The Crew developer Ivory Tower announced earlier this week that the racing game just passed the 5 million user mark, making it quite the popular racing game indeed. The title has been out there for quite a while as it was first released back in 2014.

A DLC called Wild Run was released in 2015 as a way to keep the game’s content new and fresh. It appears that approach has worked to perfection. In order to celebrate the massive number of people who have played the game, it will be offering a special in game promotion. Anyone who plays the game on May 28, 2016 will be able to get their hands on 50,000 Crew Credits.

Between this promotion and the fact that The Crew was just announced as one of the Xbox One Games with Gold for June it’s a safe bet Ivory Tower is going to be getting lot more eyes on the game in the near future.

In spite of relative commercial and critical failure upon its launch, Ubisoft have persisted with their support for their open world racing MMO, The Crew. They continued supporting it post launch with substantial updates and patches through its first year on the market, and then, late last year, launched a new expansion for the title that sought to fix a lot of its issues. It was called The Crew: Wild Run, and it certainly hinted at the kind of game The Crew had presumably always wanted to be.

The support does not end here, either, as The Crew will continue to get some pretty neat updates. Take this next one, for example, which is due out “very soon.” The update will be adding a new Photo Mode to the game, as well as improved handling, and a new Speed Trap Challenge. You can check out the full patch notes below:

New Content and Features

• Speed Trap challenge: This new game feature will be introduced during “The Summit” on January 25. In a Speed Trap challenge, a player must find the best path to pass the radar points with the maximum speed. The final score is the player’s average speed from all the radar points.
• Photo Mode: More details about this new feature will be shared very soon! This new game feature allows players to take in-game screenshots. Photo mode can be activated anywhere in FreeDrive, with access to various menus and options.
• “The Summit” monthly reward bonus: During “The Summit,” players can try winning an exclusive vehicle. Chances of winning this vehicle depend on your performances during the last week of the month.
• With this upcoming patch, we are introducing a new change that will add a bonus chance on top of your performance during “The Summit.” Participation qualifiers throughout the month will award players with a +5% bonus chance of winning the exclusive vehicle for the month. This +5% bonus will be granted whether you achieve bronze, silver, gold, or platinum medals in any qualifier. If you participate in four qualifiers during the month ranking from bronze to platinum before entering “The Summit,” you will already have a +20% chance of winning the exclusive vehicle! For example, a player who ranks silver during “The Summit” would have the usual 10% chance of winning the exclusive vehicle, plus the bonus chance acquired by participating in the various qualifiers for the month.

Improvements

• Monster Trucks gameplay: Monster trucks have received several adjustments to improve gameplay mechanics during the monster arena challenges. New tricks and combos have been introduced for even more fun, and the scoring system has been tuned as well.
• Crew time attack missions The forced crew missions in qualifiers and “The Summit” can also now be launched in a crew of two or three players.
• Drift missions: The scoring system has been reworked during drift missions. Players who are able to perform long drifts will now be rewarded with even more points.
• Improved handling for several vehicles:
  • Chevrolet Camaro RS 1969 FULL STOCK/STREET/PERF/CIRCUIT/DIRT/RAID
  • 2012 Grand Cherokee SRT8 FULL STOCK/STREET/DIRT
  • Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan 1967 FULL STOCK/STREET/PERF/CIRCUIT
  • RUF 3400 K FULL STOCK/PERF/CIRCUIT/DIRT/RAID
  • Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione FULL STOCK/PERF/CIRCUIT
  • Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 FULL STOCK/PERF/CIRCUIT
  • 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray FULL STOCK/PERF
  • 2013 Chrysler 300 SRT8 FULL STOCK/STREET

General Fixes

• Improved handling when using driving wheels, manual gearbox and clutch.
• Fixed the spawning location of vehicles in some missions.

The Crew: Wild Run is available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

That was until Ubisoft announced The Crew: Wild Run at this year’s E3. This isn’t your simple yearly content update – Wild Run significantly overhauls the original game’s visuals with Ivory Tower opting for a full physically based rendering (PBR) pipeline and introducing a range of other visual improvements.

What makes Wild Run so different? Using physically based rendering, The Crew: Wild Run relies on physics, material types and how light behaves in different situations (both through diffusion and reflection) to essentially make objects, characters and environments look more realistic. For instance, the way light behaves with a car’s hood will be different from how, say, it behaves with the car’s windshield. The overall effect comes across as more natural and works better for artists since they can simply specify how light should react with a specific material rather of creating multiple diffuse textures and specular maps.

