is to just chill and play what amounts to a massive-scale remake of Cruis'n USA, except it's open world. But I felt that atmosphere got a lot better when Wild Run came out as Ivory Tower not only made the sun shine (pun intended) and got rid of the “brown filter” that now stains the first year of the game’s existence, but they gave a shot at dynamic weather even though it was just sunny/sunny with rain/cloudy/rain. No dense fog, no heat waves, loud rumbles of thunder or bright flashes of lightning (something something Driveclub and Project CARS), all of which I would LOVE to see and hear in The Crew 2. It’s now sunny or raining where it used to be pre-thunderstorm near noon in the city (although I don’t remember the rain affecting your car’s traction that much. Aren’t the brakes supposed to be less effective with that much water on the road? And isn’t the car supposed to slide all over the place, hence the term “Slippery When Wet”?), and I have the distinct impression that, like with everything else, the lighting and weather can do everything but get worse.
Fantfourstic, I’m starting to see where you got the inspiration for YOUR talking scenes.
So here’s what I think The Crew is, in its current state: The Crew is a Racing MMORPG with completely unjustified microtransactions and completely justified PvP. The physics are fine as far as an arcade racer goes. The environment is nice to look at, although the motion blur turns me off a little when I’m going fast sometimes. The map isn’t even that big when you really think about it. Overall, it’s not THAT bad...but at the same time, while I 100% understand the kind of legacy this franchise is trying to carry on, The Crew isn’t a game I want to play regularly anymore. I've got my hopes high for the sequel.
LAST WORDS
As an MMORPG, The Crew 2 has more reputation to live up to than one will be led to believe, but I feel that somewhere before April 2018 is way too early to be releasing a sequel to what is already, by its very nature, a quasi-MMO. As a racing game, I would like the general feel of the game to be more authentic, in the senses that you're hanging out and cruising impromptu, you have more control over how you want your car to look, and that you're actually competing against real people in real time. And as a sequel to The Crew, I’m sure that it can only be tougher to control, more visually compelling, and more substantial than its predecessor. If anything, I think The Crew 2 HAS to have - at the very least - updated graphics, new locations, new features, and a consistent 60+ FPS on consoles. But as with the first game, I will settle with 30 FPS (unless I'm on PC, then in which case...). But as for The Crew, as a game on its own, during the time I spent playing it...I liked it. I want to see The Crew 2 surpass its predecessor, and be the open world racing MMORPG sandbox that the soon-to-be prequel could never be. But what will the E3 presentation bring, and what will the rest of the gaming conventions that The Crew 2 appears at showcase? That is another matter.
Good to know it is not competing directly against NFS Payback, the diversity of vehicles is pretty interesting. I wonder how much use aircraft and boats will require relative to cars and bikes.
Video posted some 7 hours ago and it’s already blocked? That’s no big deal for me, because despite me being able to watch it before it got removed, I know Ubisoft will upload a better quality version later on, if not a different trailer entirely. But I feel that I owe myself to give a verbal description of what I salvaged in my brain. It’s not much, but here goes...
Timestamps left in, because why not?
0:04 - That is a stunt plane doing a 720 roll over the streets of New York City. The traffic outside Madison Square Garden has officially seen everything.
0:06 - “DOMINATE AMERICAN MOTORSPORTS” Not sure what this is supposed to be, but I imagine it's some kind of career mode within what's supposed to be the story where you take the role of professional race car driver. As far as racing games are concerned, this isn't new to me.
0:09 - Two cars street racing, the black one’s a Ferrari (not sure if it’s a 458 or 488). I believe the red car is a 2016 Camaro.
0:16 - “CONQUER THE LAND” Dirt bikes racing against all-terrain vehicles on gravel? Nothing new, I’m afraid...
0:20 - “RULE THE AIR” So that stunt plane from earlier had a purpose after all (and even better, a close call with a dirt bike).
0:26 - So offshore powerboat racing is a thing now? (And yes, before anyone asks, this is a real competitive sport.) If that is, now I can’t wait for F1H2O (think of it as Formula 1 for Powerboats) to be represented in a game. My hope when it comes to the planes and the boats is that they’re as competent as the cars and bikes.
0:33 - It’s nice to see that the cops are still here. If we’re still able to play as cops in specially modified cars and make arrests, I want to see arresting improve from CAU.
0:46 - Those are Indy Cars, aren’t they? I’m guessing these will NOT be allowed in free roam, and I’ll be damn surprised if they are...because that would be awesome.
