The crew game review. Review of The Crew - the best is the enemy of the good. The tale of how the server forgot all the progress

Racing games, as if in spite of their dynamics, represent almost the most conservative genre, which has practically not changed for many years. It seems like the last big revolution was back in 86, when the creators of Out Run came up with the idea of ​​hanging a camera behind a driven car.

No, small upheavals happened every now and then. Well, let's say, not coups - and so, fashion trends blew up. Here, she taught us to love rally racing and off-road. instilled a fondness for spectacular crashes, chaos, and destruction. spawned a fashion for street racing and tuning. But most of these trends lived no more than a couple of seasons, and the entire racing genre eventually degenerated into a conveyor like games in the line. How many of you buy more than one racing game a year? That's the same. And all because sometimes we just want to drive cool cars, and take a look at the surrounding charms through the prism of the nextgen - famously, fun, without filling our heads with new rules.

Best the enemy of the good

And so, Ubisoft, seems to have decided not only to launch one of the first races for top platforms, but to follow in the footsteps of those trendsetters in their attempt to change the genre we are used to forever. The development of the masterpiece was entrusted to the studio Ivory Tower. Moreover, this is their first project. But it should be borne in mind that at one time employees managed to work on such lines as need for Speed, Test Drive Unlimited and V-Rally In a word, the team is new, but experienced. And in the game we clearly see this experience. We see that it has become for them a chance to realize all their ambitions and old fantasies.

However, my fantasy played out, and played out badly, weightily, like an elderly, but still coquettish lady who had drunk too much. EVERYTHING. At first glance, the main problem The Crew is that the game gives much more opportunities than we basically need. For example, a player is released into a huge open world. The geography of the game is all of America. From the gray streets of Manhattan to the sunny beaches of Miami through the fiery deserts of Nevada. Cool? Damn! The only problem is that it will take so much time to simply travel around all the states, open all the cars and, in principle, try out all the experience that can be squeezed out of the game that it will probably be faster and easier to upgrade an elf to level 80. But in addition to the mandatory events, an incredible number of different side quests and secrets are scattered around the map. With the latter, by the way, not all thank God either. For example, in order to find secret cars, you just have to ride back and forth on the map and carefully respond to the radar readings, which beep on the cold-hot principle. Only the cars found are not marked on the world map in any way. It remains, perhaps, to print it out on a printer and make notes with a marker, otherwise the sacred mission of searching will have to be passed on to grandchildren.

Hard to learn, easy to fight

The incredibly intricate game mechanics adds fuel to the fire. It would seem that something difficult? Pedal to the floor - and they won't catch up with us! Yeah, just for starters, please kindly figure out how and why to switch between characters, how to earn and what to spend skill points on, why you need to join new gangs, how to open new tasks in a new location, what are the basic principles of tuning, what are the configurations cars, how and why the levels of cars increase, what classes of cars can participate in certain types of races, why there are two types of currency in the game at once, why the hell can't you catch a friend online ... All this is INCREDIBLY LOADING. Moreover, most of these little things are frankly superfluous, and due to the intricacy of the interface, all this micromanagement can cause almost physical pain. Be mentally prepared to open the map, teleport to the "base", look for the necessary menu item with the profiles of gang members - and all this in order to increase the controllability of the car by 1%.

The problem with honest money is that it's hard to earn - profits are low... However, we will now explain about the two currencies. One is the usual such in-game money, given for winning races and completing tasks, everything is simple here. And here's the second one... If you're an ardent fan of free2play mobile games, you've probably already guessed what I'm talking about. Yes, yes, you are invited to buy a second currency for quite real money. Of course, fancy pricing goes hand in hand with this monetization model. For example, a spoiler can cost 2,000, and a tiny sticker the size of a fist can cost 40,000. But what the prices are consistently high for are brand new horses. It is logical that when you arrive in a new city, you will want to visit the local dealer first thing and upgrade your fleet. Yes, but with a high probability the hell with two you will succeed - there will be 2-3 times less money in the account than the cheapest horse costs, unless you save on upgrades and repairs.

