The Crew 2 is loaded with events and challenges for you to take on across land, sea, and sky. These tips will put you on track to go from a slow-moving Rookie to a speeding Icon in no time.
Overnight Celebrity
When you first kick things off in The Crew 2, you'll be labeled an up-and-coming Rookie with hardly any social-media following. In order to level up your fame – thereby unlocking additional disciplines and vehicle types – you'll need to gain more followers, who act as experience points.
As you level up, you can compete in more and more races and challenges across many disciplines. There's a huge variety of events, like drifting, street racing, rally cross, motocross, acrobatic flying, track-car racing, boat racing, and monster trucks – but only a few of each become available with every fame level you achieve. While your first few vehicles are free, and give you access to the initial disciplines, if you want to participate in all racing disciplines, you'll also need to purchase additional vehicles that correspond to that particular event type if you want to give one a go. For example, you can't compete in a monster truck event without a monster truck. The good news is that every event you tackle gets you followers and cash no matter how many times you complete it. So if there's one you really enjoy, and want to attack its leaderboard over and over, you'll still be rewarded with the followers.
Dominating events isn't the only way to gain a following. Free driving around the world and completing certain actions – like drifting, nearly missing oncoming traffic, or catching air – will help you build up a following. If you person multiple actions in quick succession, you'll receive a bonus of followers, so the cooler the tricks you can string together, the better.
Complete Those Trials
One of The Crew 2's unique features is the Fast Fav system, which lets you switch between a land, water, or air vehicle on the fly. Want to drive off the coast of Miami, directly into the ocean? You can use Fast Fav to switch to a power boat and make a seamless transition. Coming up on the edge of the Grand Canyon and want to avoid an ugly crash? Switch to your favorite plane and take to the skies before you plummet to the bottom of the gorge.
In order to use the Fast Fav feature, you need to unlock a vehicle for land, sea, and air. Instead of spending the cash you don't have on shiny new ride, you can complete the Street Racing, Pro Racing, Freestyle, and Offroad trials to unlock four free vehicles. While the newly unlocked rides will be automatically set to your favorite by default, you can change up your Fast Favs at any time in the vehicle menu.
Be Better Than Stock Parts
Successfully completing events earns you loot in the form of vehicle upgrades. These upgrades and modifications will be equipable for the type of vehicle that the event was for. So, if you've just finished first in a street race, you'll get parts to upgrade your street-racing cars. Each vehicle type has seven changeable parts, each of which have a performance rating score attached to them. A vehicle's overall performance rating is the average of all its parts. It's important to play attention to a vehicle's performance rating; not only is it a quick way to compare rides, but every event in The Crew 2 has a recommended performance score, letting you know if you're ready to take on particular events.
If you miss the loot drop after an event, it will end up at the HQ of whatever family the event was tied to. Purple and blue parts have AFFIX attributes, which give additional bonuses, like increasing nitro power by .2%/sec while in use, or increasing followers gained by 2.0%. These added bonuses are important to consider, and mean that a higher performance rating doesn't always mean better gear.
While you're tuning up your ride with new parts, hardcore motorheads may want to dip into the pro tune settings so they can customize things like suspension, traction control, and anti-lock brakes to make sure their ride is exactly how they like it.
Ice Cream Paint Job
Sometimes you want to customize more than just what's under the hood. If you're looking to trick out your whip with new aesthetic details, then you'll want to head over to your Home in either LA or Miami, where you'll find your entire collection of vehicles. Simply approach one and choose the Customize option, and you'll be able to change its color. That's not all, however; you'll also be able to alter the aesthetic appearance of certain parts of your ride, like the hood, rims, front or rear bumper, and even the interior of your vehicle.
Make sure to check out the Livery section of the customization menu, as it will allow you to apply decorative decals to the exterior of your car. What's more, you'll be able to create entirely unique decals to make sure your ride is truly one of a kind. And, if you're particularly fond of your creation, you can upload it for others to use, or you can search other community creations to deck out your ride.
The Activities Menu
The Crew 2 gives you a number of ways to get to your next challenge. You're free to embrace the open world and drive or fly from one event to the next, or use the map to fast-travel to your desired destination. If you happen to be looking for a particular race within a particular discipline, then the activity menu is your best bet. Here, you can quickly view all the activities in the menu organized by type, letting you easily jump into a race without having to scour the map for it.
Photo Ops
If you're going to be a social-media star, you better post some pictures. While you're in the Activities Menu, head to the Photo Album within each Motorsport family. Each Photo Album includes a series of photo opportunities that task you with fulfilling certain conditions. For example, perform a jump in a drag race vehicle, or drift in the rain and snap a Photo Mode shot of it, and you'll be rewarded with 2,000 new followers and 15,000 Bucks. Don't worry if you missed your shot; once you enter Photo Mode, you'll be able to rewind to the exact moment you were performing a donut in the middle of Times Square. Photo ops can be a great way to increase your follower count, as well as a way to perform unique actions you might never do through normal competition.
The Crew 2's open world has quite a few Easter eggs hidden in its massive map. While we don't want to spoil everything by revealing them all, we thought we'd point out a few Ubisoft-specific ones to whet your appetite. First up, head to Washington, DC and take a look at a bird's-eye view of the redesigned Capitol Building, and you may recognize the symbol of a familiar creed. Secondly, just south of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is a garden sculpture that bears a striking similarity to the Ubisoft logo.
These are just a taste of what's hidden within The Crew 2's map. Can you find the rest?
The Crew 2 is available now through early access via the Gold Edition, and launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on June 29. For more on the game, check out our previous coverage.
