Junior Member
Note dump time! This is supposed to be a test, after all. Following up on my closed beta Reddit post- https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Crew/co...ay_1_thoughts/
This may seem like a lot of complaints, but I tend not to take notes when I'm blasting around having fun (which was the bulk of my experience). I do take note when something gets in the way or seems off. But we'll start off with...
Praise
* Yay, more events to test!
* HOLY CRAP GUYS: if you haven't yet done it, get a drift car, turn off the assists and do one of the events. I finally found a game I like drifting in.
* Dirt bike tracks are a blast, especially in first person.
* Jet Sprint boats are so much more fun than the speedboat courses. Driving a boat thru a concrete valley in the middle of the desert (Vegas) is a delightful irony.
* Actually, the boat races in general seem to get better as one advances.
* A lot of very good courses in the street race section. Loving some of the stunts and flat-out blind turns.
* Dedicated track racing!
* Finally saw snow! It looks fantastic, especially from the air, and doesn't completely demolish handling like the first game.
Suggestions
* Still need more slots in the faves menu. Need at least an extra slot for an off-road machine, or just more slots that can be filled with whatever. Maybe a full wheel?
* Separate volume levels for "Music" and "Radio." I like the licensed radio selection, I don't like the ambient background or menu music.
* In the first game, I'd be able to start off from where I was when I last quit out. Please bring that back, it'd save a lot of load screens after crashing.
* A dark mode interface. The grey on white map sucks.
* Maybe don't put snow so far south. I lived in Florida for 20+ years, only saw flurries once, and only ever heard of it touching the ground once or twice.
* Seems a lot of loot boxes spawn off-road. Be nice to see them closer to the streets or water more often. Maybe even add aerial caches?
* Would love for the "Alpha Grand Prix" cars to have much louder exhaust notes. See Project Cars' F1 cars for reference, they absolutely howl.
Complaints
* CUTSCENES - ANY number of unskippable cutscenes is too many. If I wanted videos, I'd browse YouTube, or watch The Grand Tour. In fact, there's too many useless cutscenes in general. Again, this isn't TV, and nobody plays racing games for the "characters." Restarting a race replays the cutscene, and I don't mean the short countdown, I mean the longer scenes for some of the events. I didn't want to see it the first time, why would I want to see it again? (if you haven't noticed, I really hate cutscenes in racing games)
* Main Menu should be on ESC, like in NEARLY EVERY OTHER PC GAME EVER. Who thought putting it on F10 was a good idea? Put the buttons for restarting and aborting in the Main Menu, as well- I keep hitting Esc or Start looking for a button that you people moved to another menu for some stupid reason.
* Why do I have to hold the button for so many things? Menu selections, cutscene skips... for the sake of my hands, please stop. Just put in Yes or No prompts, it's easier on the fingers.
* Cheating NPCs. They'll just randomly speed up like rockets when they're behind, then slow down again. This is fine, I guess, until they speed up and pass you at the end of a race. NPC boats seem to gain speed off the same ramps that slow me down, too.
* Still can't look up in the cockpits of airplanes. 3D movement needs a 3D camera.
* Poor course direction indicators. Bring back the ribbon. Lap counters would be nice too.
* Screenshot mode still defaults to having a big ugly logo...
Bugs
* Sessions are still really unstable. I try to do flybys over people's cars, and they just disappear.
* First (seemingly random) crash. Think I was in a boat heading to Lake Mead.
* Second crash: saw someone in a boat changing vehicles, and the game locked up and crashed. Was in the Grand Canyon, after the speedboat race there.
* Oh yay, the game still crashes when resetting my plane after a collision.
* Button prompt for loot boxes doesn't always appear. Holding the button still seems to work in these cases, tho.
* Lower floor garage doesn't remember the cars I switch to. Bug or missing feature?
* GPS loses route on longer road trips (think Cannonball Run), turns into a straight line.
* Stick twist and hat switch bindings for my Thrustmaster HOTAS are not getting saved.
* Salt Flats are way too bumpy, especially in a Touring Car.
TL;DR: my main gripe is the butt-ton of cringy cutscenes. If you had some neat personalities like Jeremy Clarkson or HOT ROD's David Freiburger, it might not be so bad. But barring that, take them out or make them ALL skippable. At least turning the voice volume down mutes some of them. I hate how game devs seem to think people come to racing games to listen to poorly-written characters with half-rate voice actors ramble about how cool they are. Also, redo that interface.
Other than that, the handling feels SO much better than the first game, especially once the assists are dialed down. It's a fantastic visual improvement, too, and even my aging beast can handle it. I love the sheer variety of things to do.
A on gameplay, C on presentation. Still gonna be a day-one purchase for me.
Member
For me the game also was unstable af, probably because Stupid Ubi/Ivory changed or removed the AVX requirements...? Dont know.
The driving model aka what people call Handling got worse than TC1, its like the game is trying to be more forza'ish. LOL.
Photomode or Screenshot mode as you call it has 2 major bugs since the May alpha and they didnt get fixed.
Visually, the game is 7 / 10 even though its the same underlaying engine as in TC1 they improved it once more. Have to say, night time looks better and is much more improved than daylight graphics
Gameplay aka career mode is 5 / 10 because copied from Forza and not innovative anymore
Discplines variety is a 10 / 10 of course. Never saw a game combining cars and bikes with boats, playnes and even Hoovercrafts -and Helicopters.
Technically, the game is -5 / 10 because when you dive really deep into it and you would care about competition you will not buy it.
Junior Member
