Gamer Recognizes Game: 'The Crew 2'

Ubisoft is the video game equivalent of McDonalds. You'll DoorDash it to your house at 2 a.m., hope no one sees it get dropped off to you and devour it while you curl up in the fetal position and weep softly — regretting every decision you've just made.

Now imagine if, mid-meal, Ronald McDonald broke into your house, told you that you rented that food from them, then took your half-eaten Big Mac from you and ran out the door to fleece another poor soul out of their money.

Ubisoft maintained servers for “The Crew” for 10 years before announcing they would be shutting the servers down without adding an offline mode. This is despite the fact the game had a robust single-player campaign.

Ubisoft also removed the game from some players' libraries and encouraged players to purchase other games from them that would inevitably be shut down.

They doubled down on this disgusting sentiment by telling players to get comfortable with not owning the games they paid for, as that will be the status quo with their future titles.

This left a lot of players upset and confused, turning to play the next game in the series before it gets shut down: “The Crew 2.”

After that rant, you are probably wondering why I would write about how good this game is and encourage people to purchase it, if it will just be unplayable 5 or 10 years down the road. And I would usually agree; I am a major advocate of not buying this game for full price.

But until Sept. 23, “The Crew 2” is on sale on all platforms for $1, which means there is no better time than now to buy it.

“The Crew 2” does start off a bit slow, having the player select a discipline of racing and go through a few mandatory events. However, once the map opens up, you're free to try out the other disciplines and get into the subgroups of those disciplines.

The disciplines are street racing, offroad, freestyle, and pro racing, with each having their own specialized events and subgroups.

One thing that the game does incredibly well is include a variety of racing styles and builds them out to each have a robust variety in their courses — in addition to a unique vehicle selection for each discipline.

While there are a few cars in each category that are considered better than the rest for certain races, once you have the mechanics of the game down, you can do well in any car you want.

Another aspect this game nails is the size and scope of the map — a restructuring of the entire contiguous United States. The featured cities include incredible amounts of detail making them nearly accurate to their real-life counterparts.

Even drives across the country are immersive and capture how remote some locations are, as well as their biomes. From lush mountains and cornfields to barren deserts and salt flats, the game captures the many environments found around the United States and immerses the player within them all.

Races and their rewards also feel well balanced. There are some races that have been mapped out by the community to make the best amount of money for time invested, but the game has races anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 or 40 minutes.

Players are able to fast travel to and hop right into races depending on how much time they have to sink into the game on that particular day. I, myself, love sitting down and racing from New York to San Francisco in 30 minutes whenever I have the time to.

Vehicles and their customization are also incredibly well built out. Cars, planes, boats and more can be customized, from their paint schemes to their performance features.

Most of the cosmetic changes don’t affect gameplay, but it's still nice to see a large amount of customization available in the game that isn't really locked behind a paywall.

Two features I had barely explored until writing this article are the photo and video editors. Instead of having to screenshot a scenic view while you drive around, you can enter photo mode.

This allows you to scrub through the last 10 minutes of driving to find the perfect shot, adjust the features of your car, the time of day, and much more. The photo mode is so robust that I can't possibly cover all the features in the article, so I encourage you to tinker with it for yourself.

The game also builds algorithmic shots of the last 10 minutes of video, rendering them when you open the video editor. You can add your own shots and — similar to the photo editor — edit the time of day, your vehicle's damage, and more.

Both of these features are incredibly built out, making it very easy to sink hours into finding and creating the perfect shot.

All of those positives make the game worth buying while it's marked down to $1.

After months of backlash following “The Crew's” server shutdown and delisting, an official announcement was put out by Ubisoft. 

In it, they detailed that they understand fans' concerns about the future of “The Crew 2” and are working to add an offline mode to the game before they take the servers offline. 

While there is no guarantee that Ubisoft sticks to that promise, it still stands that this is an amazing game to buy while it's on sale — even if you only get a few years to play it before it gets taken offline forever.