Last month, The Crew 2 received a sizable patch that included a next-gen upgrade (although the performance mode is dreadful) and dozens of new activities. Not a huge deal in itself, as games get updates all the time. The impressive part is the fact that the game is heading into its fifth year, and the continuous post-launch support has turned The Crew 2 into a genuinely great racing game following its astonishingly poor start.
Over five years on from launch, it’s sustaining similar or even slightly higher concurrent player numbers as at launch (according to SteamDB), with some impressive peaks in the last year or so. Its Steam reviews score, meanwhile, has recovered from ‘Mostly Negative’ on launch to ‘Very Positive’ from over 50,000 reviews.
Let’s look at the games long and arduous road trip to get to where it is today.
Playing The Crew 2 on release was a numb experience. It was a unique enough take on racing games – enough to position itself on a different tangent than Need for Speed or Forza. I mean, getting to explore the entire United States on land, air, and sea, with the ability to switch between cars, planes and boats with the single press of a button is pretty enticing, right? Unfortunately, most of the game’s massive world was relegated to barren blocks, and the quirk about dropping a car from the stratosphere wasn’t enough to compensate.
The stuff to do in the base game was sparse; you could drive for minutes without any sight of activity. On the bright side, it was nice for cruising – tuning on some country music while driving on those smooth American highways was a treat. For the most part, however, it was a lifeless world. It also made races feel plain as the tracks were mostly comprised of just having checkpoints in the world.
The Crew 2 had a non-linear narrative, which in the beginning felt right, as nobody cares about story in racing games. Most of them revolve around cliched tropes about crimes, the FBI, revenge, or the underworld—the first instalment was also about revenge. Ubisoft replaced all that with something a little more anodyne: gaining social media followers. Everything about the game was tame and “going legit,” which doesn’t sound all that compelling, does it?
The biggest upside of The Crew 2’s largely infertile lands was the incredible diversity in terms of different racing disciplines. There were four disciplines in the game: Street Racing, Freestyle, Offroad, and Pro Racing. Each of those had several different types of race too, like Freestyle had Monster Truck, Aerobatics, and Jetsprint. That’s what the developers continued with throughout the game’s post-release updates, and every content drop added something new. Some were chaotic moshpits like the Demolition Derby that was added shortly after release, while others were about pure speed and racing like U.S. Speed Tour which was made available on July last year.
But the hands-down best mode The Crew 2 has received since launch has been “Stories,” which was added in March this year. The stories have you chasing landmarks, scattered throughout the game’s world, with nothing but loose hints such as finding “the biggest yatch,” or “the smoking cigar club.” The activity isn’t arduous, but it’s enough to quench anyone’s feelings of wanderlust. You’d often find other players trying to locate the landmarks too, chasing after the same stories. Sometimes, you just exchange some emotes, other times you’d find yourself a travel buddy for a future trip – it’s a lovely relaxed form of multiplayer that contrasts with the usual competitive feel of racing games.
New content isn’t the only thing making the game better, as developer Ivory Tower continues to add quality of life changes and focus on the game’s mechanics. Steadily, over the course, handling was improved. There were several graphical changes, such as improving the color grading, shadows, and visibility, and while those didn’t magically make the game look great, they’ve certainly had their effect. The weather system, in particular, has been improved, and now snow seems a bit better and developers are aiming for a more realistic look. Most things, like contrast, sky, reflection, color grading, were tinkered with in the latest update.
The Crew 2 now has over 400+ plus vehicles and 100+ new activities and races since launch, and unlike base games, they feel somewhat distinct from each other. This is not something like a No Man’s Sky, or even Rainbow 6 Siege, comeback, but it’s doing pretty well. Likewise, the game is still very arcadey and if you hate it then, the updates will still not convince you. But if having fun, going on a long trip with the squad, or a massive log of races to complete is what you yearn for, The Crew 2 is right now in the best state since its release.
