THE CREW® 2 - Open Beta

Pros

• XP and leveling mechanics
• RPG loot mechanics

Cons

• Open beta has ended

The Crew 2 Open Beta gives everyone a chance to experience this Ivory Tower racing game.

The Crew 2 is an open-world racing game developed by Ivory Tower and published by Ubisoft. The original The Crew, which was also developed by Ivory Tower, found an intensely loyal niche following over time. Initially, however, it was passed for suspect driving mechanics and an edgy revenge storyline that diminished the lighthearted fun of racing games for some.

With The Crew 2, the developer changes the focus of the story to motorsports rather than illegal street racing and other activities. In this game, you have various racing families—such as Street Racing, Pro Racing, Freestyle and Off-Road. Yes, street racing, but it is different than the last game and even the story is focused on taking the sport legal.

Each family has its own story, which is basically a carrot for you to change as you progress. It is all about options in The Crew 2, so you play what you like. If you just like touring cars, you can stick to that and level all the way up to the maximum level. In addition to cars, Ivory Tower has added planes and boats this time around as well as a number of activities specific to those vehicles.

The Crew 2 is a caRPG—a car-focused role-playing game. As you compete in various events, you earn followers. Earn enough followers, you go up in level. Each level, you get points that can be put into various skills that effect how you drive. Doing drift events? Bump the skill that gives you multiplier faster and lets it go higher. Increasing in level also unlocks a slew of tuning options.

The Crew 2 is also a loot-based game. Each time you meet the conditions for a race—which is just a podium finish on normal mode—you get loot. This loot is parts for your cars, and rare (blue) and legendary (purple) parts have one or two perks, respectively, that increase your skills further.

The open beta caps you at a certain level, and so this walls off a lot of content. Still, there is substantial content in the beta and enough to determine if the game is for you. Note that Ubisoft has also announced that all year-one DLC will be free for all players, and this includes two free cars a month, new activities, a PvP mode, a third difficulty mode and a fourth loot tier that adds set bonuses.

The open beta has ended and probably will not return. As the time of this writing, Ubisoft has hosted its first free weekend for The Crew 2. That required a separate download. In other words, the Ubisoft client did not update the Open Beta software. So, this means that while the Open Beta software can still be installed, it is not particularly useful at this point and probably never will be again.

Pros

• XP and leveling mechanics
• RPG loot mechanics

Cons

• Open beta has ended