At the time of publication, the earliest players of The Crew Motorfest are being let loose inside the virtual playground of the game’s rendition of O’ahu. Therefore, this formally marks the beginning of the sunset for The Crew 2.
The Crew 2 has led an exceptionally long life, leaving behind quite the legacy for The Crew Motorfest to live up to. So, before everyone makes their way over to the new title, let’s look back on what The Crew 2 accomplished over the years and what bright future it sets up for The Crew Motorfest.
Overhaul in the auto body shop
It’s almost hard to believe that The Crew 2 launched back in 2018—five years ago. A lot has happened in that time; a new generation of consoles has launched, and various other titles have released, particularly in the racing genre. Due to its age, The Crew 2 has managed to go up against both Forza Horizon 4 in 2018, and Forza Horizon 5 in 2021.
Such a feat is notable due to the fact that ever since The Crew 2 was revealed, racing fans were to quick to point out its glaring similarities to Playground Games’ open-world star.
The original rendition of The Crew series seemed to fall more in line with grittier, moodier racing series such as Ubisoft’s Driver and EA’s Need for Speed series.
That is why the change of pace with The Crew 2 was jarring to some. Gone was the action movie-styled plot with notes of double crossings and revenge in favour of practically no real plot at all.
The Crew 2 decided to take a number of pages out of Forza Horizon’s playbook, with the set-up now revolving around a fictional racing festival taking place across the United States. Drivers would compete across a variety of racing disciplines and take to the skies and seas in racing planes and boats.
This entire concept has been leaned into even more heavily in the upcoming Motorfest, but The Crew 2 was really where the series tried to branch out and find an identity in the open-world racing genre, even if it was once again inspired by another popular series.
At first, I was amused, but not enthralled
For me, this gear switch for the series was remarkable. I didn’t really pay much attention to its original outing, but since Forza Horizon 3 became one of my most favourite games ever back in 2016, having yet another racer adopt its style was particularly interesting to me.
I got the chance to play The Crew 2 as both a tester and then as a review copy. Speaking directly in reference to my thoughts on the review version, while I certainly enjoyed all that it was trying to do with its expansive map and roster of vehicles, something felt ‘off’ to me.
In one way, I found the sheer scale of the project to be incredibly impressive. However, I also saw this as being its Achilles’ heel to an extent.
This mainly came down to two key areas: driving mechanics and map design, which were the game’s two biggest hallmarks.
While the driving mechanics certainly felt serviceable to me, I also found them to be stiff and an even a little janky, for lack of a better term. For certain, I didn’t think it matched the fluidity of Forza Horizon 3’s mechanics which already had the benefit of sharing DNA with the tech behind Forza Motorsport.
I chalked this apparent weakness up to the fact that The Crew 2 was trying to cover such a wide range of vehicles, especially due to the fact that when free-roaming and during certain events, players had the ability to swap from land, to sea, to air. While The Crew 2 isn’t the first game with this concept, it is arguably the first to try it in a semi-realistic setting.
Traditional cars, various styles of bikes and off-road vehicles, along with more unorthodox types like hovercrafts and monster trucks, all in addition to planes and boats—that’s a massive amount of driving styles to calibrate for.
To me, the mechanics were made to reflect that, and ended up coming off as being a “jack of all trades, master of none” scenario.
As for the weaknesses related to its map design, it must first be noted that the Ivory Tower team, although reusing the map from the original game, did do a remarkable job at sprucing it up for the second go-around.
More depth and detail was included, especially due to the fact that the various waterways were now accessible, as well as the skies above. It still blows my mind that while most racing games, particularly open-world ones, will focus on just having a single city (and sometimes a small handful of cities) as the backdrop, but for The Crew, the designers went with the crazy ambition to build a map of one of the largest countries in the world.
That said, some creative liberties were taken with its scale as it’s not a 1:1 recreation of the US, but it does encompass much of the nation’s major areas, including famous landmarks, large and notable cities/towns, and its extensive geographical differences.
Altogether it’s a beautiful, very well designed map, but even when I dove into it for the first several hours, I found parts of it to be a bit bland in comparison to how courses in any given racing game are designed.
Since most of the races in The Crew 2 take place on the streets of the USA’s cities, the makeshift courses are often filled with a lot of straightaways and very little turns or curves. Combine this with the less-than-stellar physics, and I found myself amused, but not as enthralled as I initially imagined upon the game’s reveal.
