Speed Crew needs a full team to be worth your time

Intentionally chaotic party games have been on the rise thanks to titles like Overcooked, Moving Out, and Tools Up! that embrace mundane tasks and make them cooperative challenges for you and your friends. Speed Crew is the latest to take that concept and put a new spin on it. With a team of up to four people, you will try to fix as many race cars that come into the pit stop as quickly as possible. The game is a chaotic mix of frantic fun but that reliance on team play saps away any potential fun for solo players.

One lug nut away from greatness

Speed Crew opens with a pit stop crew being challenged by Dominion Torrentto of the Furious Family to see who can fix up more cars — clearly skirting the line as close as they could without inviting the wrath of Vin Diesel’s lawyers.

After the opening, you jump right into some “championships” that act as groupings of levels. The better you perform, the higher you raise your score and unlock the next championship. Each tournament has a decade theme, which is a nice touch to add some variety. You’ll be playing in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s as you interact with progressing technology in tools and cars. You start out with simple tire replacements, but soon have to start repairing the tires and putting them back on top of other tasks like fixing dents, fueling the car, and putting out fires. When the time is up, you see your final score.

Everything in Speed Crew is controlled with a single button. Run to pick up the tools you need and get to work on the broken-down parts of the vehicle. Every time a new car comes in, you need to get it scanned by a computer, which is a little bothersome, causing you to keep running back and forth, but they play around with this idea quite a bit. Sometimes, you’ll have a computer automatically scanning the cars so you can just get to work. Other times, you might need to actually carry the computer so the car is within range. Those small changes keep a fresh perspective in gameplay as you go through levels.

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Teamwork or fail

I enjoyed the new challenges that were continually thrown my way, but also felt severely held back for not having anyone playing with me. Eventually, you start running into levels that section you off from portions of the map with hazards. This really nails home how the game was designed with teamwork in mind, and without it, you are restricted to a lower score. Other games with this style have the same issue, so I hope we start seeing some AI help or a separate campaign for single players because the solo experience is so much tougher.

The lack of people to play with was the only thing to hold me back in Speed Crew, though. The game embraces chaos like Overcooked, and hits the same gameplay style in a twist that I’m sure racing fans will enjoy.

Needless to say, if you have a group of friends or family that enjoyed Overcooked, you will like Speed Crew. They essentially exist in the same space, the latter just has a racing pit crew theme. The chaotic teamwork at play here is in full effect and that is enough to carry the experience. If you play games on your own, though, not enough has been done to make up for the lack of help to make this a game worth your time.

Speed Crew was reviewed on Nintendo Switch with a code from the team. It is also available on Steam. It will release on PlayStation and Xbox later this year.

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