The Crew 2 to me is a deeply flawed but still a very fun game, with the highs being so high to the extant i considered ranking it among my favorite 3 racing games of all times, that was back when i was just starting out, my opinion kept slowly souring the more i played it, but not enough to make me not consider it still as a good game.

Unfortunately, those highs i just mentioned also come with some very deep lows, the lows that snap you into reality & remind you that this is a Ubisoft game after all. The good news is, despite all those flaws it is still very much fun! and is worth it just for the amount of content it has alone, you like classic/hyper cars? motorcycles? perhaps you're here for some rally racing & off-roading instead? how about some boat racing & hovercrafts? planes? no? then surely you like monster trucks! not even that? okay, i know what you can't say no to, demolition derbies!

My point is, there is pretty much something for everyone here, and most of it seem to be pretty well made from what i experienced so far. (Yes, 225h in and i only finished like 60% of all the content)

i'm not sure on how i want to go on with this review, so i suppose i'll just mention some pros & cons.

The good:
+ The graphics are pretty good for a 6 years old game, except for the NPCs, we don't talk about those.
+ A huge selection of cars & vehicles from various time periods, you're sure to find something you'll enjoy, the handling was alright for the most part, and most vehicles felt different enough to drive to warrant switching things up from time to time.
+ A huge map full of all sorts of races and activities, you'll either love it or hate it, there are like a billion icons on the map for you to clear up, typical Ubisoft stuff, you won't unlock it all at once though. (it was a bit too much for me tbh, especially the billion skills & photos, but it's still content for those who care ig?)
+ Some key bindings felt weird on planes & boats but thankfully everything was very customizable with various sliders for everything you could possibly want to adjust, very extensive vehicle tuning too!
+ They also added a few unique fun events in almost all disciplines, with special aesthetics & unique soundtracks, some even form their own mini-stories/events, they're a bit on the shorter side though.
+ When playing with friends, as long as one of you wins everyone gets the same rewards, big +++
+ The game ran almost perfectly for me with rare dips here and there, nothing game-breaking though, i also only experienced 2-3 crashes so far (from what i recall anyways).

The Bad:
- Cars are way too expensive imo, it felt so jarring coming from Forza Horizon 4 to this, depending on how much you play you could end up spending days saving for a single vehicle, i really hate that & it's one of my biggest gripes with TC2, as i'm someone who likes to experiment with different cars instead of directly buying the meta thing and never looking back. (For context, i'm 225h in and i only have 147 out of 626 vehicles)
- No real character creator, you also can't change your avatar once you pick it up so you better choose well!
- The servers will randomly disconnect & kick you out without saving your progress, it didn't happen all the time but still enough to be pretty irritating.
- Although almost everything can be played with friends, some of the coolest & most unique races are solo only, especially the ones where you switch vehicles mid-race, shame..
- The UI is needlessly complicated & annoying, with multiple hidden sub-menus, want to upgrade your loot? haha, good luck figuring it out when you're just starting out.
- The game loves to waste your time, every single aspect of it is built around wasting as much of your time as possible, want to play a race? drive/fast travel to it, waste 15 seconds for it to start, waste another 15 seconds going to your spot! now there is a chance you'll be slapped with an un-skippable cutscene depending on the race/event, waste even more seconds waiting for the game to start the countdown, in a game with countless races, and where you're forced to endlessly grind for cars & parts this can easily accumulate to hours or more!
Want to check the summit? okay, how about we fast travel you to one of the hubs instead in front of a big monitor, now press enter, wait some more, you're still not in, pick the current summit, press enter again, now you can check the summit, you're welcome! (there are many other examples but i digress)
- Gold sets, ah.. where should i even start with this one?, let's say you played enough PVE, and now you want to experience the PVP, let's say you actually want to be competitive & even win sometimes, or maybe you just want to beat some of the PVE races on the hardest difficulty but can't, what you need is gold sets, sets that are pretty much obligatory to even have a chance at end-game content (mainly the Summit), one of those sets doubles your nitro, another doubles your score, not a 1-10% meaningless bonus; double!!
Now to get a single set for a singular discipline you'll have to spend 3-8h farming the same type of races on the highest difficulty over & over & over, you're not guaranteed gold pieces ofc, and you could be stuck for hours farming for the last piece you need, now imagine having to do it for 16 different disciplines, endless hours of mindlessly replaying the same 2-3min races over and over until you go insane, okay, it took me 80-90h to finally get all the sets i need but at least the nightmare is finally over, right?
Get the duck out of here scrub, what are we? reasonable people? ofc not.
Each of the golden parts have 2 other random attributes, want the good ones? you'll have to use in-game currencies to reroll them and hope for the best, the price will go higher each time ofc, you could spend 100k or +10 millions to get the attributes you want, feeling lucky? aight aight you finally did it, you got the attributes you want, but wait! there is moreee! each attribute have a % attached to it, you only got 1% out of 20%, time to spend endless time & currency grinding & trying to max it out! Woohoo!!
You don't have to do any of this ofc, but that means you'll never be able to get any the of the exclusive Summit cars, almost no vanities (which are normally only buyable using real cash atm, but you get some once in a while in Summits provided you rank high enough), your choice!😄
- You think that was tedious enough? wait till you try stories! they're some unique events(?) with some cool rewards like more exclusive cars & vanities, they basically tell a little story, provide you with a photo & a small description and then ask you to find the location in the photo in the huge US map, then you have to drive to it using a specific type of vehicle (mostly ground vehicles), but you can't fast travel cuz that would make things simple, no no, you'll have to drive! fair enough, found it, it's 75KM away!! woah! alright, i'll spend 15 mins or however long it'll take me to get there, done, checks next step, 95KM away, what the duck? aight, another 10-15mins it is, the 4th location, 45km away, oof, how many more steps i need to finish? what's that? 12 total for a single car story? +1-1.5h if you check YT & 2-3h if you try to do it yourself? how many stories are there? +20? ah, alright, do you get any special narration after each step? a mini cutscene maybe? no? nothing? how about some currency, let's say 1 currency, no? ♥♥♥♥ off then..