Another let down for me was despite the fact that such a large map was on offer with the premise of competing across various challenges with all the different vehicles, it was clear that the priority of focus was given to standard cars.
Bikes, off-road vehicles, boats and planes had their own places to shine in, yes, but the game really seemed to be built around cars first and foremost, with everything else being secondary. From the physics feeling a bit weirder everywhere else and activities keeping you locked into a standard car more often than not; this was all just a bit disappointing to me.
My last big point of contention was that of the way the in-game market worked. Nearly every customisation part needs to be paid for, and payouts from events and challenges are not very high. It does take a considerable amount of time to accrue funds (no pun intended) to buy new vehicles and parts.
Ultimately, I signed off on my review of The Crew 2 giving it a soft recommendation and concluding that while it was a good racer, I didn’t find it to be particularly amazing.
Just months after, I would get sucked back into the world of Horizon with the release of Forza Horizon 4. I ended up enjoying my time there far more, despite its much smaller scale. In essence, comparing the two directly left me thinking of the old saying: “Bigger isn’t always better.”
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who thought this way; my opinion seemed to have been shared with others in the critic space as the game’s Metascore ranges from 64 at the lowest on PC, to 69 on the Xbox One. For comparison, Forza Horizon 3 is 91 at its highest and both Horizon 4 and Horizon 5 earned a 92.
So, if it seems that The Crew 2 was a relatively lukewarm experience, then why has it survived, if not thrived for half a decade?
Finding its voice and paving the road
Despite the tepid response that the Ivory Team got for its efforts at launch, that didn’t kill its spirits and even more notably, it did not seem to dissuade the higher-ups.
It’s become all too often in today’s gaming landscape to see a title come out with seemingly impossible sales expectations from ‘the suits,’ and when it doesn’t meet those expectations, it’s unceremoniously axed. Ubisoft itself has undergone a wealth of changes in recent years, cutting down its number of projects and choosing tried-and-true IPs that it knows will do well.
Somehow, The Crew as a series has managed to weather the storm of change, and not only has it been allowed to flourish into a new title, but the road leading up to that has been paved with support for its predecessor.
The Crew 2 of today is not really the same game it was at launch. Various features and new elements have been overhauled and/or added in. Almost every facet of the game has been spruced up in some form or another, with some interesting additions made to flesh out the experience.
One of the smallest gameplay changes was the debut of Missions in the open-world. They serve as extra distractions, in addition to the various timed challenges that are sprinkled throughout the nooks-and-crannies of the game’s map.
There are two types, Crazy Taxi-inspired chauffeuring missions where you drive a patron to their destination in the quickest time possible with them reacting to your driving style. The others are off-road delivery missions that personally remind me of the Spintires/Runner series that have you hauling supplies from one point in the wilderness to another.
On the larger side of changes is that of the introduction of Stories, seeing you follow a series of clues that are all part of a tale of an in-game character.
Each story has some depth to it, such as the very interesting one that’s found in the American Legends season update (the last big update before the release of Motorfest).
This particular Story follows the path of a person reminiscing about the adventurers they went on with their father in a special car he loved so much.
It takes you throughout various portions of the west, revisiting old spots that this person visited with their father, all culminating in finding the car and sending it to the LA Harbour, where it’s being transported to Hawaii just in time for the opening days of the events in the forthcoming Motorfest.
In fact, one of the later portions of the story even has you going to the fictional Motorfest HQ.
Of course, this entire tale was drummed up to connect some ‘lore’ from the preceding game to its successor, but it serves as an example of the excellent ways Ivory Tower has built upon the mechanics of The Crew 2 over the years.
Having brought up that mention of the American Legends season update, it represents the core behind all the work that’s been put into the game during this past half-decade of support.
Each new update brings with it a fresh load of content; new cars, new customisation options and interesting new gameplay elements such as the Stories. There are even more new features like an inconceivable amount of in-game achievements to unlock and the Motorpass system, just to name a few.
All of this was nowhere to be found at launch and the months thereafter, but it’s been weaved in over time.
I have to admit, despite this growth over the years, it’s personally taken me forever and a day to even recognise it. After I wrapped my review coverage of The Crew 2, I dabbled in it here and there, but eventually moved away from it for a good while to enjoy Forza Horizon 4, as well as other titles.