Money is not mushrooms - you can find it in winter

Also, by the way, a strange and most likely rudimentary solution. At the end of the race, you are offered to fix the car for the Nth amount. Well, yes, they crashed a couple of times - it was the case. Only now the car is on the move and in full working order, why, one wonders, spend virtual money? “In order to start spending real ones as soon as possible,” he grins. Ubisoft.

However, it is assumed that you can earn this very second currency in multiplayer. And here it is - the main feature The Crew, that's what it's all about. Within one global map unite players from all over the world and give the opportunity to put together gangs, arrange single and team battles, play PvP and PvE. At any time, you can contact gamers who are passing somewhere nearby and arrange a check-in, for this you don’t even need to leave the “single”. But even here, be prepared that you won’t be able to “get it” from a swoop as everything is arranged here. For example, in The Crew there is no common lobby. You can think of each location as a separate server. Are you and your friend lucky to be on different ones? So someone has to take a ride. But the main trouble is not in this, but in the fact that it is not so easy to find a company. You can wait up to 20 minutes while the game is pushing in an attempt to gather players for your race - and not the fact that your expectations will be rewarded.

And it seems that the whole game is such a huge array of incomprehensible and complex decisions. But, it is worth delving into them, as understanding comes. Do you know The Crew- It's not racing in its purest form. This is a timid attempt to create a world of roaring engines and burnt rubber. That's why, if you really love fast cars and the romance of the road, you will close your eyes to the traffic that appears in front of the player's nose, to the rear-view mirrors that do not reflect anything, to the incredibly confusing interface and game mechanics that require long-term study. Close your eyes and be mesmerized by watching your experience bar grow, painstakingly filling your garage with new models, paying real money, grinding over and over again and - most importantly - hanging out online at night. Because for all their faults, The Crew is much more than a racing game. It's a whole world for those who understand. That is why, despite the seemingly devastating review, we give this game a good rating. in advance. Because the heart of a journalist says that The Crew in its present form, it is only the beginning of a long story.

Almost forgot to tell directly about the race. They are dashing and funny, yes.

Game tested on PlayStation 4

Among the players there is an opinion that Ubisoft gets everything right the second time. Say, if the game of stars from the sky is not enough, its sequel will certainly be much better. By and large, this only happened with Assassin's Creed 2 and (and, possibly, will happen again with The Division 2), but many expected the same from The Crew 2. Unfortunately, the second part is worse than the first, and even very active support after the release will hardly be able to fix this.

⇡ Again and again

The problem with the sequel is that it takes a few elements from other Ubisoft titles and lacks personality. If the predecessor could boast of at least some kind of plot - about a guy who went to jail for killing his brother (which he, of course, did not commit) and ruining an illegal group of racers from the inside, then all this grimness was removed from the second part. Now there is no story at all - you take on the role of an ambitious racer who wants to prove to the whole world that he can do everything: win races in a car, drive boats, and perform incredible stunts on an airplane.

For the sake of such locations, you can put up with mediocre physics

For each race, you get fame, which is also passed off as a dashing ride in the open world. Something similar happened in Watch Dogs 2, only there we collected as many "followers" as possible. Here, fame is required to gain access to new disciplines - for example, you can’t immediately jump on a motorcycle. Luckily, there's no need to replay old races - there's enough variety in the world to earn fame as you progress through all the available content.

And so you go to the menu, scroll through the list of disciplines, select the desired one and start the race. It loads, then some completely uninteresting characters say something to you, you listen to it all and see a countdown on the screen - in three seconds you will have to drive, fly or swim forward. And at first all this is even exciting, but with each new race you begin to understand more and more clearly that the physics of transport behavior cannot be ignored even by those who rarely pay attention to it.

The developers of The Crew 2 could not make either realistic or good arcade physics - they got some kind of mess, which, as they probably thought, should please both yours and ours. But when you do not have the opportunity to master the art of driving, learn how to carefully enter turns and use acceleration correctly, interest quickly disappears. In this game, absolutely all cars drive like irons and do not receive any damage, and the direction of driving can be changed right in the air after jumping from a springboard. Artful twists? Why, if you can pass them by ricocheting off the wall.

