First things first: you should play The Crew. It's wonderful, honestly. If, like me, you glossed over it last year because you were already playing Forza Horizon 2, or because you'd heard the online service was flaky at launch (it was), or because you were in a sulk with publisher Ubisoft over Assassin's Creed Unity, now is the perfect time to correct that.
An online, open-world driving game with the usual themes - the acquisition and customisation of sweet rides, wrapped up in a corny street-crime story - The Crew, by French studio Ivory Tower, is a great deal more than the sum of its unrefined parts. As a racing game, it's basic, broad, enjoyable: heavy handling, high speeds, focusing on judicious use of nitro boosts as much as anything else, with slippery dirt tracks and bouncy off-road rally raids in addition to every arrangement of tarmac you can think of. It's not technical, and the AI drivers stick to a pretty rigid script, but it's a good time.
This action sprawls in glorious plenty across what is without question the greatest open world in any racing game. It might be one of the greatest open worlds, full stop. The Crew's gigantic map of the entire continental USA must take a full hour to cross from coast to coast. Dense and atmospheric despite its grandiose scale, it conjures the soul as well as the sights of the American road. It's at its best in its carefully elided transitions: you'll sweep through the clapboard churches, scrubland and oil jacks of Texas to the glossy towers of Dallas, or down from New England's smouldering woodland toward Manhattan, or from Miami's low-rise suburban sprawl into the swamps and spanish moss of the Louisiana bayou. The sheer size of it just allows for more texture, more variation, more time, and heightens the romance of the journey. The less often you use fast travel, the better this game is.
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