WeView Verdict: The Crew

I think it’d be fair to say that Ubisoft did not have a strong 2014. Watch Dogs, seemingly their new franchise to take over from Assassin’s Creed when it wanes, fell way short of what was promised, Assassin’s Creed Unity was plagued by issues when it launched, and The Crew doesn’t seem to have done much to improve things. The console version of the racer is hovering around the 60 mark on Metacritic, clearly far lower than Ubisoft would like, and it doesn’t look like the good people of TSA’s community were all that impressed either.

Take Forrest_01 for example. While they did actually have fun playing the game, a variety of problems with the title forced them to advise people to avoid picking it up. For a start they found that “crewing up is often much more difficult than it needs to be”, forcing Forrest to try “a variety of hosts” before finding success.

The game also corrupted Forrest’s save file, an obvious frustration, and even though Ubisoft did fix the problem, they didn’t actually communicate that it had been fixed. On top of Forrest’s own problems, they related a tale of woe from R1MJAW, where everytime “he finishes/places he gets kicked back to the main menu”. If a game is having these kind of issues, it seems near impossible for it to become any kind of success.

For many of you the beta was enough to put you off, with TSBonyman complaining they couldn’t even connect to Ubisoft’s servers, something that seems to be a common experience for them. hornet1990 was equally unimpressed, but for different reasons. Instead of technical difficulties, the beta left them feeling the game “would be a case of grinding the same events time and time again to progress a horribly clichéd story”, although they did admit that “if you got a group of friends playing it together it could be a riot”.

Amphlett took similar issue with the beta, complaining that the game is just “a sprawling map littered with fairly generic tests/races”. However, they were more disappointed by the game’s visual presentation, saying the game looks “so mediocre for new/current gen”, complaining that it lacked any “fancy visual filters”. They also felt the handling was a let down, with the car feeling “artificially hampered for the first hour or so”.

There was a little bit of positivity about the game however, coming largely from Crazy_Del. Although they too complained about the game’s always online elements, they also “fell in love with this game from my first car” and platinumed the game. Del praised the size of the map and the sheer volume of optional missions, which they felt really helped the game’s replayability. Although they agreed with Amphlett that the game does start off with terrible handling, Del felt that it really improves once “you can upgrade the vehicle and the perks” after a few races.

Joining Crazy_Del on the positive side of things was B_Cambo, who enjoyed The Crew despite not being “a huge racing gamer”. They took a different view on the game’s graphics to Amphlett, praising the game’s “spectacular visuals” and “the spectacular detail to the iconic landscapes”. As for the handling, they said that while it’s “frustrating at first… you slowly get the hang of it”.

Despite Crazy_Del and B_Cambo’s defense of the game, things aren’t going to end well for The Crew today. However, before we get to the verdict I’ll leave you with freezebug2’s comment, which does seem to sum up both The Crew and Ubisoft’s broader issues:

If you can’t play the game offline during a lull then it’s broken…Avoid it!!

So, time to count things up and see just how badly The Crew did. Buy It and Plus It managed to gain a single vote each, while Avoid It picked up five votes. Even if you take out the three people who voted for Avoid It after only playing the beta, we’re still left with the same verdict overall. It seems The Crew really isn’t worth picking up at all.

With The Crew out of the way, it’s time to look to the future. Tomorrow we’ll be taking a look at Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments and, as always, you can vote for next week’s game below.