While I recognize that The Crew is just another disposable helping of Ubisoft open-world slop full of map-revealing radar towers and distracting activity icons that get in your way at least as often as they represent opportunities for rewards, I can't help but feel a great affection for it. The ridiculous deep-cover gang infiltration (it's incredible how many things can be accomplished through the medium of illegal street racing) story and world flavor, however thin and clichéd, are so much more fun than the bland sports festival theming that seems to be the trend today. Race design is hit and miss, but the hits are memorable, like the time I bested a high-performance supercar with my dirt-tuned Nissan Fairlady by efficiently drifting through a series of off-road shortcuts that ran alongside and often cut across the street, a twisting duel of contrasts that felt much more interesting than a typical race between similar vehicles sharing the same circuit.

But, more than anything else, I just enjoyed tracing my way across the massive map, winding through the mountainous northeast on a rainy night to Laurent Juillet's ambient music or stomping through a southern swamp to Baby or Black Milk. I know it doesn't seem very impressive, but I think I might just be happy if a game gives me a map, a car, and a soundtrack. My love for paths and routes and mazes is something that I think about all the time in the context of videogames but rarely talk about because I don't entirely know how to explain it and doubt most people would understand, but the point here is that I take great pleasure in simply following The Crew's interstates and highways. Those relaxing cross-country trips that lasted twenty or thirty minutes before I reached New York or Los Angeles for the first time, flying down the overpass as the buildings gradually enveloped me, decelerating into the smooth cruise of an exit loop, fluidly weaving through traffic as I cleanly transitioned into a tunnel or a grid of city blocks, coolly emboldened by the Arctic Monkeys or American Princes song on the radio—those are the experiences that I'll remember most from this game.

Is that really anything remarkable for the genre? Am I overvaluing The Crew because I simply haven't played many of its influences, competitors, and successors? I honestly don't know. I look forward to finding out.

I meant to spend more time with it before it got shut down, but thankfully members of the community seem pretty confident that they can get some kind of server emulation up and running to preserve the game. I hope it won't take long. I still have to finish avenging my brother's murder by driving real good.

I know I'm literally 10 years late on this one but I had to try it when I saw it was shutting down. I did not care for the story one bit; my goal was to get some American car considering the location and visit all the main attractions and landmarks (little did I know that the 31 of March was not included in the days you can still play the same). Got in my red Mustang and started exploring, 1170 real life kilometers later I was done with everything besides the west coast. Imagine my face today when I hopped on to finish and see the servers are done. Fuck you Ubisoft for not allowing an offline mode. Guess now I'll have to look on YouTube for the west coast. Anyway, the vibes at the end of it were great, relaxing cruising to see iconic stuff in the US. I even got used to the driving mechanics.

Screenshots: https://www.imagebam.com/view/GAAYMV

West Coast landmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny0EdIp8BTw

With The Crew's servers going down in less than two weeks, I felt compelled to play through the campaign before it goes away forever. My expectations were fairly low coming in, and The Crew was actually even more boring than I thought I'd find it. I did find the massive map to be impressive and driving through it could sometimes be zen-like, but the campaign events are repetitive and the plot is threadbare. The entire game feels pointless and boring as a result, with little reason to play event after event. The multiplayer aspects also appear to be shoehorned, though I didn't experience it directly.

I miss this game a lot. The overall product is just alright, but The Crew 1 had a game structure that I am frankly shocked that Ubisoft didn't run into the ground, because they really had something here. Thanks to game depending on centralized servers, NOBODY CAN PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE!!! YAAAAAAAY! Death to everything!

I cannot put into words what it feels like when you're tearing ass in the car of your choice that you built up an attachment to because of the spent time upgrading it through numerous challenges -- across the largest fucking map for any game I have ever played. There is-...there was nothing else like it. I can't get this pick up and play thrill from other games besides like Forza Horizon 4 but that game isn't nearly as good in it's game structure.