All transport is controlled exactly the same. Planes sometimes do not crash, even if they crash into a tree - their wings are so strong that when they come into contact with five pillars in a row, nothing happens. The handling of motorcycles deserves a special mention - they ride in much the same way in Ride to Hell: Retribution and other similar crafts. The only outlet is the boats, which bounce great on the waves, but that's where the difference between them and ordinary cars ends.

⇡ Nice and empty

A bleak picture is brightened up by a variety of tracks and locations. The giant open world, as in the first part, adds a few points to the final score - it is truly huge and in some places very pretty. If you go through various races without returning to the old ones, you will again and again find yourself in never-before-seen places in various American cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas and others. I especially liked to drive in rainy weather, when the screen is covered with drops, and the cars leave trails on the water.

But outside of racing, you don’t want to explore the open world at all. The entire list of races and tests is available in the menu, so there is no desire to waste time on extra trips - you got tired of looking at beautiful backdrops and taking screenshots even in the first part. They tried to revive the cities by adding passers-by, but this does not affect the perception in any way - the world remains just as empty and dull. Therefore, very quickly, I stopped riding from one point on the map to another, but simply opened the list of races and completed them one by one.

It is very easy to emerge victorious in the vast majority of cases. A few races (especially on boats) seemed difficult to me, but many races are completed without any problems on the first try. Still, no one demands to take first place - they won’t even really reward you for this. With the exception of some events, it is enough to get into the top three - then the test will be passed, main character get a lot of fame, and at the same time earn extra money. The currency is needed to buy new vehicles - the starting car and plane are given out for free, and to participate in additional disciplines like drifting and dredge, you need to pay a lot of money.

One of the main drawbacks of the first The Crew seemed to me the pumping system - certain parts were given out for obtaining specific medals in races. Here they got rid of this, turning the game into a kind of Destiny and The Division: the transport has several elements that the player can change for better ones. For the successful completion of the race, parts of different quality levels are awarded - the cooler they are, the greater the increase in performance they give.

The vehicle will not necessarily become faster, it will just be a little better - its rating will increase, and therefore it will be easier for you to take part in high-level races. However, there is not much sense from this system - old parts cease to be needed when new ones are received, so you just waste time going into the menu over and over again and replacing each element one by one. At the same time, on the track, on the water and in the air, there is no feeling that something has changed significantly - the control is still the same oak, and the races are still too similar to each other. The difference is slightly felt when using rare parts - with their help, the amount of money or fame earned increases.

You can list the cons of The Crew 2 for a long time, as you constantly stumble upon them during the passage. You start to miss dialogues and videos on the engine very soon - listening to nonsense about cool cars and crazy racers is just as unbearable as in. Many tracks are literally strewn with jumps, for which the developers have some kind of unhealthy love - with such physics, it was clearly not necessary to force the player to “fly” in cars so often. During races, it doesn’t always make sense to get ahead as soon as possible - opponents cheat and gain comically high speed, overtaking you and complicating the task.

If we compare The Crew 2 with the Payback mentioned above, then it is a little better and not so annoying. After a couple of hours, I didn’t want to touch the last Need for Speed ​​​​at all, while entering The Crew 2 is much more pleasant. But she quickly gets bored. It is enough to complete a couple of races, fly a plane, even try switching between vehicles on the go. For some reason, this “trick” is not used in the races themselves, which is strange - in GTA Online similar entertainments have already been introduced, and they worked well there. Here, what Ubisoft boasted about so much at exhibitions turned out to be a useless option.

The new The Crew surprises in how a game can be ambitious and empty at the same time. It offers as many as fourteen disciplines, but none of them has been brought to mind. The physics leave much to be desired, the world is boring, the races are identical to each other, and attempts to build a story around this turned out to be a failure. This arcade is very reminiscent of

Company Ubisoft at the end of the year, she fired a volley from all the guns at once. Several games have been released:, and. Standing apart in this list is a new IP in the racing genre - which was presented with pomp on E3 2013, then postponed, and now, finally, the appearance on store shelves.

