Recs.
Updated
The Crew 2 is an always-online open world racing game. You take part in races within various cities in the United States against other players.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro You can switch freely between driving a car, a speed boat, and a plane
The best part about The Crew 2 is getting to change your vehicle type on-the-fly. While racing around on the road with a normal race car, for example, if you go flying off of a ramp at high speed over a lake, you can switch to your speed boat with a few simple button presses. Then, while zipping through the water, when you're about to reach land, you can change to your plane and fly for as long as you want. When you find a street to land on, you can go back to your car. It's a fun and innovative concept that lets you cross stretches of land in different ways.
Pro Slick and clean visuals
Everything looks nice and polished. Paint on your vehicles gleam in the sunlight, the weather is realistic, and the locations you race around in all look amazing. While character models in story cutscenes aren't as well-done, they're still fine. The devs did a great job at making the game pleasing to the eye.
Pro Huge map of the United States to race around
The Crew 2 features a giant open world set in major cities across the US. Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and more are here for you to drive around in during races and free exploration. The cities are all true-to-life recreations of the actual locations, with recognizable landmarks and buildings. You can go anywhere you want within the available locales, driving around, joining races, and making your own fun along the way.
Cons
Con The world is barren and empty
Even though the open world is massive, most of it is wasted space. The cities you drive around don't feel lived-in, as if they only exist for cars, boats, and planes instead of actual people. It's just a nice copy of the US without any recreation of the history and culture of the locations, serving as empty sandboxes for gameplay. Having more detail and fine touches throughout the maps would have gone a long way to make these places feel more meaningful and worthwhile.
Con Online-only means you need to have a good connection to play
The Crew 2 is always-online, which means you need a solid internet connection in order to play. If you don't have stable internet, then you're probably better off not purchasing the game, since your performance during races depends on how well your connection holds up. If you're constantly lagging and/or rubberbanding, then you're going to have a bad time.
Con Thin story
There's not much of a narrative here. Basically, it's up to you to win races and gain social media followers for fame. The story doesn't even try to pull you in, and it knows that it's less important than the gameplay. So if you're looking for even a halfway decent plot in a game, you won't find one here.
Con Plane and boat racing aren't that enjoyable
Compared to the arcadey fun of driving cars and bikes on roads, steering speed boats in the water and planes in the air isn't as engaging. Races by boats are pretty boring, where you just go from point A to B with only a few turns to make. The flying controls are imprecise, like how the game sometimes doesn't register when you correctly pull off a loop or barrel roll, and you end up not getting points for them. It's a cool concept to switch between three methods of racing, but it's obvious that the devs didn't spend as much time refining these two.