The Crew 2 is an open world racing game with the aim of satisfying a wide variety of players. It is set in the United States and focuses on arcade racing. Events are divided into four categories Street Racing, Offroad, Freestyle and Pro Racing. Each of those, contains multiple disciplines that determines the type of event you’ll be participating in. You gain fans for winning races, finishing events and completing challenges, which increases your popularity. Upon gaining a new level, you unlock more disciplines which gives you access to even more types of events. For example, in Street Racing you start off with just a regular race discipline, but by increasing your popularity you can unlock Drift, Drag and Hyper Car.
This signifies the sheer abundance of options and variety that comes with The Crew 2. Almost all interests are taken care of, and no matter what type of a racing fan you are, you can compete in whichever event you’re in the mood for.
As expected, all vehicle types handle different but planes and boats have different mechanics, and there are specific disciplines designed around them. Once you get the hang of it, you can instantly swap between land, air and water vehicles, which often resulted in many hilarious and memorable moments. As you complete races, you gain loot belonging to different tiers which then improves the car’s handling and performance, making it easier to go after bigger challenges with your favourite vehicle.
If you do not want to spend time getting to the race, you can quick travel right to it irrespective of its starting location. Otherwise, you can spend time driving around and completing challenges such as speed traps and stunts.
You can also look for loot crates by following a beeping sound or take pictures of specified objects. But there isn’t much to do in the open world and its design itself is pretty generic and bland. The Crew 2 is an online only game with a heavy focus on multiplayer. You are generally thrown into a session with random players, but it is perfectly enjoyable for fans of solo racing.
While it is an improvement over the first game, the mechanics are not comparable to its competitors. Furthermore, the design of the world leaves a lot to be desired after other open world games like the Forza Horizon series have made significant improvements over the years.
The Crew 2 is a great all-round racing game. Instead of doing one thing well, it aims to please everyone and mostly succeeds. Changes made to the game’s structure means you will get scaled back open world activities, but the sheer variety and options available to players is a noteworthy achievement.
