Preview: The Crew 2 is a significant step in the right direction

In 2014, Ubisoft dropped an ambitious new racing game on all of us in the form of The Crew. It was an open world racing game with expansive customization but the kicker was that you could drive across the entire United States. The Crew 2 takes that formula and takes it to the extreme.

The first Crew was a fairly grounded game, it took itself somewhat seriously with a story set in a world of crime and street racing. Ultimately, the basic presentation wasn’t anything to write home about and was quite forgettable but The Crew 2 says “Screw that, let’s make something absolutely bonkers.”

The basic set-up for this sequel is something akin to the Forza Horizon series where the world is super invested in motorsports and actively thrives off it. Your goal is to rise to the top of this sport, getting as famous as possible by performing well in races, showing off your immense skills by doing stunts, and taking great photos and video clips using the in-game photo mode and video editor to go viral.

While it would be easy for people to say this game is just a copy of Forza Horizon at a glance, it’s much more, dare I say it may do what Horizon does even better. One of the complaints of the first game was that there was this large open world with a lack of things to do and a lack of detail in areas. Yes, this is the entire country of the U.S. but it’s also a video game that can’t create every city to scale.

The big cities like Washington D.C., New York, Miami, Chicago, and more are all here with a majority of their key landmarks but you won’t find say Des Moines, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, or Omaha, Nebraska. That’s too much for any developer to make in the span of four years even with the largest development team, it’s simply unrealistic. Instead, the game plays to its strengths by using the big cities as hub worlds and scattering various other activities across the less “relevant” locations.

Whether you’re zipping through alleys or off-roading through the country, there’s plenty to see and do. Whether it’s actual races, photo ops, or other miscellaneous activities, there’s something to do. There aren’t as many long stretches of nothing and if you do find yourself in the middle of nowhere, you can quickly teleport to other activities.

The Crew 2 is a technical achievement, truthfully. For as big as this world is, the game loads incredibly fast seemingly without sacrificing anything in the process. Ubisoft has accomplished something that I’ve only seen Rockstar Games do with Grand Theft Auto V by quickly switching from one end of the map to the other in an instant. On top of that, the game is constantly recording you and actively stores your last 10 minutes of gameplay for you to edit into a video in an advanced editor or find the perfect shot for screenshots.

Every picture used in this preview and our review later this month will be screenshots I captured myself using the game’s extensive photo mode. I could have spent hours toying around with it but I pulled myself away to play more of the actual game. At any given time, you can pause the game (something pretty unexpected given this is technically an always-online game) and go into the video/photo mode.

The core gameplay is as you’d expect with an added twist, you can switch between three different vehicle types on the fly during free roam: Car, plane, and boat. It can create really fun improvised moments such as planting a car on top of the White House or flying a car off a ramp and then using to momentum to take off and transform into a plane. I have yet to see it integrated into races itself but one has to imagine that as the game progresses, there will be races that combine all vehicle classes for insane moments.

There’s really nothing quite like this in the racing genre and given how much Ubisoft likes to keep building on their games months and even years after release, I can’t wait to see where they take this foundation they’ve laid.

With an aging genre, Ubisoft has found several ways to innovate with The Crew 2 and left a massive impression on me. While I only got a small taste of what the game has to offer in the beta, I can’t wait to return to the game and review it later this month and see how Ubisoft continues to escalate the gameplay in the final product. If you’re looking for a good game to occupy your time this summer, The Crew 2 is one to keep an eye on.

The Crew 2 releases on June 29th, 2018 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.