When not rooted to the ground, The Crew 2 still manages to ably impress in both the air and sea domains. Whether you’re competing by land, air or sea, driving vehicles in The Crew 2 simply feels bloody fantastic. The cars in particular have that Grand Theft Auto feel to them where each one palpably seems like a solid entity that reacts with the sort of explicit real-world feedback that one might expect from every little turn and every little adjustment you make as the driver. When it comes to the handling of these various vehicles, The Crew 2 very much embodies a bespoke feeling of weight, heft and physicality that really hasn’t been seen in a while. On the face of it, this sort of loot collection for incremental gain should be a cynical turn off, not least because of the grinding that it infers, yet there’s an almost a perverse kind of addiction to getting all this loot (as no doubt Ubisoft has intended), and gradually making my fleet of vehicles more powerful soon revealed itself to be a hugely compelling pursuit (though granted, not everyone will feel this way). Once collected, loot manifests itself as parts of varying qualities that can be used to boost the performance of the vehicle which you used to win the race in a number of different ways, ranging from buffing acceleration and top speed, through to handling and drift capability to name just a few. Motocross is just one of the many disciplines available in The Crew 2.Īnother benefit of completing objectives and generally not doing crap is that you will be rewarded with loot at the end of every event, with the quality of said gains increasing in potency if you elect to take part in these events on their higher difficulties – the latter of which requires your vehicle to be properly attuned and capable in the first place. From straight-laced sports cars that encompass recognizable names such as Aston Martin, through to hulking monster trucks emblazoned with Red Bull branding, The Crew 2’s diverse selection of racing opportunities is only really matched by the wide variety of vehicles that you can use to take part in them with. Rather than just sitting in a vault somewhere in Scrooge McDuck sized piles, all that moolah can be used to purchase vehicles that in turn can be used in various racing disciplines. Winning races, succeeding at events and taking cool photos also provides you with two different types of currency – regular cash and the aptly named Crew Credits, with the only difference between the two being that you can reach deep into your pockets and use real-life money to top up the latter. There are literally hundreds of different events to try too and in this sense, The Crew 2 offers more content than just about any other racer money can buy. Luckily, this being a Ubisoft Game that presents you with a scaled map of the United States of America, there are no shortages of race and activity icons popping up all over the map, so the need to grind old events in order to access new ones is actually kept fairly minimal for much of the game. In The Crew 2, you gain social media followers for completing races, special events and taking photos of Instagram worthy shenanigans, but more than just pure braggadocio, your follower count acts as an experience bar of sorts that when topped out, knocks you up a level which then opens up a veritable smorgasbord of new races and events for you to take part in.
Once you’ve gotten past the trying presentation of The Crew 2’s social media beats, it becomes apparent that it’s more than just audiovisual presentation and that it also acts as the bedrock for The Crew 2’s numerous progression systems. At times, The Crew 2 can be a stunning looking effort.