What is it when a video game dies? I’ve long abandoned the Backlog Burndown concept, since I can’t finish games even as quickly as Epic puts them up for freebies in the store. But, when I heard that The Crew would be shutting down its servers after a ten-year run, and that there looks to be no offline patch in the works, I wanted to make sure I at least knocked that particular game off my backlog while I still had the chance.
Obviously I have a bit of a history with this franchise. The Crew 2 was probably the biggest review I’ve ever written for Marooners’ Rock. It gave me the opportunity to write a whole different feature about the Harley Davidson Iron 883 (which was approved by Ubisoft’s PR, but not by Harley’s ahead of time). Then last year, when The Crew: Motorfest came out, I got to do it again, though without the bike review.
But somehow, despite all that, I’d only barely ever scratched the surface of the game that started it all. What’s really the most interesting about The Crew is that in some ways, its origin has a lot of similarities to the Saints Row series. The first game is a bog-standard clone of another series, but the sequels go increasingly crazy and off the rails in their own directions. In Saints Row’s case, it started as a Grand Theft Auto clone and went increasingly over the top. For The Crew, the first game is essentially a Need for Speed clone, complete with the plot about an outlaw racer looking for payback on the man who murdered his brother and framed him for the murder.
None of that really matters though. You can’t buy The Crew on any digital service anymore. You could buy a used physical copy for Xbox 360 or PS3 off eBay, but if you do, you’d better be sure and play it quickly, because that disc will be a coaster after March 31st.
What does matter? I finished the game, and got it off the backlog, so there’s that. The story was okay.
Here’s the thing. In the long run, every game dies eventually. Or every gamer. None of us are immortal, and in the end, the server goes down, the power gets pulled, the hard drive gets corrupted, none of the Steam Achievements, PlayStation Trophies, Xbox Gamerscore, or arcade high scores matter.
Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless, says the scribe in Ecclesiastes. No real difference there from books, movies, or TV shows that can take hours and hours of time, Save that those three forms of entertainment don’t (usually) become unavailable after reading through them, or magically disappear off your shelf before you’ve ever had the chance to read them.
