Super Adventures in Delisted Racing Games Part 1: The Crew

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing racing games you can't buy anymore, not online anyway. In fact, you can't even play The Crew anymore as Ubisoft shut the servers down last March! They just took a game people bought with money and made it entirely non-functional.

I struggle to write about racing games as basically all you do in them is get in a car and turn left or right. Sure the process of winning races is a little more complicated than that, plus I can talk about the types of races they have and their various features, but if I go down that route I'll pretty much end up writing an instruction manual and no one reads manuals anymore.

But screw it, this is my last chance to write about The Crew while it's fresh in my memory, so I'm doing it. Plus I'm throwing in Need for Speed: Undercover and Forza Horizon 3, because it's easier to see what makes something distinct when you put it next to the things that it's similar to.

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Developer:

Ivory Tower and Reflections

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Release Date:

2014

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Systems:

Win, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4

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The first game I'm writing about is The Crew. It says 'Calling All Units' under the title, but it's a lie, I never handed over any cash for that DLC... thankfully. Lucky escape there. The game was released in 2014 and destroyed in 2024, so it existed for 10 years before moving into the past tense.

Huh, I just noticed that it came out for Xbox 360, but not PS3. That's weird.

Anyway, The Crew had two main gimmicks that I'm aware of. First, it let you drive across the whole damn United States. Second, it was a bit of an MMO and you could team up with other people in the world to race together as a crew...

...so it's a bit weird that you can't make your own character. You can't even choose a face from a list. Instead you're stuck with this guy on the left, Alex Taylor, and the beard is mandatory.

The game presumably started with a cutscene of Alex witnessing his brother being gunned down in the street, then getting arrested for the crime of being next to him when the cops arrived. I can't be 100% sure of this however, because I played a demo or a free weekend or whatever back when the game was new and it wouldn't let me reset my progress and start again. You got to play through this game once.

An FBI agent called Zoe came to Alex with an offer: if he works with her to take down the folks that murdered his brother and got him arrested... actually that's pretty much all he needed to hear before he's in.

Oh damn, I just realised that I can completely spoil the plot of this game as no one can play it anymore. Ubisoft already ruined it for everyone, I can't possibly ruin it any further. Here's one spoiler for you: this multiplayer game has more story than the two single player racing games I'm writing about afterwards.

I was worried that this was going to be one of those racing games where the only guidance you get on the road is a marker pointing to a checkpoint circle in the distance. But no, this had big holographic chevrons on the corners and a blue racing line to follow. It was possible to go sailing right through the yellow barriers, they didn't block you, but I basically never did.

This is Times Square, by the way. I was driving around actual New York! Well, a scale model at least.

They even threw in a few landmarks, like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. The texture quality was weirdly low, especially compared to the beautiful cars, but when I got the light just right in photo mode I couldn't even tell. Man, I loved the lens flares in this game. The best part of any racing game is when you see the sun peeking through the gaps between the trees and buildings you're driving past. Well, unless the game is set entirely at night.

This photo mode was added in a later update and it was pretty great as it let you move the camera around, change the time of day, the car condition, and the weather, and it took proper quality 4K images, no matter what resolution you had the game set to. That's maybe not ideal for people playing it in the future on an 8K monitor... but no one's going to be playing it in the future, so that's fine!

The game got a big graphical overhaul in 2015 to accompany the Wild Run DLC, so it didn't used to look this pretty. They also added new HUD, along with dynamic weather!

Look at those shiny puddles! It's nice to be warm and dry inside the cockpit view of a racing game while it's raining outside, especially when each car has a proper dashboard. I've played a lot of racing games that don't even have a cockpit view so I never take this for granted.

The traffic density was a little less than realistic, I never got stuck in a jam, but there were enough cars around during races to give me something to think about. I had to get good at weaving between vehicles. There were pedestrians around as well, but they've never been a problem in any racing game... probably. I don't think I could run them over, so I just let them do their thing.

One thing the The Crew did well was give me the feeling of being in an actual place.

I mean how many other open world racers let you see highway streetlights stretching out into the distance? The game didn't have the most realistic graphics imaginable, but that simple line of dots made it feel more real than any other racing game I've played.

It was nice to just go on a drive and see the scenery. In fact, the game reminded me of the times I played a flight sim and flew off across the wilderness just because I could. Especially when I left the roads and drove up a cliff to send my car airborne.

Though there's another reason I started to stray from the roads on my travels. I'd be driving around the countryside listening to Zoe and Alex have a chat about something that happened in the plot, and then I'd spot it: a skill challenge marker, right in the middle of the bloody road.

These things triggered one of a bunch of different challenges like 'drive through the narrow gates' or 'jump the ramp', and they were generally pretty harmless. I've got no problem with showing off a bit of driving skill while I'm travelling somewhere.

The trouble with these challenges was all the crap they put on screen. Not these holographic markers, they were fine, I'm talking about the rewards I was given after completing the task:

The game didn't pause during this, so I was hurtling down the street with this mess blocking my vision. Nope, it waited until I made my choice, then it faded to black and paused for a moment. You know what I don't like when I'm driving? Interruptions.

