I played this all beta weekend and was pleasantly surprised. I play a ton of racing games and flight games so I'm super interested in this. As of right now though I will not be pre-ordering. This beta showed me something I'm really interested in for sure but it had a lot of stuff that really bugged me. I'll be keeping my eye on it though. I never got around to playing the first Crew but this beta left me interested in checking that out now since now I felt like I might have missed out. Right now though this game seems to have an identity crisis with it's handling. I can't tell if it's trying to be a racing sim with ramps or an arcade game that hates when you leave the ground. A lot of the wonky physics really pulled me out of the game and kept having me analyze what's going on.

I have feedback on most aspects and I have a lot of feedback at that.

"Exploration":
My biggest complaint: GIVE ME AN OFFROAD FAVORITE SLOT!!!! The game is split into planes, boats, street races and off roading. Why can't I have down on the r-stick be an offroad vehicle? It makes sense and idk how that wasn't added. It'd be nice to tear *** with my touring car, ramp off into the dirt become my buggy and maintain my speed, turn into a plane fly off, pop into a boat drive through a swamp, turn into a buggy tear *** through it and then pop into the street as my touring car again. It baffles me offroad favorite isn't a thing already.

The world is cool but very barren in terms of activities and interactivity. Like I said I never played the first one but I heard there was more too do I hope this is added in

The L1/R1 reset to track needs to be more forgiving. I got stuck more times than I'd like because I flipped over something or fell in a crack and the reset just kept putting me back 10 ft at speed and launching me back into the same crack. And since it was usually a small area I couldn't just turn into a plane and fly out. I usually had to launch a race and then drive away from it to be "unstuck." Sometimes it would straight up just drop in the same exact spot.

I didn't understand what the different pop up events where on the map. Like I never figured out the photo thing. I understood speed trap and escape the red circle thing but those were actual events that launched and were cool. Others I still don't know and couldn't find anywhere where they were explained individually what they were and how to complete them.

1st person feels awful and unnatural when you're walking around the HQs

Waypoints were hard to track while driving and I would miss turns often or crash. I also don't want a giant "WRONG WAY!" flashing when I'm driving to my custom waypoint while exploring. It feels aggressive.

When putting liveries on I had a hard time telling if it was applying or not and when I would click back in it would reset my car. So I lost a few liveries that way. There needs to be some confirms and stuff added to this.

Moving around on the map is painfully slow and so is zooming in and out.

Allow combo multipliers to "tricks" that way there's more of an incentive to keep your multiplier up and combo drifts, near misses and speeding. And in the plane combo all those. The system feels a bit like a not very fleshed out Tony Hawk type scenario and I think it'd be great to really embrace that and let you do full car tricks and keep track of like best combo stunt and stuff.

"The Grind":
Let me buy loot or add a system that pays attention to your lowest part since it's based on an average. I LOVE the loot based system but I got my GT-R parts up to 140ish but STILL had default brakes because I NEVER got a brake drop. Even after I did they were only a little better than the ones I had. This drove me insane and was a huge turnoff in other RNG drop games like Destiny. (Still never completed the first raid outfit even after 3 months because I never had arms drop).

I'd appreciate if there was a bit more visual difference between parts just so the experience is not so generic. I'd suggest fake part manufactures. Even if only just for the rarities and then slap their logo on the part. So you can say I got a "SKR Exhaust!" instead of pink exhaust.

Loot being sent to the HQ's when you missed it is dumb. Idk why I can't go to my house as well. I couldn't tell there was mail waiting at my HQ either. They all blink for various reasons. There wasn't anything on the UI from what I could see that says something like "You have 3 things in your inbox." Which why do I have to physically go get them? Just put them in my menu and I'll open them there so I can pop them on.

The loot drops need to be a little smarter. I had them drop on bridges above me and behind walls a bunch.

Give me something for scrapping loot. Even if it's just like 250 bucks. Literally anything, some sort of positive feedback.

"Racing":
The AI is frustrating as hell. They are absolutely on rails and WILL not be budged. That has to be one of the most frustrating experiences in racing games.

The AI rubber banding is frustrating as hell. If my car can smoke them off the line, around every corner and destroy them with performance. They should not be sitting on my bumper the whole ******* race. This makes every race frustrating. I'm sure it's more noticeable in this beta because I was grinding to get parts and money for the other classes, but every single race was frustrating and difficult. Good AI should be hard but these felt so incredibly cheap. Especially if you touched them because then that on rails effect happened and they would **** you up.

