When The Crew came out it was received with average to poor reception. After a few years, however, Ubisoft has polished that gem in the rough to a sparkling diamond. It’s still a game with its flaws but overall it’s a way more enjoyable experience than it was when it came out. Ubisoft has also continued to support the game with DLC that added a lot more cool features. Now we are at the second and last expansion pack for the game and we are going to take a look if it’s worth your time and investment. This is Calling All Units.
In Calling All Units the long and fast arm of the law are central. There are some new story missions in which you play as a new character named Clara Washington. The story is not anything like the main game’s story. There are several missions with a little cutscene telling you a new gang has hit the scene and it’s up to you to bust them. The story missions serve as nothing more than a tutorial to the game’s new multiplayer mode. The “story” doesn’t have any narrative value but it does it’s job well enough in explaining to the player the new game mode.
The new game mode is called Chase and basically amounts to a game of tag… but with cars. As said before you can now choose to play as the police instead of a street racer. When traveling in the world as a street racer you will find packages which when you drive into them you will need to deliver to a certain drop-off point. As soon as you pick up a package “the fuzz” will be right on your tail. If you play as the police it’s your job to stay in close vicinity to the car with the package for seven seconds in order to make the arrest. This game type can be played with up to four people(two vs. two) and every player will have access to three power-ups to try and catch or outrun each other with. One power-up is always set to return players to the action if they got lost or stuck keeping the game at a nice tempo. The two other power-ups can be chosen by the player from a selection of four power-ups. These power-ups are mostly specific to the faction you are using. Racers for instance can flashbang the police and the police can remove the ability to use nitro or power-ups for a while. This mode is the main sell of Calling All Units and it’s fun as hell. I personally think playing as the police is way more fun than playing as racers but it does not matter who you are playing as because it’s a blast. It’s a thrill trying to catch the racers and exhilarating if you can escape an arrest at the last second. With three other friends, it’s probably some of the most fun you can have with the game in general.
Of course, there are the regular additions to this expansion as well. Level cap is raised to 60 and a few new cars are added. You can race with a quite a bit of police vehicles and a lot of other new vehicles for racers are added as well.
Closing note:
Calling All Units’ story is not really the reason to buy the new expansion. There is no real story to speak of and on top of that the new character’s voice acting is pretty bad. Now that doesn’t really matter but it kind of annoys me so I thought I would bring it up. There are a bunch of new cars with just a little under half being police cars. The new game mode is a real blast to play and if you have a “Crew” to play with I know you will have a ton of fun.
Now the real question is if the price is worth the admission. That’s where it get a bit hard. Calling All Units is 25$ at the moment and while the new multiplayer mode is fun this is way to steep of a price for me to really recommend it. Die-hard players will probably pick this up either way and I would suggest you do so too. But only if the price drops in a sale or if you don’t own the base game in which case you should definitely get the ultimate edition. As much fun as Calling All Units is it lacks enough content to make the as of now high price tag worth it.
8/10
If you are interested in the other DLC pack reviews you can see them here:
