The Crew Wild Run First Look Gameplay

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Welcome to our exclusive first look at The Crew Wild Run expansion from Ubisoft.

You may remember that The Crew was released in December 2014 on the PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.  It’s an open world racing MMO that allows you to create your “crew” and compete together in events across the US.

Overall, the game – and I do mean game, it’s certainly not a sim or even simcade  – has done well.  Well enough in fact that Ubisoft is injecting new life into it in the form of The Crew Wild Run expansion.

The Wild Run expansion won’t be out until November 17th but we were given an exclusive opportunity to drive an  early build version at Ubisoft’s US headquarters in San Francisco.

The event allowed me to try almost all the new content of the expansion; dragsters, drift cars, monster trucks and motorcycles.  It also allowed me to experience new improvements and features, such as the new dynamic weather system, improved graphics, updated sounds, FreeDrive Stunts and Challenge and the Summit.

Speaking of the Summit, what is it?  The Summit is the hang out spot.  A hang out spot you’ll hear about a lot (insert summit lines).  It’s where you can go to unlock new solo events or where you can meet up with your crew and do multiplayer challenges together.

This is essentially what we did with our time at Ubisoft.  Myself, and three other YouTube content creators were plopped down on PC’s and united as a crew.

One thing of note for the usual Inside Sim Racing fanbase.  We were not given a wheel and pedals, just an Xbox One controller.  Again, this is an arcade game.  With that said, it does support a number of wheels, so it is an option.  Unfortunately, there was no mention of improvements to the game for wheel users so we won’t know until the beta is released.

So the gameplay started with us finding our way to the Summit.  To access the Summit we had to complete a few solo trials first.  This put me in a sporty looking Subaru BRZ on drifting optimized mountain roads, a monster truck at a playground arena and a Corvette Zo6 dragster in the middle of no where…

The drifting was fun once you get the hang of it, which took some time since I haven’t used a controller in a racing game since Gran Turismo 4.  But hey, at least I looked good!

The monster truck was fun even though my back flipping skills clearly need work.

The dragster on the other hand was kind of boring.  A car this powerful should be a handful but the only thing you do is gas it to the green line and shift at redline.  Not that involving, too many lines, not enough driving.

Once we got done with the trials we followed the big blue line in the sky to the Summit to alleviate our FOMO.

Once there, I entered a couple more solo events, including more drifting – hey I like that Arctic Monkeys song! – and my first taste of the bike, which was fun to ride.

Once I finished those, my makeshift crew got its act together and we started doing the multiplayer events.  This is where The Crew Wild Run clearly shines.

Except at first it didn’t.

We did a race at the Little Eagle Speedrome in the Midwest which looks awfully close to a track that I’m very familiar with in Indiana…  As for the race, it wasn’t much to get excited about.  The only thing I learned from it is; A, the wet weather graphics – and the new physics based rendering shaders – are pretty and B, the collision model makes all those sim racing forum pissing matches over bad netcode look silly.

But racing big winged 370z’s around a psuedo Indianapolis isn’t what this game is about.  It’s about the absurd.

Exhibit A: Hold the Crown Monster Trucks at Crown Arena Bonneville.  This is what this game is about.  To no surprise, the game is straight forward.  Get the crown, keep the crown, run over your friends if they have the crown.  Fun, fun, fun.

Exhibit B: The elevator blitz brawl at mountain states in the Hot Rod.  This format is a cross between capture the flag, curling and demolition derby.  Step one, find zone.  Step two, stay in zone.  Step three, don’t get knocked out.  This was my favorite event of the day and had me down right giddy!

Next up we ran a bike race…which was challenging.  Overall the bikes feel good, well weighted, and you have to treat them with respect.

Then we transitioned back to four wheels with the Viper at another pre-wetted Daytona Run in The South and the Ferrari F458 Speciale at Race for Liberty on the East Coast. It was much more enjoyable to race against friends on a street course than oval.  Dodging traffic and your competitors really ups the difficulty level.  At least until you mess up…

But sometimes you don’t mess up and win!  Still.  A.  Stud.

We then decided to do something different.  I jumped out to the map and created a Free Drive Challenge to Chicago.  Objective: Get there first.  Route?  Choose your own destiny.  Yes you can follow the blue glowy line in the sky but you can also take the path least travel and go off road.  With that said, that didn’t work out well for one of my crew  members…

Another cool feature about FreeDrive is you can change cars on the fly.  Viper top speed not getting it done?  No problem, jump into the McLaren!

Once in Chicago we did the usual.  Drove really fast.  Drove really slow.  Sang along to some tunes.  And jumped bridges.

This is where we accidently discovered the FreeDrive Stunts mode of the game.  Was cool to stumble into a mode while just driving around.  From there we spent the rest of our time performing shenanigans of the jumping variety.  I’ll admit, I wasn’t great at it.  Going forwards or backwards.

So there’s my wrap up of our first look at The Crew Wild Run.  I would like to thank Ubisoft again for flying me out to San Francisco and treating me so well.

Again, The Crew Wild Run will be out on November 17th but you can join the PC beta on October 15th if you qualify.  Go to thecrewgame.com/beta to learn more.