If you were hoping that Ubisoft learned their lesson from Assassin's Creed Unity and other day-one release bombs where the reviews were restricted to the day of release or post-release, think again. The upcoming open-world racing title, The Crew, will be another game where the reviews are embargoed to the day of release. It attempts to avoid the Simcity issue where early reviews weren't representative of the game, while also potentially dabbling in the Assassin's Creed Unity problems where the reviews arrived a little too late for a somewhat broken game.
Ubisoft made a recent blog post about the upcoming game to discuss the new open-beta that just dropped today. While gamers participating in the beta on the PS4 and Xbox One are enjoying their time in the wild streets, open plains, two-lane highways and mountainous ridges across a virtual United States, Ubisoft snuck this little tidbit into the blog post regarding review copies...
“You want to read how the pros feel after their carefully considered road tests of The Crew. While we totally understand (hey, we read reviews, too!), The Crew was built from the beginning to be a living playground full of driving fans, so it’s only possible to assess our game in its entirety with other real players in the world. And by other, we mean thousands and thousands and thousands of players – something that can’t be simulated with a handful of devs playing alongside the press.“For this very reason, The Crew will be available to media to begin their reviews when the game launches on December 2.”
Ohhh, day one review embargos. Now where have we seen these before? Oh that's right... Aliens: Colonial Marines. We all remember what happened there, right? Of course we do.
But opposite of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Ubisoft has a reason why the embargo is set for the day-one release and they make it known that there are no post-release embargos, stating...
“There will be absolutely no embargo on any type of coverage once the game is available for sale. While we fully anticipate that you might see some reviews immediately at launch – largely built around the preview sessions we facilitated during the past months or the limited content of the closed and open betas – they won’t be based on optimal conditions or reflect the finished game.“
In an attempt to win back the favor of gamers (and reviewers?) they reposted the open beta 101 trailer, which you can check out below.
To be completely honest, I don't really care one way or another about the review embargoes for The Crew only because the game looks rather boring to me. I've yet to see anything that genuinely makes me think that this will be a must-buy game. It reminds me of Forza Horizon 2 with a bit more of an urban motif and a few extra game modes to flesh out the replay values.
The open beta for The Crew is underway right now for the Xbox One and PS4. The game is set to release on December 2nd, next month for home consoles and PC.
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