Game Tech: Fine fun with planes, boats and automobiles
The Crew 2 racing game has two big selling points. The first is that you have the entire North American continent to traverse. The second is that, at any point, you can change your vehicle from a land-based to water-based to a flying machine, at the touch of a button.
This makes for some of the most creative and downright satisfying racing you can imagine, as you transform from spitfire into a Formula 1 car to a wave-racer and back again.
The only downside to this highly entertaining feature is that The Crew 2 doesn’t use it more often in the actual races.
While the open-world section of the game allows you to explore and transform vehicles at will, with friends in tow, the campaign section of The Crew 2 only features multi-vehicle races sporadically.
The ability to transform on the fly (sometimes literally, if you’re in a plane) is the big change in this Ubisoft sequel, but there are a few other welcome additions, too. The story mode has changed from cringe-worthy Fast and Furious wannabe to, well, cringe-worthy trendsetter wannabe, with the player now being judged on his number of ‘followers’ in the game, with followers increasing as your achievements do.
There are a few different ‘motor families’ to chose from, too: street racing, pro racing, freestyle and off-road.
Each one has different terrain and vehicles to select from, so pro racing will have air races and touring cars, while off-road will have monster trucks and swamp races.
Check out these amazing shots taken by the community using #TheCrew2's photo mode 📸
— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) July 3, 2018
Share your best shots below & keep tagging us! pic.twitter.com/QxhCQqargC
Every ‘family’ also has a unique mentor to train you in each form of racing, along with a rival who is looking to steal your limelight.
So what is stopping The Crew 2 from taking pole position among modern racing games? The game requires players to be always connected to the internet to play, which may not suit every gamer.
Even if online connectivity isn’t an issue, the racing itself, while lots of fun, isn’t the best on the market. If you only want a car-racing game, then The Crew 2 doesn’t do that best — Forza or Gran Turismo does.
The Crew 2, like one of its planes, has an easy pitch.
Tons of fun vehicles to drive across an expansive America. It’s not going to change your life, but it will transform your car.
KILLER INSTINCT
If you’re looking for something truly transformative, then look no further than Fortnite. As everyone knows, this is the game that ate our teenagers. Every week brings a fun new story about the game, very few of which involve actual gameplay.
This week is a little different, however. Fortnite had a ‘story event’ recently, in which a mysterious rocket was launched into the sky and created all manner of pyrotechnics in the game’s atmosphere. There had been a countdown to the rocket’s launch and hardcore fans got worked into a fervour about the event. In the end, the rocket launched without much ado (for now), but one player saw his chance to steal a march on the record books.
As other players turned up to peacefully watch the rocket launch, Elemental_Ray, as he is known, targeted a ramp that was holding 48 players in a prime viewing spot. He destroyed the ramp, eliminating all 48 players at once, and subsequently took the record for most kills in a solo match, thus launching his name into the stratosphere, along with the rocket.
Dream big. Race hard. The open roads, rivers and skies are waiting for you! #TheCrew2 is out now!
— The Crew Motorfest (@TheCrewGame) June 29, 2018
ROBOT JOCK
Finally, some rockets leave the atmosphere, others enter it. The latest Overwatch hero is a plucky little guy by the name of Hammond. He’s a space-faring hamster, who flew himself from the moon (where he was genetically altered to become super-smart) to Earth, landing somewhere in Australia to fight arena battles in a giant robot.
Blizzard certainly didn’t hold back on the weird for this one.
Hammond will actually go by the name ‘Wrecking Ball’ and is the latest addition to the Heavies in Overwatch. You won’t ever seen him fight as a hamster, but Hammond will, nonetheless, be inside his giant robot, pulling levers and birthing memes.