One look at The Crew: Wild Run, especially next to the original release, makes this more obvious. Your vehicles, environmental objects and roads look more natural depending on the lighting. Whether you’re awash in bright sunlight or simply racing against the backdrop of a setting sun, you’ll notice the light interacting with the environment and your racer in different ways. It’s apparent in the chrome reflections on your vehicle, the subtle refractions when light interacts with puddles or the dull shadows cast by rocky structures as you speed by.

Head to head comparison between the PS4 version without and with the update. This video also has PC footage at ultra settings. Select 1080p and 60fps for best possible video quality.

The Crew wasn’t always like this though. The game shipped on PS4 and Xbox One running at 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second with minimal frame rate drops experienced at times. The PC version won out by supporting 60 FPS but along with a poor AA solution (which resulted in plenty of jaggies), The Crew used a very weird implementation for depth of field. Lower resolution textures would often come across as either blocky or even blurred out. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear The Crew was stuck between the previous and current generation of consoles.

With The Crew: Wild Run, Ivory Tower has clearly focused on the current generation. Along with the physically based rendering pipeline, Wild Run introduces dynamic weather to the mix. This is an especially good addition with the game’s focus on outdoor, off-road racing. However, even the physics and handling for cars has been changed up, making vehicles easier to handle. Racing in the rain, much like in Forza Motorsport 6, is a more dynamic affair and causes you to change up your steering, braking and overall strategies. The post processing AA is far better this time around and though the jaggies have been reduced, they’re not completely gone. Texture quality is relatively the same but the PBR pipeline makes everything look drastically different from before. To top it off, there’s no performance downside in switching to PBR – frame rate performance is very stable throughout. Ivory Tower seems to have improved the texture streaming, with next to no pop-in for objects and faster loading times for textures.

Not everything is amazing though. There are lower resolution objects in the environment which don’t have any PBR properties. Though the developer could be credited in focusing more on the racing action and one’s car, these kinds of discrepancies stick out every now and then. Depth of field and blur effects are also similar to last year’s release and still come across as disappointing overall. Keep in mind that The Crew: Wild Run isn’t going to offset DriveClub or even Forza Motorsport 6 in terms of attention to detail and effects but the scale on offer is very impressive. Taken together with the improved texture streaming and The Crew actually feels like a game you want to explore. Enough credit can’t be heaped onto the physically based rendering as it seemingly encourages your exploration and desire to drive off the beaten path.

Say what you will about The Crew and its gameplay or how Ivory Tower has ultimately handled the content it’s received. The fact remains that no developer has offered such a significant visual upgrade over its vanilla release, that too in less than a year after the original launch. Ubisoft clearly has a lot invested in The Crew and the online experience it brings to the market. It paints a relatively positive picture for the company’s future online games like Tom Clancy’s The Division and Ghost Recon Wildlands (though we hope they also don’t take a year to receive such wide-ranging improvements).

The Crew: Wild Run’s gameplay may still divide the most hardcore racers but its dynamic weather effects, larger scale, updates to the overall handling and physics of the cars, implementation of physically based rendering, better post process anti-aliasing and improved texture streaming without any strain on the overall frame rate performance is something worth admiring. Now let’s see what Ubisoft has planned next for its massively multiplayer online racer.

The woefully bland visuals also did not help matters. Don’t get me wrong, The Crew was not a bad looking game per se, but there is no doubt it looked like something that was pulled up from last gen and just made to work on current gen consoles. However, this was not a surprise, since the game also had a last gen version as well. Essentially, The Crew felt like a game that was stuck in the transition from last to current gen, hampered with some weird story choices and irritating server issues. It seemed like a game that Ubisoft just pushed out of the door, possibly due to hard deadlines and market competition.

"The Crew: Wild Run marks a significant turn of events for the franchise. Right off the bat, you will notice that the game has undergone a major change in the visuals."

Surprisingly, despite the somewhat mediocre reception The Crew received, Ivory Tower and Ubisoft were consistently patching the game with updates, in the process ensuring that it is bought to a level that is expected from modern racers. It’s perhaps a testament by Ubisoft, who are perhaps best known for releasing action adventure games, that they are serious about making it big in the racing genre. And guess what? The Crew Wild Run does that. In many ways, The Crew of today is what The Crew of 2014 should have been. One wonders why publishers don’t just delay their games for a better user experience. If your game is not ready, why release it? Delay it and make it even better.