0:48 - OK, so he’s in a racing uniform on a podium, (obviously celebrating a race win, complete with champagne) and then in street clothes in a garage. The “he” I mention, I think, is a nameless generic player character that can customized via the usual options, (gender, skin tone, height, hair color, hair type, tattoos, clothes, etc.)
0:58 - So there’s a beta for this game as well? NOTE: I was going to sign up for it, but the link provided doesn't work. Don't even bother for right now.
Overall Impression: Aside from me, is anyone getting Diddy Kong Racing/Mario Kart vibes from this?
Video posted some 7 hours ago and it’s already blocked? That’s no big deal for me, because despite me being able to watch it before it got removed, I know Ubisoft will upload a better quality version later on, if not a different trailer entirely. But I feel that I owe myself to give a verbal description of what I salvaged in my brain. It’s not much, but here goes...
Timestamps left in, because why not?
0:04 - That is a stunt plane doing a 720 roll over the streets of New York City. The traffic outside Madison Square Garden has officially seen everything.
0:06 - “DOMINATE AMERICAN MOTORSPORTS” Not sure what this is supposed to be, but I imagine it's some kind of career mode within what's supposed to be the story where you take the role of professional race car driver. As far as racing games are concerned, this isn't new to me.
0:09 - Two cars street racing, the black one’s a Ferrari (not sure if it’s a 458 or 488). I believe the red car is a 2016 Camaro.
0:16 - “CONQUER THE LAND” Dirt bikes racing against all-terrain vehicles on gravel? Nothing new, I’m afraid...
0:20 - “RULE THE AIR” So that stunt plane from earlier had a purpose after all (and even better, a close call with a dirt bike).
0:26 - So offshore powerboat racing is a thing now? (And yes, before anyone asks, this is a real competitive sport.) If that is, now I can’t wait for F1H2O (think of it as Formula 1 for Powerboats) to be represented in a game. My hope when it comes to the planes and the boats is that they’re as competent as the cars and bikes.
0:33 - It’s nice to see that the cops are still here. If we’re still able to play as cops in specially modified cars and make arrests, I want to see arresting improve from CAU.
0:46 - Those are Indy Cars, aren’t they? I’m guessing these will NOT be allowed in free roam, and I’ll be damn surprised if they are...because that would be awesome.
0:48 - OK, so he’s in a racing uniform on a podium, (obviously celebrating a race win, complete with champagne) and then in street clothes in a garage. The “he” I mention, I think, is a nameless generic player character that can customized via the usual options, (gender, skin tone, height, hair color, hair type, tattoos, clothes, etc.)
0:58 - So there’s a beta for this game as well? NOTE: I was going to sign up for it, but the link provided doesn't work. Don't even bother for right now.
Overall Impression: Aside from me, is anyone getting Diddy Kong Racing/Mario Kart vibes from this?
I can't even picture what this game is gonna be like. Sounds kinda disappointing tbh. I'm guessing it's still gonna be set in the U.S. Just give us more customization and I'll be satisfied to be honest.
- EUROPE
- Less microtransactions
- On foot gameplay (something like TDU2)
- Clothes stores to customize the character
- Buying houses and garages
- Driver SF handling
With some of those, it would be a total dayone for me. Otherwise, i will be fine playing FH3
Should I take it from that brief trailer that they're retaining the USA map?
I hope they do. I thought The Crew's map was a hugely impressive technical achievement, albeit imperfect - exactly the sort of thing that deserved to be worked on more, over multiple games even. It'd be a shame if they ditched all that great work just to make another techically-impressive-but-imperfect map of somewhere else, starting the cycle all over again. (......unless they ever decided to make a UK map, then I'd be so in. Too boring you say? But what better way could there be to show off the game's rain effects? )
Should I take it from that brief trailer that they're retaining the USA map?
I hope they do. I thought The Crew's map was a hugely impressive technical achievement, albeit imperfect - exactly the sort of thing that deserved to be worked on more, over multiple games even. It'd be a shame if they ditched all that great work just to make another techically-impressive-but-imperfect map of somewhere else, starting the cycle all over again. (......unless they ever decided to make a UK map, then I'd be so in. Too boring you say? But what better way could there be to show off the game's rain effects? )
The video was leaked and made some rounds on Facebook and youtube before being yanked. I did manage to see it before that and I was pretty amazed. Now I know what 'beyond the road" means, and here I thought that they just were going to expand the off-road parts of the game. The Ubisoft conference is at 1pm PST today, I expect the trailer will be officially unveiled during it.
Signed up to the beta and am on the waiting list. I participated in the previous closed beta on the first game so might as well see what this one entails.
Signed up to the beta and am on the waiting list. I participated in the previous closed beta on the first game so might as well see what this one entails.
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