The game was developed Ubisoft Reflections and company Ivory Tower. The latter arose in 2007 and consisted of people from Eden Games, which are known to fans of races in the dilogy and PS1- versions Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

At the core The Crew lies the story of a former street racer incredibly similar to Gordon Freeman (except that the glasses have changed a little, but the hairstyle with a beard has become more fashionable). His brother, who, by the way, does not look like him at all, is killed in the prologue of the game, substituting the protagonist. The accusation and several years behind bars - all this remains behind the scenes, as it turns out to be a backstory.

The action begins to actively develop around the grouping “ 510 ” - street racers who don’t climb under the hood for a word. These people are ready to threaten, kill and crash cars if it is necessary for the prosperity of the gang. The car-criminal group has gained control over all major cities in the United States. It is clear that this situation does not suit the country's authorities in any way, so the protagonist is approached by a sexy secret service agent, offering to become their undercover man. Wanting to avenge the death of his brother and the years in prison, the main character agrees and now his goal is to become the head of the gang “ 510 ”, defeating all the leaders, and at the same time feel like a detective on wheels, finding a connection with the “rats” from the agency who covered the group all this time.

To say that the plot is banal is to say nothing. We saw similar “moves” in “ fast and furious” and in single player campaigns Need For Speed(the same ). But from the time E3 2013, the attention of all was riveted by one idea - the scene. All America on huge map no downloads, big cities with recognizable streets and monuments. The realists said that Ubisoft it is unlikely that it will be possible to do everything very reliably, they have set a painfully high bar for themselves. What happened in the end? Let's figure it out.

The first city - Detroit, in reality, almost died out, but in the game it appears to us, one might say, polished, as it was during the heyday of auto production. Having completed several tasks that are not the most diverse, having gained confidence in the leader of the local “ 510 ” and once in the group, we move to St. Louis. At this moment, you understand that there can be no question of reliability. The distance between St. Louis and Detroit is almost 750 kilometers, and in the game only 20. The path from New York to Los Angeles is 4000 kilometers, but in The Crew were limited to 120 kilometers of winding roads and changing landscapes. For the sake of interest, we drove the last route, spending about 40 minutes of game time on it. It would seem not bad for games, and the local world can be called really huge, but the scale of 1:30 is hardly comparable to the big words from the announcement of the game about the map of all America. Moreover, the chosen proportion not only reduces the distance between points, but also the cities themselves. AT New York, for example, only a couple of blocks separate Central Park from Times Square, instead of 10-15 "blocks". The scale can still be accepted, but it is impossible to accept a lot of flaws.

For example, each car, of which there are about sixty in the game, has a view from the cab, which is very commendable, but the mirrors “do not work”, they are dead. And we're talking about racing game in 2014 on new generation consoles! The cabin is a separate issue. It would seem, how can you screw up with gear shifting? Just! The animation is triggered a moment after you hear the sound of the checkpoint going up or down. As a result, it looks like the player is tapping on the steering wheel. In this case, the gearbox shift paddles remain motionless. The on-board computer also does not work in the cockpit, which can be attributed to unpleasant details.

I would like to start the review of The Crew not with the traditional and boring introductory paragraph, which will describe which studio worked on the game, a story about its past projects and something else like that, but with impressions. The Crew is simply a storehouse of impressions and generally resembles an encyclopedia dedicated to the United States. For example, I didn’t know at all that such colorful swamps are located near Miami, which are so nice to ride in an SUV. Later I remembered that these places, like many others, I saw in a bunch of American travel films. Now everyone who has bought or will buy The Crew will have the opportunity to take a virtual tour of interesting places USA, at the same time you will get it quite easily and effortlessly. I want to pay tribute in advance to the game designers who managed to charm the player and give the riders the opportunity to visit the most colorful places in America.

