The Crew Skills, Perks And Gameplay Trailer Released

A new walkthrough trailer full-up of gameplay for the upcoming next-generation multiplayer racing title, The Crew, has gone live. Ubisoft's foray into the open-world vehicular racing genre could give EA a nice run for their money, especially with all the cool stuff present in The Crew.

You know, I have to say that while the game still feels a bit “meh'ish” I have to admit that there are some elements – micromanaging elements, mind you – that I find feverishly intoxicating. So early in the video we see that he modifies the car to fit an offroad setup and then proceeds to select a perk for the car.

Now, one of the things I wonder about is if you will start with a preset pack of perks or will you have to unlock all of them? Having to unlock every single perk in the game would be wondrous. The best part about games with micromanagement stat progression is the chase... the chase for better stats, more equipment, better gear, etc., etc. I do like that The Crew really seems to get knee deep in the stat/perk/parts territory which will give completionists like myself a good deal of replay... assuming the game holds a steady measure of fun in the actual races.

Speaking of the actual races... The Crew has a wide variety of different race types for players to engage in, ranging from standard road courses to offroad beats to completely non-distinct checkpoint runs across the entire US of A. The one thing I keep thinking about whenever Ubisoft uses that tagline as a promo pitch (racing across the country) is how long did it take those poor track designers to map out and optimize each and every aspect of the entire racing grid from one end of the map to the other in order to be playable. Insane.

One of the other highlights of the game is the use of crews. While it's called The Crew, I thought it was going to be one of those ironic names where the title doesn't inherently fit the gameplay, but Ubisoft proved me wrong by actually showcasing that there are enough people filling out each race grid where you can have multiple crews battling for the top spot in a single race. I was thoroughly impressed with that feature.

As some of you know, there are various other MMO racing games out there where you can also form crews or guilds but the grid is so small that usually you're just kind of competing against each other or only one or two members from the guild can enter a race at a time. Ubisoft and Ivory Tower really seemed to work hard to ensure that actual multiple members of a crew can tag-team together in a single race, which is brilliant.

The crew is set for release in 2014 for next-gen consoles and PC. You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the official website.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.