The game was giving me a prize, I was supposed to feel rewarded, but I just wanted it to quit asking me stupid questions. Yes, of course I want to equip the upgrade, why would I ever not want that? Just give me a subtle notification about my 0.3% acceleration bonus and then piss off.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the skill challenge rewards were the most annoying thing about the game for me. Well okay, the servers shutting down so I can never play it again was the most annoying thing, but they were in second place.

I also ran over a special crate in the road that triggered a massive police chase. But I didn't mind the police, especially when their helicopters had such beautiful lens flares.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to do about the cop chopper, I guess wait for its fuel to run out, but the cop cars could generally be evaded with some smart driving. All I had to do was get out of their range without smashing up too much stuff and aggravating them further, and then wait for the countdown to finish. Except for when I was carrying a crate, then I just had to run the gauntlet to the destination.

The game gave me some optional toys to make this easier, like infinite nitros. These super powers only appeared while the cops were around and I could only carry a couple of toys at once (with cooldowns) but they helped I think.

I've read that it took players about an hour and a half to drive from New York to San Francisco but it didn't feel that long for me. I guess that means I was enjoying it. I've also read that there were 1000+ real world landmarks in the game and I decided to put the racing on hold for a while and just drive around the country, photographing them.

I'm almost certain I also saw a space shuttle flying over San Francisco, but when I checked my screenshot folder it turned out that my PC had just decided to stop taking them a few minutes earlier. So that was a pain in the ass.

I got a photo of this Data Station satellite dish I found though! These things seem to work like the towers in... basically every other Ubisoft game, as when I reached one it showed off the local area and revealed things on my map.

Here's the map screen by the way. You can see my epic coast-to-coast cross-country journey as it's the bit that's been coloured in. The game let you to fast travel to any location with colour, so even though I'd left all my currently available race icons behind me in Detroit this became a big help for getting around later in the game.

The game said I could use can use airports and rail stations to visit distant locations without driving to them, but I never tried them because I like driving!

I wasn't keen on this map at first because of the information overload and the very real possibility that if I pressed the wrong button I'd end up racing against another player, but once I figured out how to filter out everything I didn't need it was fine. In fact, the map was great and I loved how I could go from this view and zoom right the way in to real time 3D. The transition from map to gameplay was awesome too.

When I was driving around city streets everywhere looked kind of similar, landmarks aside New York didn't look too different to Detroit or Los Angeles, but out in the countryside there was a lot of variety. And the game map was so damn big that I was always finding myself racing on roads I'd never seen before.

There was a decent variety of different races as well, about what you'd expect from a game like this. I wasn't expecting to win so many of them on my first try, my driving talents are kind of modest, but hey if a game wants me think I'm good at racing I'm happy to go along with that delusion. Though I wasn't all that bothered by failing, as restarts were fast and cutscenes were skippable.

The game had a lot of cutscenes... and for some reason this red car of mine ended up on its roof a lot in them. Weird glitch.

There were never any dialogue choices or anything like that, but there was definitely a lot of talking, and I liked Alex's 'Fine, if I need to set up and lead my own chapter of the 5-10s to get my revenge, I'll just get on with it' attitude. Oh, the 5-10 Motor Club was the criminal car racing organisation the game was based around. You had to work your way through the ranks while also doing secret schemes with the FBI, making allies, and setting up bases across the US.

You'd think that Alex would've been able to get out and walk around inside his many HQs, especially as I started to recruit friends, but nope. I could see them hanging around like it's the Normandy from Mass Effect, but they were just part of the background. They only talked to me when I was out in in the car, doing jobs for them.

But I did get one benefit from having them around...

Each new buddy had a new set of perks for me to spend points on! These gave me things like an enhanced racing line, lower prices and stuff, though I still had points left over once I had everything I wanted.

The discounts they offered weren't much good to me as I rarely ever bought anything. The game was suspiciously stingy with its rewards and cash was too tight to just throw away recklessly. Sometimes I was was racing to win my opponents car and I didn't even get that afterwards!

I have a theory for why that was: the game had two currencies, the one you earned in game and Crew Credits, which were bought with actual real-world cash. If a publisher makes more money by not letting players earn what they want through gameplay, then it's in their interest to be mean.

At first it seemed like there wasn't much of anything to buy, I was shocked at how few cars there were on the collection board. Then I realised that visiting the shops in different cities was adding more vehicles.

The game was set up so that races required a certain type of car, like off-road races required a Raid vehicle and races on racetracks needed a Circuit car. Fortunately Zoe gave me a new car in each category for free when I needed it, so I ended up with a garage full of Dodge Challengers, each set up for different terrain. Every column of photos here features variants of the same car, so there are only 6 models on this page, but I did eventually reach 14 pages. That would've been more impressive if the bikes weren't all locked behind the Calling All Units DLC.

