The Crew is a huge and unique racing game, playable exclusively online and, above all, it can boast of offering an ambitious open world so huge that it deserves to be on this year's list of the best technical achievements. But The Crew's visual rendering pays the price for its size, and its problems do not stop there. In general, sound effects lack punch, the economic system is rather stingy, the multiplayer community is poorly connected, and missions are too often spoiled by an incredibly frustrating AI that will openly cheat in a clumsy attempt to raise the tension a notch.
Where The Crew is right on target is in its stylization and miniaturization of the entire United States. Cities are model caricatures, but the vast expanses of land that connect them offer a road trip from city to city across the country, better than any driving game before it. Many racing games are adorned with a few different backdrops in their selection of circuits, from street racing in major American metropolitan centres to icy snow-covered mountain tracks, as well as sequences of pure and hard sprints under the desert jackpot, or even expeditions in the mud of giant redwood forests. The Crew manages to do all this brilliantly in one world that you can cross in one long session.