Physics in this game is garbage. The cars handle well and feel good for the most part but physics as a whole is awful. I'll go in specifics about physics below. But in Races it's most noticeable with the tank weight AI that can't be moved and hitting objects. It's so dumb if you knick an object that isn't a wall you die or your car stops DEAD. Like if you tap a park bench that was inside of a shrub all the sudden youre at 0 mph. Sometimes you can get magnetized to buildings and angular structures. Hitting curbs is either a small pop or you stop on them like it's a wall. This is unbelievably frustrating and caused me to loose more races than me genuinely messing up. If I full on crash that's my fault but tapping a trash can shouldn't be like hitting a magnetic wall.

I couldn't replay the live races. I hope that doesn't stick around in the full game. And I hope there's all class races too. That'd be cool. Essentially like every vehicle is allowed to enter as long as it's the same terrain type (Land, sea or air) and they all get equal performance. Be sweet to be in a race full of bikes, monster trucks and ferrari's.

NOS does nothing in this game. It feels so unhelpful. It doesn't speed up acceleration in any reliable way, it doesn't give huge speed boosts. After a while I forgot it was there and was doing better for it. The only reliable use I could find for it was getting over your top speed limit by 3-4mph.

"Land":
Physics is my biggest issue easily. It feels so unnatural because all the cars and bikes seem to have an insane amount of mass. It feels like a bit of an arcade racer until tires leave the ground then all the sudden I'm flying a tank short term. The dirt bikes in the motocross section felt so bad idk how that got this far. Leaning and tilting had almost no affect on traction or launch. This is like the whole mechanic behind MXC racing. The second you left the ground you slammed back down with so much force the bike always recoiled to it. This is my issue with every drivable vehicle. They have too much mass in the air. It feels so unnatural, kills any kind of fun you can have and you can tell the game engine hates it when you come back in contact with the ground. Idk what the point of dirtbikes even was since they have like no suspension and like I said you can't really control how they handle by leaning or anything. It's confusing. Street bikes felt much better and handled well EXCEPT!!! when they caught air, then again they were pulled back to earth with so much force the bike looses control. Buggys, trophy trucks and offroad vehicles felt amazing and had great and bouncy suspension. Unless they caught some mad air they felt really good. If they caught too much air though they were slammed back down and the recovery was always rough as hell. The way things feel in the air is a real buzz kill and considering there's even ramps in some of the races the way cars land and handle through the air it was sometimes a death ramp that was out of my control. Physics is the main reason I was turned off while playing. I was nervous every time I saw a ramp no matter what vehicle I was driving because I was worried about when they slammed into the ground or if they would launch funny or if someone tapped me in the air. If I'm playing an arcade racer I should be excited by ramps and getting air, not annoyed.

"Boats":
I really got no sense of feedback with the trimming in this. I could see the lean meter around the odometer but I couldn't tell if it was good or bad. If I needed to be doing it all the time or what. Sometimes doing to would cause me too loose control of my boat and I couldn't tell why, because sometimes it did nothing but a small speed boost.

Boats felt fine in general but the rubber band AI in this is egregious. You really can have the most flawless run and the people in 2nd and 3rd will be touching the back of your boat the entire time.

"Planes":
These need the most retooling to me. They fly unnaturally in a way that defy's the games set physics. For one there seems to be no stalling at all. I think I flew straight up for like a solid 2-3 minutes which is weird and when I tried to cut the engine I just hung there, this happens anywhere, idk why the plane doesn't drop like a rock once the engine is cut. One of the cooler parts of plane tricks is stalling and falling into patterns. It's goofy how they still can be moved in every direction and seem to glitch out and float if you hold deccelerate.

Idk if this was an option in the advance settings, I didn't really dig down into them too much but the plane auto air braking when your knife flying was killing me inside.

Flying during sunset/sunrise was impossible! Something about it just made the contrast go to **** and I could only make out silhouettes of stuff just barely. This is realistic in some ways but made flying a plane near at that time unforgiving. And I don't get to pick the time of day when I do an event so that's annoying.

Plane tricks needs to be more forgiving. Those stunt events were unbelievably frustrating because of how precise you had to be to accomplish tricks. Like loops don't count at all unless you level off at the end. If you're slightly tilted loops will never count. And the game was slow to acknowledge tricks which is terrible in a timed stun event. You had to be level on the beginning of the vertical climb or it didn't count which is dumb as hell.