What was annoying about this screen is that it didn't show any of the stats and I couldn't buy cars from it directly. I had to go off to the city with the appropriate shop. Fortunately I could just fast travel, so it was only a minor (and pointless) inconvenience. It's weird that the game had friction like this when it also had so many quality of life features.

It's also a bit weird that the customisation options were so limited. Back in the day games let you scribble all over the car and Autosculpt your bumper, but here there wasn't much scope for creativity. I suppose it was designed for multiplayer and simpler cars mean less data being sent to other players.

Each car also had a health bar that could be refilled by spending cash to repair it, but I never did. There didn't seem to be a point. I never bought parts either, I just relied on the free upgrades I was getting after everything I did.

Here's a shot of me taking a Raid spec car out to smash some crates. The timer was really tight on these levels, so I had to figure out the correct route and I could only get away with missing one or two boxes on the way.

It was cool though, I liked taking a break from all the sprints and circuits and checkpoint races I was doing.

The game was also fond of its take down missions, where I'd have to chase a car and hit it a few times to encourage them to stop. These chases always seemed hopeless but then I'd get them at the last moment. Well, except for the one where I had to stay close and follow someone through Las Vegas, that was so difficult it was giving me Driver flashbacks.

This had the same developer by the way, kind of. The Crew was co-developed by Driver dev Reflections and Ivory Tower, and it was their first racing game after the excellent Driver: San Francisco (they spent a few years making nothing but Just Dance sequels). It was also their latest racing game, as Ivory Tower made The Crew 2 and Motorsport on their own.

These missions were sometimes more tied to the story than the racing levels, especially when Alex had been told to kill someone and he was working with Zoe to figure out how to keep his cover without anyone actually dying. They also had a lot of stuff going on, like planes flying overhead, firemen working to put out buildings, mining rigs doing their thing etc. This one had a bloody space shuttle, which makes up for that other one in San Francisco I didn't get a screenshot of.

At first it seemed like the game was going to be full of drag races, drifting and stunt races as well, but I guess those missions were just a preview of one of the expansions.

It's a bit a weird maybe that they didn't just unlock everything for everyone in the game's final days, seeing as no one was going to spend real money anymore, but I guess they didn't want to pull attention from The Crew 2. I gotta be honest, I'm not going to lose any sleep over missing out on extra drifting challenges.

Despite all the side events this was definitely a proper racing game, I could tell because I found hot air balloons. I dunno what it is about these things, but when I see them in a racer I think 'ah, they get it'. Probably because I played too much Need for Speed as a kid.

The Crew definitely leaned more towards the arcady NFS style of driving than the more simulation focused Gran Turismo and Forza games, so it wasn't really a struggle to keep my car facing the right direction and get it around corners... generally. One circuit race at the end in particular repeatedly kicked my ass.

When I lost a race in The Crew I'd just get right back into it, try it again, and eventually win, but this circuit defeated me so thoroughly that it drained all my hope that I'd ever get past it. And I never did! This is where the game ended for me; I hit a difficulty spike and that was it.

There were no difficulty options in the game that I was aware of, though I've read that you could grind the skill challenges to make it easier. Every car in the race had a number showing how good it, with everyone else here being around 680 and my car being 741 just through normal gameplay. If I'd gone and done some more challenges, gotten more +3s to my drive train etc. I may have been able to get that number up to 800 or 900 and flown past everyone.

But I ran out of time to even try that. I thought I had another day left! The only server problem I ever had with The Crew was the server being shut down forever.

I can get why an MMO can't live forever without someone paying to keep the online side of things running, but this was clearly a single-player game as much as it was a multiplayer one. It always gave me the option to play a race with a crew and I'm pretty sure I saw another player out in the world once or twice, but I was basically playing it offline.

I should be all kinds of pissed off about having a game I own taken away from my library, even if I did get it for free and then left there unplayed until the last moment. But with so many other racing games in the world, was anything actually lost when The Crew shut down?

Well the gameplay was nothing special. It kind of played like Ubisoft's version of a Need for Speed game (one with cutscenes and cops), with the same kind of vibe and handling, so there are plenty of alternatives out there if you want that experience. It did have its own proper single player story though, which was as good as these games generally get. And there were presumably some interesting multiplayer features there that I never tried.

But what made The Crew really stand out for me was its incredibly huge open world. It just refused to let me get bored of revisiting the same familiar roads. I was always going somewhere new and seeing something different, and I can't get that experience from anything else I currently own. Plus it was just a fun racing game and I would've rather played this than Need for Speed: Rivals or Need for Speed 2015 if I'd known it was any good ten years ago!


I guess The Crew 2 probably features an equally huge map, but I'm going to wait until 2028 to see if disappears before I gave that a go. Or I suppose I could try the demo.

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Sorry that it took until July to get this published, this wasn't the plan. "May" it says in the plan, it's written quite clearly. That's a long time to go without a new clue image so I went and made you one, even though you already know what the next game is.

What did you think about The Crew? Is it a tragedy that it's gone, or are ancient racing games like this just too archaic to be worth playing anymore?