I just noticed i'm running out of space so this will have to do for now, sorry folks, blame steam.

All in all, even with all the terrible parts of TC2 i'd still consider it to be good, one of the better racing games out there, it's 100% worth a try but DO NOT waste your time excessively grinding for anything as it's not worth it in the slightest, just focus on the parts you enjoy & then move on and never look back. 7/10 (but i'm kinda biased since i only paid 0.8$ for it, so maybe a 6? idk)

The Crew 2 to me is a deeply flawed but still a very fun game, with the highs being so high to the extant i considered ranking it among my favorite 3 racing games of all times, that was back when i was just starting out, my opinion kept slowly souring the more i played it, but not enough to make me not consider it still as a [b]good[/b] game. Unfortunately, those highs i just mentioned also come with some very deep lows, the lows that snap you into reality & remind you that this is a Ubisoft game after all. The good news is, despite all those flaws it is still very much fun! and is worth it just for the amount of content it has alone, you like classic/hyper cars? motorcycles? perhaps you're here for some rally racing & off-roading instead? how about some boat racing & hovercrafts? planes? no? then surely you like monster trucks! not even that? okay, i know what you can't say no to, demolition derbies! My point is, there is pretty much something for everyone here, and most of it seem to be pretty well made from what i experienced so far. (Yes, 225h in and i only finished like 60% of all the content) i'm not sure on how i want to go on with this review, so i suppose i'll just mention some pros & cons. The good: + The graphics are pretty good for a 6 years old game, except for the NPCs, we don't talk about those. + A huge selection of cars & vehicles from various time periods, you're sure to find something you'll enjoy, the handling was alright for the most part, and most vehicles felt different enough to drive to warrant switching things up from time to time. + A huge map full of all sorts of races and activities, you'll either love it or hate it, there are like a billion icons on the map for you to clear up, typical Ubisoft stuff, you won't unlock it all at once though. (it was a bit too much for me tbh, especially the billion skills & photos, but it's still content for those who care ig?) + Some key bindings felt weird on planes & boats but thankfully everything was very customizable with various sliders for everything you could possibly want to adjust, very extensive vehicle tuning too! + They also added a few unique fun events in almost all disciplines, with special aesthetics & unique soundtracks, some even form their own mini-stories/events, they're a bit on the shorter side though. + When playing with friends, as long as one of you wins everyone gets the same rewards, big +++ + The game ran almost perfectly for me with rare dips here and there, nothing game-breaking though, i also only experienced 2-3 crashes so far (from what i recall anyways). The Bad: - Cars are way too expensive imo, it felt so jarring coming from Forza Horizon 4 to this, depending on how much you play you could end up spending days saving for a single vehicle, i really hate that & it's one of my biggest gripes with TC2, as i'm someone who likes to experiment with different cars instead of directly buying the meta thing and never looking back. (For context, i'm 225h in and i only have 147 out of 626 vehicles) - No real character creator, you also can't change your avatar once you pick it up so you better choose well! - The servers will randomly disconnect & kick you out without saving your progress, it didn't happen all the time but still enough to be pretty irritating. - Although almost everything can be played with friends, some of the coolest & most unique races are solo only, especially the ones where you switch vehicles mid-race, shame.. - The UI is needlessly complicated & annoying, with multiple hidden sub-menus, want to upgrade your loot? haha, good luck figuring it out when you're just starting out. - The game loves to waste your time, every single aspect of it is built around wasting as much