Every now and again I would hop into the game, but it really didn’t hook my interest much. It wasn’t until after the announcement of Motorfest did I decide to truly dive back into The Crew 2 to re-familiarise myself with the game and the series as a whole. I also had the thought of making note of the changes from this iteration compared to its successor.
Upon booting up the game a few months ago for the first time in a while, I was genuinely gobsmacked by the amount of changes that have been made.
Small things like a complete UI overhaul, to larger ones including the aforementioned extra gameplay elements. Going through patch notes from the season updates, it was just a bit overwhelming trying to understand all the new bits and bobs that the game now had to offer.
Truthfully, I’ve ended up tinkering with The Crew 2 far more in recent weeks than even that of Forza Horizon 5, a racer that I truly love. It almost makes me think I, and perhaps the rest of the critic crowd, were a bit too hard on The Crew 2.
Be that as it may, again, this is pretty much a live service title, so the game of today being different than it was initially has a lot to do with this change of heart on my part. There are pros and cons to building this style of video game, but that’s a whole story for another time.
What it all boils down to is that I have some serious respect for the team at Ivory Tower for refining their product over the years and building out what has become one of the most well-supported racers in modern history.
It’s a totally different approach than what’s seen throughout the majority of the sub genre, as many racers tend to only be supported for a much shorter period of time before either being succeed or written off.
There are drawbacks to hanging on to an older title for so long, however, such as the fact that the core experience is still relatively the same due to the ageing tech underneath it all.
Yet, even now, The Crew 2 still looks good and plays well enough, despite their being more robust and complex titles out there. The fact that much of the progress in terms of vehicles and customisation parts that were earned throughout the life of The Crew 2 will be freely and easily transferable to the new title is another plus.
I am still a bit miffed that various parts of both games seem to encourage spending real money to buy Crew Credits in exchange for quickly accessing vehicles and special customisations, but that aside, the amount of free content updates is staggering and sets an amazing precedent for the future of The Crew Motorfest.
Looking on the horizon to Motorfest
All things considered, The Crew Motorfest certainly has its work cut out for it.
It’s yet another big change for the series, with the team now choosing to focus on just one condensed map—an island, at that.
Fun trivia: since a lot of the Ivory Tower team worked on the acclaimed Test Drive Unlimited duology, which was also set in Hawaii, this is a bit of a return to home. Still and all, this choice to keep the action in such a relatively small space, especially when compared to the gigantic map of the first two titles, brings with it some interesting benefits and limitations.
I’m very eager to see if the exploration-focused extra missions that were introduced in The Crew 2 will make a return. Even more so, I wonder if we’ll ever see an expansion to one or two of the other islands in the Hawaiian archipelago.
With this in mind, just from what I played during the beta, I was very impressed with how much more handcrafted the map feels, and the races seem purpose-built to take advantage of that. This alone is a big step up from The Crew 2 and combined with the very well refined driving physics, already two of my biggest gripes have been corrected with flying colours.
The biggest mystery for me, however, is still that of how planes and boats will be implemented. It’s the largest unique feature The Crew Motorfest has to help it standout from its direct rival, Forza Horizon and would serve as a great way to help sceptical race fans to look at this as more than “just another Horizon-wannabe”.
Other than that, the next challenge is making this tropical playground feel truly fresh and fun throughout the many years Motorfest has ahead of it. All of this, though, will play a big part in how the game will conquer its toughest challenge: turning the critical reception of the series around.
The IP has clearly been successful enough to warrant long-term investment, but it would be nice to see it really stand out and shine, finally cracking through the stronghold that Forza Horizon has on the entire open-world racing sub-genre. Forza Horizon is truly a great series, but it having a little fire under its foot from a true competitor would certainly serve to benefit us, the players.
“Competition breeds creativity,” as they say, and I very intently want to see Ivory Tower and Playground Games, as well as the other studios wanting to compete in this space, fire on all cylinders and create a wealth of great racers.
Nevertheless, a big hats off to the entire team at Ivory Tower. Their hard work with The Crew 2 is admirable and the future of The Crew Motorfest is exciting. If the last five years is anything to go by, race fans should expect to get their money’s worth and certainly then some.