Well, now it's time to descend from heaven to earth and dismantle The Crew by bones. You take on the role of Alex Taylor - a street racer who loves to mock the cops, dragging them into another chase and leaving them with nothing. Alex's brother is the head of a huge group of racers called "5-10". These bandits make money on everything: smuggling, street racing, theft and much, much more. Alex is tired of driving alone, and he decides to become part of this large network, after which he immediately loses his brother, who is killed in front of our hero. After a few years in prison, Zoe, an FBI agent, comes to Alex, who wants to expose her colleagues, who are covering participants 5-10. To do this, you need to infiltrate the gang and grow from the usual six to the right hand of the Razor - the leader of the group. The path will be short and thorny, and Alex will have to travel the United States from East to West and from North to South.

The game is divided into five zones: Midwest, East Coast, South, Mountain States and West Coast. In the listed sequence, we will have to go through them. Along the way, Alex will visit: Chicago, Detroit, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and a bunch of little-known cities. He will have to overcome a variety of natural landscapes: swamps, deserts, plains, forests, finally salt marshes. Throughout the game, my eye could not get tired, because he did not have to look at the same picture all the time. While traveling, America will surprise you and throw up new beauties. And that was the most memorable part of the game for me.

Throughout the journey you will be accompanied by a curious story. In principle, it could already be seen in several parts of Need for Speed ​​​​and in the films of the Fast and the Furious series, but for some reason it is precisely such a light narrative that fits here at the right time. In addition, it is the plot that will give an incentive to study the United States of America and make you trudge from point "A" to point "B". There are few types of tasks: win the race, catch up and crash the opponent's car, meet the allotted time, deliver the car with the least damage, escape from the police. There are also quite unusual tasks from the category: defeat rivals in supercars, moving in an SUV. I will explain the delicacy of the situation: the first ones reach speeds of up to 400 kilometers per hour, and your car, at best, up to 230. To win such races, you will have to cut corners in every possible way, go into the wilds, that is, where a supercar will never pass . At the end of the game, however, it becomes somewhat sad that for all this 12-hour dashing action movie there was not a single shootout.

Story events are not the only thing the game has to offer. The Crew will have to start with a weak street car, which, of course, needs to be prepared for new battles through many improvements. But here's an interesting thing - parts that increase the power of your car cannot be bought in a store. They must be earned by participating in challenges scattered throughout the map. What is nice - improving the car in this way is suddenly unobtrusive. I got new details just by riding around the map and admiring its beauties. When I saw the test, I started it. Realizing that I could pass it better, I pressed the restart button, realizing that the task was too tough for me, I just drove on. No one will force you to improve the car on purpose. Just keep in mind that the lower the level of your car, the more difficult the next mission will be for you. Harder, but passable.

By leveling up, the pilot will receive skill points that can be spent at headquarters to reduce the cost of various spare parts, increase the power of the nitro, increase the experience gained, and much more. At any time, the skill points pumped in can be thrown off and redistributed. For this, however, you will have to pay a small amount of in-game currency. I write in-game, as there are also funds purchased for real money. These are the so-called "Team Points". After joining the faction (I will return to this later), Alex will receive 100,000 command points in his hands. I recommend spending them wisely, since you will not receive more command points - they can only be bought for rubles. Therefore, I recommend saving this amount for buying a cool car or for buying skill points (the latter can only be done with team points).

If The Crew just has a huge choice of where to go and what to see, then the situation with cars is somewhat sadder. There are about 30 cars available, which is somehow not enough for a racing game. However, there is such a moment that many vehicles can be changed beyond recognition. The Crew has the ability to turn an ordinary sports car into a car for street racing, off-road or rally car, into a real supercar, as well as into a racing car. And all this from one car! For example, my Nissan 370Z, on which I overcame the whole game, in the modifications "Rally" and "Racing" looks simply unrecognizable! Put them side by side, so you won’t immediately say that the same car is taken as the basis.

So far, I have not said anything about physics or control. I'll start with the last one. Management in the game is specific and quite simple. You instantly get used to it and master it, and soon you even begin to scold it for its simplicity. Only a sports car and racing car. The latter has the most specific management, by accepting which it will be possible to firmly settle in the first place of the victory podium. As for the SUV and rally, these cars are the same in mastering, except that the rally mod keeps a stable 200 km / h on any off-road.

