Motorbikes & Monster Trucks

The Crew, Ubisoft’s open world car RPG, launched almost a year ago. In that time the game has seen patches and updates to bring it up to scratch after meeting lukewarm reception at launch. The Crew: Wild Run, a major expansion, caps off these updates in a very similar way to Destiny’s Taken King expansion, but unfortunately does not deliver as overhauling and satisfying a package as some might hope.

Even so, there’s definitely a lot of fun to be had in The Crew: Wild Run, especially if you can overlook the ridiculous and barebones story it contains. What it does add is motorbikes, monster trucks, new vehicles, weather effects, gameplay updates and an online competition mode, The Summit, as well as new races and events. It’ll be sure to give people still playing or wanting to return to the game new things to do, but at the cost – $45 AUD – it may deter people from coming back.That being said, this is a great point to jump into The Crew for first time players, with a lot of the graphical issues and problems that lead to a less than stellar reception rectified. Apart from the pains of progressing through the original game’s story to access The Crew: Wild Run content, it does well to expand an already quite ambitious title, with more activities, events and vehicles at your fingertips than ever before.

Motorbikes, the speedy, nimble and well handling vehicles added in Wild Run are very welcome in The Crew’s city and races. They have a sense of speed we just didn’t see in the original, controlling well whether you’re racing through tight urban sprawls or the open highways and roads of America. They’re much more responsive and fun than the cars, even with the new gameplay upgrades, quickly becoming my favourite way to get around the various environments that make up the game world.Monster trucks also debut in The Crew: Wild Run, delivering a lot of zany action whether you take them to the open road or their own arenas. These are filled with jumps, ramps and all manner of obstacles to ensure crazy action and stunts. Playing with these new vehicles was easily the most fun I had with Wild Run.

There’s plenty of new missions, races and events dotting the game world, but the map is fairly cluttered and hard to read, making for a bit of an aimless start when firing up the DLC. Once you get going though you’ll quickly be sorted with a motorbike and an invite to one of the best parts of the The Crew: Wild Run, the Summit.The Summit is a month long event competition, with weekly challenges and events that qualify you for the final Summit at the end of each month. These events change each week to give player something to come back to on a regular basis, rewarding them with a whole host of activities to enjoy. These range from monster truck events and drifting to time trials and circuit races which can be played solo, also including PVP modes which seem a lot more competitive. While I’ve only been able to play a few of these, they were a lot of fun and definitely will keep fans of the game happy.

There are still some residual issues with PVP and matchmaking however that make the online gameplay a little hard to get into. I found it difficult to get regular matches in these modes, and hopefully once more people pick up the title this issue will be resolved. You can play most of The Crew: Wild Run solo thankfully, but it goes against the original vision for the game’s cooperative and online goals.

Overall

At the end of the day The Crew is better than it has ever been thanks to a year of work and the Wild Run DLC, but it’s still not an incredible game. Issues of an empty and boring open world and tedious story still persist, but additions like the summit help to improve on the best aspects of the game. In short, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who were waiting for Wild Run and will love the new stuff it brings, but there’s still vastly better driving experiences to be found out there for those who’ve moved on.

Developer: Ivory Tower/Ubisoft Reflections
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One (Reviewed) and PC

A review code was provided by the publisher.