The Crew Standard PS4/PS5

The Crew tries to be a driving game with something for everyone. You can team up with a group of friends for an epic road trip filled with fast-paced illegal activities, and seamlessly explore a massive map of the U.S., from the tip of Maine, all the way down to Miami, over to Los Angeles and back again, passing through other iconic cities along the way. Though it's true that all of this is possible, the experience isn't all that it's made out to be. The Crew tries to do a lot, and while it technically delivers the features it promises, it frequently stumbles over itself. There are brief moments of joy within, but just when you start to think the game's turned a corner, a bump in the road sends your joyride careening off course. When the best thing a racing game has going for it is the variety of environments it has to offer, you know something's amiss.

At some point during your journey across America, you wonder: what was that about forming a crew, again? Despite the game's title and pitch, The Crew is a single-player experience tucked into a multiplayer server. It starts with a story that casts you on a grand mission, and you're constantly encouraged by your cohorts to head to the next step along the way. You always have the option of inviting three of your friends along for the ride, but at no point does the game inspire you to do so. Think extra crewmates will help you on a difficult mission? Nope; the game scales its difficulty accordingly. If anything, forming a crew is a chore that's easy to brush aside. The best thing you can do to improve your chances at success is to upgrade your car, but the way in which The Crew facilitates this can get a little frustrating. While the game won't prevent you from entering a story mission, it will tell you if you're below the recommended level. You can purchase kits when you're avatar's level is high enough, but it takes a while to hit successive milestones.

These optional missions can be useful when you need to level up, but they can also be an annoyance when you're just trying to get from point A to point B. Every time you hit the road, you eventually cross the virtual gate that activates these missions, but there's nothing you can do to prevent them from activating automatically. Pass through a gate, and you have to suffer through a cluttered user interface, which starts with icons, but ends with a large results screen that blocks your view while driving. Apart from driving off the road to avoid a gate, or entering into a menu to abort after a mission activates, you're at the mercy of the map.

One of the best aspects of a racing game is the selection of cars that you get to choose from, but The Crew has a meager selection and does a poor job of incentivizing you to explore your options. Story missions are broken up by the type of vehicle they require: street, dirt, raid, performance, or circuit. Not every vehicle can be kitted out to fit every spec, but the one you get at the start of the game definitely can. Given that you earn new parts for the vehicle you complete missions with, you are never compelled to pick up new cars. Maybe your curiosity will get the better of you and you'll check out a new car, but there's nothing stopping you from using the same car from the beginning of the game through to the end.

Although the variety of cars is underwhelming and underutilized, the story missions take advantage of the different car specs in a good way. As you travel from one region of the country to the next, you encounter different terrain and environments that call upon the different types of kits you can fit to your car. You race street cars through dense cities, take on dirt car races through construction sites and rough terrain, and tear across states in souped up performance vehicles. The story missions are largely the best moments in the game, however, there exceptions: raid car missions and fleeing missions.