It brought in celebrities from the car world as characters, including Porsche-phile Magnus Walker, hooligan driver Ken Block and RWB mastermind Akira Nakai. The street racing narrative was back, with a new list of cars to buy, race and modify in Ventura Bay, a fictional Los Angelis-esque city. The latter was a big step-change for the franchise, with a new developer and a new vision, after the first year fallow for the title since 2001. One of those low points arguably began with the release of circuit-cade racer Pro Street in 2007 and has been near-on consistent ever since, minus 2010’s Hot Pursuit and… 2015’s Need For Speed reboot. The Need For Speed franchise, powerful as it was in the driving game-scape, had its low points. The Crew games are, like the TDU entries before them, a lesson for the Forza Horizon devs in how sim-lite physics and photorealistic graphics aren’t the be-all-end-all in an open-world game, especially at the expense of replay value. I put 10,000 miles on my Corvette ZR1 alongside a friend in his Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 as we immersed ourselves in what is an enormous map, densely populated with as many spectacular sights to see, as there are great driving roads.Ī worthy filler for the Test Drive void it was and the 2018 sequel ‘The Crew 2’ even more so, with the addition of racing cars, boats, planes, a massively expanded car list and improved physics with more customisability, with which to enjoy them. Ignoring the dodgy cops and racers story, it was a soulful road trip game featuring a range of superb cars to rack up miles in around America and her many points of interest with eight of your friends. Ubisoft picked up the project and hey presto, 2014’s ‘The Crew’ was born. They began work immediately on an open-world racer not unlike Test Drive but minus the lifestyle bits, with some added Need For Speed cringe-tier story, set in the USA. From the ashes of Test Drive: Unlimited 2 and the collapse of associated companies, came the establishment of a studio named Ivory Tower.

Need for speed 2015 pc revival