What else I want to scold The Crew for is the level system. The maximum level 50 is taken well, very quickly, you can do this already halfway through the campaign. The point here is that you get experience literally for everything: you completed a mission - experience, completed a test - experience, overtook a car, albeit a single one, but - experience. After that, it's kind of sad to see that your level bar doesn't grow any more. Somehow I got used to the fact that after beating the game and passing a small grind, you are far from the last level and have something to strive for.

The feature of the game will definitely be the ability to complete missions in the company of friends who instantly turn into your partners. So it's much more fun to complete missions to destroy cars and escape the chase. In the latter case, only the head of the gang leaves the police, and everyone else must ride nearby and drive the cops away. In normal races, the goal is still to come first to at least one of the members of the group. In this case, the mission is considered completed for everyone. The only strange thing is that you and your buddies will play as Alex Taylor, the story campaign is also designed for a lone wolf. Who are all these racers, why are they clones of the main hero and help - a mystery.

The saddest thing comes when you decide to go into PvP racing. More Alex Taylors are waiting for you here. I want to emphasize that there is no character customization in The Crew, even in online battles. Only the car has to stand out, since there are a lot of opportunities to set it up. Choose a color, choose a vinyl decal, choose a cool hood cover, choose a bumper, side mirrors, interior color and put a fancier spoiler. What you can love about The Crew is precisely for the possibility of good old-fashioned car customization, for which racing fans are already desperately hungry.

The Crew has a pretty nice picture, but there is no smell of a new generation of graphics here. Game designers did their best, and the natural landscapes here look very beautiful, but not high-tech. But the urban jungle is inferior in detail, probably to the same GTA 5 in the PlayStation 3 version. The musical component is presented in the form of three dozen compositions that have settled on several radio stations. In the presence of rock, indie, electronic and ... classical music. The last one for me is a real wildness, since I just can’t imagine how fun it can be to drive under this.

If someone decides to take platinum in The Crew, then he will have to spend a lot of time on this. The game has to be played twice. The second time you will need to achieve a platinum result in all story missions. It is also necessary to hack all satellite stations. Unlike the series Assassin's Creed, here it is not some kind of tedious task, but quite a useful one. Thanks to this, you can quickly learn about the location of parts for the secret car (for the recreation of which a trophy is placed) and various tests that will help improve the car. Well, I also cannot fail to note the trophy, for the capture of which it is necessary to go through a three and a half hour race in the company with one or more people. By the way, the game has the following trophy "Spend 24 hours in a team." In fact, it is not difficult, although time-consuming, the jamb here is different. The Crew somehow doesn't give a damn about statistics and shows, for example, that I played it for 0 hours 0 minutes. Statistics are reset with each restart of the game, which makes it very, very difficult for trophy hunters to get a number of trophies. We can only hope that in the next patches this will finally be corrected.

The review is based on the disc version of the game for PS4, provided to our editors by the developers.

Should be aware of this. Were these people's expectations justified? Not really - at the start, the game looks boring, uninteresting, and also suffers from server problems.

The tale of how the server forgot all the progress

The promises of a trouble-free start were completely fulfilled by Ubisoft employees, however, there are numerous complaints about the operation of the servers themselves. It happens that connection breaks occur at any quality of the Internet, the selection of participants for competitions is far from ideal, as well as their very number - for some reason, there are still half-empty worlds.

The main problem with the server side is that a huge number of players lose their progress the next time they log into the system. This is very disappointing and such unreliability only discourages the desire to play, in addition, all cars can disappear from the garage, all car parts can be reset to the stock level, and so on and so forth. Uplay issues kill cooperative mode, since the players do not find each other.

Is it worth mentioning that no one has installed servers for the vast territory of Russia, so you have to connect 5,000 kilometers away with a ping of more than 200 milliseconds? Ubisoft does not even plan to release patches for the game client yet, constantly patching the server side (so far without much success). If you think it's time to feel sorry for the buyers who lose a couple of hours of gameplay every day while the servers are on maintenance, then don't rush - the most important thing is yet to come.