The Crew: Wild Run marks a significant turn of events for the franchise. Right off the bat, you will notice that the game has undergone a major change in the visuals. The engine has been overhauled to include a physical based rendering pipeline which allows several objects in the game such as buildings, pedestrians, and car materials to react dynamically to environmental light sources. Furthermore, weather effects have been added which adds a dynamic layer to the racing. While the game does not compete with DriveClub or Forza from a visual perspective, the graphics overhaul really changes the experience that one might have had back in 2014, and the best thing about it is that the graphics update is available to all users, with or without The Wild Run expansion. The Wild Run also brings along tweaks to handling and the physics system. After playing the vanilla game and comparing it to the expansion, a significant difference can be observed while driving the cars. All of the updates inject a new breath of life into the game, something that was clearly missing back in 2014.

The Wild Run adds more variety to the base game by injecting a host of new events which includes dragsters, trucks, and a new mode called the Summit, resulting in some spectacular racing moments. Riding a high powered truck and jostling for position with other competitors feels extremely satisfying and overpowering at the same time. Not to mention the addition of bikes, which bring in a new layer of freedom. The feel of riding them along the lush highways is a treat at times.

"The Wild Run is a welcome addition to The Crew and will hopefully result in the game getting the much deserved attention that this franchise needs."

The new expansion offers tons of new content, and you will most likely invest hours into it without feeling bored. Combined with the already existing variety of modes present in the game, The Wild Run keeps things fresh by allowing players to switch between different modes anytime they want. The new Summit mode only opens up only if you have finished a set of qualifiers or by using the in-game currency and once you get in, you will be able to earn points and earn vehicles which cannot be unlocked in any other way possible. This is a great way to keep players invested in this mode.

However The Crew’s disappointing story-telling continues with The Wild Run. You need to participate in underground events as you take on a powerful gang based in Detroit. The story sounds intriguing on paper, but given the open world nature of The Crew, it becomes a chore to follow the narrative. Its just seems to sort of be there, and is unable to create any sort of impact on the player.

In the end, The Wild Run is a welcome addition to The Crew and will hopefully result in the game getting the much deserved attention that this franchise needs. But I honestly believe it may be a little too late for The Crew, especially with the base game almost a year old now. Current owners are surely in for a treat with the visual upgrade and the plethora of content at offer here. For players who understandably missed out on the original, The Crew deserves a look.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Ubisoft will be launching a massive, major new update for their always online open world racing game The Crew, which will be addressing many of the longstanding issues with the game. It is a overhaul of the base game design to bring it closer to what Ubisoft (and players) presumably always wanted the product to be.

The update will include some benefits that will be available to all players for free, as well as other bonuses that are only available to those who pay for the game. If you are planning on sticking with the base game, you get access to the redone from the ground up graphics for the game (it looks substantially better now), as well as the game’s dynamic new weather system.

If you pay for the expansion, you get both of those, in addition to access to motorbikes, Monster Trucks, Dragsters, and Drift Racers; over 100 new events; and new specs for existing vehicles. The Wild Run is not included with the Season Pass, so if you intend to get it, you will need to purchase it separately.

The Crew: Wild Run, the expansion to Ubisoft’s open world racing game released last year, will be getting a closed beta on the PC starting October 15, the company announced today. The closed beta will allow players the first opportunity to participate in “The Summit”, a gathering of thousands of drivers and mechanics from around the world, taking place in iconic locations all around the USA. Run 

During the closed beta players will also have the opportunity to complete PvE and PvP missions to raise their ranking and unlock new features to customize their vehicles. FreeDrive activities will also be playable, as well as speed and skill challenges, stunt competitions with brand new trials created exclusively to fit new vehicle specifications.

In addition to allowing players a chance to go hands on with the new content before the launch of the expansion, the beta will also let players see and appreciate for themselves the graphical changes and updates that are coming to the game with the expansion. The graphical update will be available to all players of The Crew free of charge, even those who choose to not purchase Wild Run.

Wild Run will be available starting November 17 digitally, and at retail as a bundle with the base game, on November 19.

Ubisoft hasn’t forgotten about its racing MMO The Crew (though the rest of the world may not have been so kind). It will be releasing a new expansion for the same on November 17th for PS4, Xbox One and PC titled Wild Run which takes players to “The Summit”.

The Summit isn’t so much a location as a gathering of drivers and racing enthusiasts facing off in various extreme events to become king o the road. You’ll have a choice of drift vehicles, dragsters, monster trucks and a variety of motorcycles for racing against foes. Thankfully, no challenge will be the same as you navigate a variety of terrain and advance from qualifiers to finals, earning various rewards and bonuses based on your performance.

To make things even better, Ivory Tower is adding a major graphical update to produce new lighting effects and redesigned areas for various vehicles. Thoughts on this newest update for The Crew? Let us know in the comments.