Written Review.
Speed Crew is a cooperative party game with up to 4 players. It sees you and your co-op partners take to being pit crew members and getting cars fixed up so they can continue to race.
You play as a mechanic trying to get cars fixed up in various ways, it starts off simple enough with you just buffing cars to knock out the dinks, to changing wheels, to engine repair and more. Interestingly there are various ways to do these objectives too. For example, earlier in the game you get a wrench to unscrew the wheels, then you get a drill which is electric and does it quicker, but you have to charge it, so you can do other tasks as it charges but it means if you mismanage your timing you could end up waiting longer to get a car ready to get back to the race. You also have to diagnose the issue with each car, obviously, some issues you can see from the off, like it having some small fires or it being banged up, but others like if it’s low on fuel or the engine needs a repair you won’t see unless you use the diagnoses machine. Some levels actually have an auto diagnosis machine, others will have portable machines that have a smaller range so you have to move it to each car individually.
The game is enjoyable, I played through it with one other person, and we had a fair bit of fun, we found it fairly challenging quite early on, and some of the levels for us weren’t fun at all. Luckily there is more good levels than bad, it’s just a shame some are so awkward. I wonder if 4 players on these levels will make it feel a lot smoother as carrying around a car engine on your own is a slow process. The way the points work in this is each car you fix up earns you laps, if you get the car out quickly you get bonus points, but if you take too long you get a penalty, so you need to be fast.
Visually the game has a cartoonish styling, the characters are pretty stylised and have a (Squared look) to them. As said previously the cars are detailed enough to see how much damage to the body work there is. There are also fun little cutscenes again it has a very stylised aesthetic owing to an old magazine or some kind of comic. Audio is helpful you can hear cars coming up the tracks, but it’s guaranteed you’ll get run over every once in a while as they can be pretty speedy.
We did have some issues though, several times things would glitch and we’d have engines go through the floor and become unreachable or have tools move to unreachable places, it’s a shame as you have to restart the level as you can’t just send the car off or remove the now broken car and move on to the next.
It’s an enjoyable game, frantic, fun and silly with around 40 stages to play through and an Arcade mode is coming soon, some levels were frustrating and not much fun but overall it’s a good package and I think people who like other similar party game will get much joy from this title as I did.