Preview: The Crew – ready to ride???

I have played and tested the closed beta of Crew. Is it good to buy later on?

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I can tell you one thing. It is fun. And that is probably the most important thing that everone needs to know, right? But ok, let's talk about it a little bit more :-).

First of all you must pass throught short tutorial and story line. It is well made, the videos are pretty and you feel like you are there. It reminds me Fast & Furious A LOT. Simple story of corrupt cops and death of your family member. And you want revenge after the departure from a prison.

But the story there is just to get you to the main thing to do. Drive your fast car in the streets and races. You can ride everywhere in USA and lcoations are divided into separate areas where different cars could be earned. I mean first you have simple city car, later car for dirt, later for terrain and so on and the final is a racing car. The locations are changing all the time and you can even stop at some visibly marked location to learn about an important spot anywhere on the map.

The map is done like in Far Cry or Watch Dogs. You must reveal them, find sattelites to help uncover the area and then you can easily choose Fast travel and the game will teleport you there. So no need to ride 1 hour to get to your destination. Good thing.

Graphics is nice. You can choose the best details and it is really fantastic looking game. If you have a comp for it. 

Music is also perfect. Few minutes ago I was driving in a countryside at night and from the radio was playing a song and I had a feeling like from the movie Drive. Perfect.

Is this MMORPG? It is in a way. You must level your car with car parts. You win them in races, small missions put all around you on the map (from speed race, slalom, jumps etc.). And you just upgrade your car which has its own level. Right now I am on level 150 which is just the beginning. All parts are upgrading by few points your speed, acceleration, handling, breaking… And of course more points in each part makes your car better.

Then you have your own person. You have also levels to go. Each level gives you a perk which could be used for better handling, cheaper parts, navigation help and so on. There are going to be I think about 5 NPCs with different perks. Missions and car parts are also differentiated that not all of them you can use until you have a minimum level. So yes, it looks like real RPG.

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But is it MMO? Well, this is the most problematic part. Because you cannot create a "clan" or something. You are alone and can have only friends. Of course you can then join together and ride some coop missions. But honestly this is the worst part for me. There is missing a feeling of having some close friends together. Having a garage with all your cars, racing "clan" vs "clan" and similar things. I hope it will be added because this could be win or loss for many players. Including me. From the menu there will be also some factions which will "fight" in races against each other. But I dont't know how this will work.

And what about pvp? It is there. You can troll others just driving into them which happened to me. But you can defend the same way or just fast travel to another location. And there is pvp lobby where you wait for 3 other players and race against them. You earn money for it, experience and pvp experience. There is a ladder too so if you want you can try to become the top driver and be famous.

Riding in this game is fun and the control of cars is similar for me like NFS2 which I was playing a lot with my friends on LAN parties. So if the game will be tuned up, get the best "car parts" possible and implement more social gaming I believe it will be a success for the Ivory Tower.

Right now if I should rate it, it could be 7-8/10

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