Because of objective variety and map size, The Crew had thousands of mini challenges and objectives... and due to sheer map size, there was room for way, way more. I am not a car guy, but the cars on offer for just the base version were cool. I bought some DLC cars, but I just enjoyed grinding out better parts with the starter Dodge Challenger. I'm basic, but there's just about every type of major car brand here so you get to be your own snooty little shithead in your utmost ideal commercial car if you really wanted. You didn't even necessarily have to buy any DLC to get something you would like. I know, shocking.

This game does, well, DID do car upgrades really well. You had a Bronze, Silver, Gold ranking for every race and challenge and depending on how well you did, you were given a random part for your car that was either slightly or greatly better than what you were working with. Didn't matter what car you were driving, as long as you completed the challenge with the car you wanted to upgrade the parts for, you were guaranteed an upgrade. It was fucking awesome. I hadn't seen such a fun upgrade system since Racing Lagoon on PS1. That makes two racing games that I have played in my entire life that had fun car parts systems that made you want to do every challenge like crazy. One of those games is completely unplayable now. This gaming genre doesn't fucking suck shit out of a dickhole, guys. I swear.

Ok look, it's Ubisoft game. The "story" is eye-rollingly boring and generic. It doesn't really matter to me because The Crew is 100% a game you could have just turned the volume to 0% to play your own shit and it would mesh well with the game experience. What I will shit on this game for endlessly is that driving at night is awful due to a lack of lighting outside of major metropolitan areas. The day and night cycle was really, really slow. You drive out into the country at night and you could literally be staring at pitch black for an hour.

Despite it's generic presentation, The Crew was great. Great potential to be even better that never happened because The Crew 2 had to have planes or something. I popped back into the Crew 1 a year ago because I missed it and had so much fun. The game was still populated by thousands of console users, too. Now the memory of how cool it was is relegated to people who paid for it and are mad as fuck that they can't play it anymore (me).

I personally think it's really cool that a company dominated by notable unconvicted rapists can take away a product people paid money for with an undefined life span not dictated by the EULA and throw it in the trash after it's not shiny and new anymore because...there's better products? Skull & Bones? A watered down Forza clone they called Crew 3? Hello?! These games are the new hotness. You just don't get it. These games are like super cool. Pay no attention to low sales and breakneck speed of employee overturn. Please look forward to Ghost of Tsu- I mean Assassin's Creed Nippon or whatever. Suck the $180 Ultimate Edition of my dick and balls.

Not a great sign for the industry right now that every review of things I like are turning into eulogies.

I played this game a bit through Uplay years ago.

Ubisoft just shuts down the game and doesn't leave at least a single-player mode for people to still enjoy it.

GG

En 2016 conseguí este juego por Xbox Gold, y lo recuerdo demasiado porque era de los juegos que más me gustaba de todos los que desbloqueé con la suscripción, y aunque si lo jugué mucho rato y llegué casi a la mitad de la historia, por alguna razón lo dejé de jugar y ya nunca lo continué (conociéndome de seguro me quedé atorado en un nivel).

Y todos estos años he tenido el juego en la mente por esa espinita que tenía de nunca habérmelo pasado, de hecho nunca lo desinstalé, pero igual no tenía prisa de volverlo a jugar, nada mas sabía que algún día lo haría y pues ahí estaba en mi consola sin que lo volviera a tocar.

Ahora en 2024, 10 años después del lanzamiento del juego y 8 años después de que lo jugué, ví que iban a cerrar el juego y que ya no se iba a poder jugar a partir del 31 de marzo, así que pooooor fin me quité esa espinita y me lo pasé. Tantos años teniéndolo en la mente pero ya ahora si completé la campaña, y no será el mejor juego de carreras, pero por el recuerdo que yo le tengo para mi es de mis favoritos. Gracias por las memorias The Crew, y hasta nunca. (Gracias menos a las misiones de romper 80 cajas, me cagan las odio muéranse alv alv)