Phoolery

You'll never find the corpses.

So after another day of play, exploration, and so on; I'm still largely happy with the purchase of this game. That said, some of the game's warts are showing pretty badly. Not with the core gameplay, just with the online functionality of the game itself. Since the game requires constant online connection, any drop in your connection, or if the game servers have a hickup; suddenly you're tossed back to the title screen and chances are anything you'd have done in the past 5 minutes will not have been auto saved. Normally, if you're just driving around this isn't much of an issue. However, this happened to me once last night just as I was at the climax of an hour long dirt rally race... that was really hard and I was in first place and about to win. 58 minutes of my life down the tubes with nothing to show for it. Wonderful. The online PVP races are non existent. Joining a lobby is a guarantee to sit there with your thumb up your backside waiting for nothing, for nigh infinity. Ranked matches, unranked matches, doesn't matter. Reports also of The Crew's "Crew" system, the ability to group up with four of your friends or total strangers, is also entirely useless. I tried in vain to join the crew of a friend last night, only for us to be parked next to one another, hitting the accept crew invite button, to no avail. Then the instance died and I was suddenly by myself. That's another issue. You're supposed to always be surrounded by other players. However due to the shoddy connection system to the master servers, most of the time it's just you by your lonesome or maybe 1 to 2 other people. For a game that's trying to be a MMO-CAR-PG, it doesn't feel like an MMO. It feels like a poorly net coded racing game. The foundation, the game play, is totally solid. As a multiplayer game though, it is utterly borked, and unplayable even. The PC version reportedly is more stable currently, and if that's the truth, then I feel really bad for anyone who has this on console.

Sadly I missed out on The Crew's beta back in August for the PC. I love racing games, and the amount of depth and detail that seemed to be getting put into The Crew as far as the cars and the in game world seemed too good to be true. Also, my issues with Ubisoft from the past 5 years of horrible DRM and half-done Assassins Creed PC ports made my skin crawl. Still, some friends of mine thoroughly enjoyed the Beta, and I hadn't been this excited for a new IP since Titan Fall came out earlier this year. Despite that game going stale within a month of playing it, The Crew promised hours of replayability, and continued life through the "Faction Wars" system. PC Screen Shot, yep it's that pretty! So when the game went live early this morning, I had to see if the game could keep it's promises, unlike so many other AAA releases in the past year. I must say, I was not at all disappointed with the core gameplay. However, I was incredibly disapointed with how the game's "Story" is inescapable and shoved down your throat harder than a corndog at an eating contest. The main character, Alex Taylor, looks like a hipster version of a young Gary Oldman, and is voiced by Troy Baker. If you don't know who that is... he's voiced every male protagonist in every game this year, and that's only a slight exaggeration from the truth. Ever since Bioshock Infinite (he was Booker), this guy has been the leading man in several big name games. He played Joel in The Last of us, Delsin Rowe in Infamous Second Son, Talion in Shadow of Mordor, and will be playing Ocelot in the upcoming MGS5. Oh, and he also is the voice of Pagan Min in Farcry 4. Not to mention he's probably the voice of the young male hero in every english dub of every anime you've ever seen. He get's around. He's fantastic, don't get me wrong, and he makes Alex Taylor a believable bad ass wheelman. It's just that the supporting cast of largely unknown voice talent, who are just terrible at delivering their lines, that makes this game's story really, really hard to stomach. I could care less, and I am sure most other players would agree with me. I'm not playing this game for the plot. Just put me in a car, and point me to the races! Your brother got shot, and you were framed for his murder by corrupt FBI agents and now you have to avenge him through racing? BORING!!! Aside from the story playing out like a discount "Fast n' Furious" script, The Crew is still an excellent racing game... for fans of Arcade Racing. Yeah, if you're expecting Grand Turismo levels of detail and realism; you best just drop any hope of that right now. This game is more akin to Need For Speed or Midnight Club. At least in terms of handling, and playbility. Anyone with a basic knowledge of car handling can expect to succeed. This game also mixes a lot of RPG elements, and they were right on about the whole "Car-PG" aspect they sold it as at E3. What does this mean? Well, it means the more time you put into a specific ride in your arsenal, the better it gets. It's why a high leverl and properly kitted Mini Cooper S can put a low level 2015 Mustang GT to shame in a drag race. Yes, I've actually done this. The Mini was one of 3 cars included with the preorder, and I refuse to use any other car until my Mini can put a Ferrari to shame in a circuit race. "You wot m8?" Ultimately I think that's what's going to kill this game for some people. It doesn't really matter what car, truck, or SUV you drive in this game. You can buy multiple "loadouts" for your cars that will make them competitive in any racing theater. I can turn my Mini into an off road monster with the Dirt setup, a slick drifting and tight corner master with the Street loadout, a high speed low drag beast with the Circuit kit, and a rough and tumble tank with the Raid body. So in that way, the game is balanced, and will keep players from gravitating to that one car that shines above the rest. With the right investment of skill, parts, and kit any car can shine above the rest if it is properly leveled. That said, I plan to make the most of my investment into the preorder with these three lovelies. The three preorder exclusives are premodded with low tier kit parts, and are geared towards the three classes of racing in game. Street, speed, and Off Road. I plan to kit all three to their strengths, and ignore just about every other car in the game until they put a Bugatti in. They are the preciouses! After playing about 4 hours of the games reported 20 total, I am satisfied with the purchase. The game worked on launch for once, and aside from one major crash after a mission ended that didn't happen on my second try, I can say that it's a stable build, a ton of fun, and will offer a lot of entertainment to the casual and die hard racing fans. If your idea of a racing game however is cars put into classes, and overly realistic handling; you might want to pass on this. My first PVP race was me in the Mini Cooper S 2010, a Ford F-150, a Ferrari LaFerrari, a Bently CSS 2010, a Corvette ZR1, a Ram SRT-10, a BMW Z-4, and a Nissan Z34, I won that race. A Mini Cooper S has no right beating any of those cars in a race, but I brought my A game... and several high level car parts for the player level we were all at. Sue me. I'll teach them all to fear the cute! This game will be fun for anyone with a pulse, and if you're new to racers this is an excellent game to dive into to get a taste for the genre. You will learn to fear my 2010 Ford Focus!

"Here comes a lady killer."

"This hiding spot is so obvious, it's genius! They'll never find me here."