When I first heard of Speed Crew, I thought, “Do we need another Overcooked style game?” Well, I’m happy that Speed Crew did enough to win me over, and it deserves to belong alongside the other great games in the chaotic co-op genre.
It’s hard not to compare Speed Crew to Overcooked, but Speed Crew does things differently. The story revolves around a pit crew family challenged by up-and-coming pit crews. The writing is silly and, surprising, the animated cutscenes are voice-acted and well-done. After an opening scene, you start learning how the game works. The game is an isometric perspective, similar to Overcooked. The challenge with Speed Crew is that you need to service speeding cars coming into the pit, hoping to avoid getting hit by an incoming vehicle.
As each car comes in, you’ll need to do an initial scan to see what’s wrong with the car. This is where the game does an excellent job of introducing new mechanics to the player. It starts with changing tires - and the levels after the first one start to get complicated - fixing damaged car parts that will require hammering the dents out to fill up the gas tank and fixing shredded tires. And as you can imagine, with new mechanics comes new tools. Things like changing the tire will require a jack and a wrench. You must fill gas cans before filling the car; some cars need more than one gas can.
It’s not just the new mechanics you need to deal with; there are obstacles in the path too. Playing Speed Crew solo is tricky, especially when maneuvering around the garage. Each race is timed, and you need to get enough points to make it to the top three spots in that time frame. You'll need to repeat the level if you don’t place in the top three. This is one area I feel Overcooked excels over Speed Crew, as you are required to repeat the level until you can land a top-three spot.
At some point, I realized that I couldn’t do this alone and needed help. I leaned on my family to support my endeavors to become a pit crew champ. And multiplayer is where the game shines. The chaos ensues. You must develop a strategy to get into the top three spots. And while I only played couch co-op, Speed Crew allows four players to play together online.
Final Grade: B+
If you are looking for another game like Overcooked, you won’t go wrong with Speed Crew. The game does an excellent job of pacing the difficulty. But you’ll want to play this one co-op, as playing solo is nearly impossible later in the game. Luckily, Speed Crew allows for both couch co-op and online multiplayer, so there’s no reason why you can’t form a pit crew.
Review code provided by publisher