The Crew demo…
I was going to talk about The Crew on +Pete Smith 's thread, but, what the heck.
Based on the G+ buzz around it, I downloaded The Crew last week and played it a bit. My video game-obsessed grandson came by this weekend and he put in his two cents as well.
The actual racing is not that different from the kind of Need For Speed arcade racing you can find in any number of titles, online and off. The plot, such as it is, involves taking on missions to let you join and eventually rise to the top of the 510s, an old Detroit-based street racing club that has been repurposed as a smuggling ring run by a crooked FBI agent and "The Shiv", the guy who gunned your brother down in cold blood and got you sent to the slammer (courtesy of the bad FBI agent).
The Crew's unique wrinkle are the organic public events that crop up when there's a few drivers in the same area, challenging you to make it from point A to point B first, and adding some slaloms maybe to make things interesting.
My grandson was busily causing mayhem in downtown Detroit when a guy in a red car started trolling him. Matt (my grandson) eventually got tired of it and ran him off the road. Soon after, the game put us both in a race out of the city, headed toward Chicago on the interstate.
Afterward, I got a random group request and was placed in a mission race, one I'd already completed. I'd become one of this person's "Crew", and by winning this race for him, I imagine he got the credit for it.
The initial car selection is American muscle, plus one Japanese car — I believe a Nissan? I ended up heading out with a Mustang, because this game doesn't seem to emphasize drifting quite as much as in the NFS series.
The demo is time-limited. I haven't played the full two hours of it; the public grouping and ad hoc races are nice, but the plot is a little well-worn in this day of seven Fast and Furious movies. The inability to customize your driver or story seems like a missed opportunity in an online game.
I have heard that not everyone has like The Crew. They feel like there is not enough… well racing and drifting i guess you would say.