of your time as possible, want to play a race? drive/fast travel to it, waste 15 seconds for it to start, waste another 15 seconds going to your spot! now there is a chance you'll be slapped with an un-skippable cutscene depending on the race/event, waste even more seconds waiting for the game to start the countdown, in a game with countless races, and where you're forced to endlessly grind for cars & parts this can easily accumulate to hours or more! Want to check the summit? okay, how about we fast travel you to one of the hubs instead in front of a big monitor, now press enter, wait some more, you're still not in, pick the current summit, press enter again, now you can check the summit, you're welcome! (there are many other examples but i digress) - Gold sets, ah.. where should i even start with this one?, let's say you played enough PVE, and now you want to experience the PVP, let's say you actually want to be competitive & even win sometimes, or maybe you just want to beat some of the PVE races on the hardest difficulty but can't, what you need is gold sets, sets that are pretty much obligatory to even have a chance at end-game content (mainly the Summit), one of those sets doubles your nitro, another doubles your score, not a 1-10% meaningless bonus; double!! Now to get a single set for a singular discipline you'll have to spend 3-8h farming the same type of races on the highest difficulty over & over & over, you're not guaranteed gold pieces ofc, and you could be stuck for hours farming for the last piece you need, now imagine having to do it for 16 different disciplines, endless hours of mindlessly replaying the same 2-3min races over and over until you go insane, okay, it took me 80-90h to finally get all the sets i need but at least the nightmare is finally over, right? Get the duck out of here scrub, what are we? reasonable people? ofc not. Each of the golden parts have 2 other random attributes, want the good ones? you'll have to use in-game currencies to reroll them and hope for the best, the price will go higher each time ofc, you could spend 100k or +10 millions to get the attributes you want, feeling lucky? aight aight you finally did it, you got the attributes you want, but wait! there is moreee! each attribute have a % attached to it, you only got 1% out of 20%, time to spend endless time & currency grinding & trying to max it out! Woohoo!! You don't have to do any of this ofc, but that means you'll never be able to get any the of the exclusive Summit cars, almost no vanities (which are normally only buyable using real cash atm, but you get some once in a while in Summits provided you rank high enough), your choice!😄 - You think that was tedious enough? wait till you try stories! they're some unique events(?) with some cool rewards like more exclusive cars & vanities, they basically tell a little story, provide you with a photo & a small description and then ask you to find the location in the photo in the huge US map, then you have to drive to it using a specific type of vehicle (mostly ground vehicles), but you can't fast travel cuz that would make things simple, no no, you'll have to drive! fair enough, found it, it's 75KM away!! woah! alright, i'll spend 15 mins or however long it'll take me to get there, done, checks next step, 95KM away, what the duck? aight, another 10-15mins it is, the 4th location, 45km away, oof, how many more steps i need to finish? what's that? 12 total for a single car story? +1-1.5h if you check YT & 2-3h if you try to do it yourself? how many stories are there? +20? ah, alright, do you get any special narration after each step? a mini cutscene maybe? no? nothing? how about some currency, let's say 1 currency, no? fuck off then.. I just noticed i'm running out of space so this will have to do for now, sorry folks, blame steam. All in all, even with all the terrible parts of TC2 i'd still consider it to be good, one of the better racing games out there, it's 100% worth a try but DO NOT waste your time excessively grinding for anything as it's not worth it in the slightest, just focus on the parts you enjoy & then move on and never look back. 7/10 (but i'm kinda biased since i only paid 0.8$ for it, so maybe a 6? idk)