Start your engines
Ubisoft’s The Crew racing series has been on my list to check out since the release of the sequel game. It was the fact that players can drive different vehicles during the same race that was the draw, specifically airplanes. I never did get around to playing the second game but luckily, I was picked to review the latest entry in The Crew franchise; ladies and gentlemen welcome to Hawaii, this is The Crew: Motorfest.
It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well brother, Forza Horizon is somewhere feeling like a million bucks because The Crew Motorfest manages to take a lot of what makes the Horizon series great. Motorfest takes players to the Hawaiian island of Oahu to partake in the ultimate car festival. At its core Motorfest is an open world racing game like Forza Horizon in that it has a good mix of arcade and simulation type races. The island is open for players to cruise around where they can partake in various playlists, (more in a moment) and spontaneous side activities; like the speed trap that sees if players can complete a stretch of road in an allotted time.
MSRP: $69.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), Xbox, PlayStation
Price I’d Pay: $69.99
Progression in the game takes place primarily through the racing playlists; these dedicated lists are all themed around different types of racing culture. There is a Japanese playlist that takes players to an area of the island that has been themed after the racing mecha that is Japan. There will be ‘Tokyo’ drifting, dragons, smoke, and tons of neon. There is a classic car playlist for those who dig the old school racers, there are even collabs with what I assume is content creators and even more! Bottom line, there is a ton of racing in this package, and all this isn’t even talking about the multiplayer options like Demolition Royale because literally every game must have a battle royale mode nowadays.
My one complaint about the open world is that it just feels devoid of much life. While there will always be rival racers cars driving around; seeing beaches with towels and no people is just weird. I totally get why the developers chose to omit the NPC’s thus allowing all that horsepower to focus on the cars and the map and let me tell you The Crew Motorfest is a freaking gorgeous game. Sporting photorealistic versions of dozens of cars, airplanes, boats and more, the game does all of that AND provides a simply breathtaking playground on the island of Oahu. I saw some simply stunning views in my time cruising the island and the game ran mostly at a stable 120 fps. I did experience some drops and hiccups, but they were never anything that caused me too much frustration.
No, that goes to the fact that this game is online only; meaning if I wasn’t connected to the servers then I couldn’t play the game. In fact, there were issues on launch day on PC with trying to get Motorfest up and running through the Ubisoft app. This was quickly resolved, but it just goes to illustrate the problem with ‘online-only’ games. Yes, the majority of us are connected at all times, but anything can happen that causes an outage as we’ve seen. Me complaining about it isn’t going to change it, but I just wanted to make sure I pointed out how lame it is to have this game be dependent on servers.
The Crew: Motorfest is just that, a celebration of (almost) all things that have a motor. There are a ton of cars from dozens of manufactures, even a DeLorean which I am currently saving for. I am not a race guy, but I had a lot of fun with Motorfest, especially once I unlocked the vehicle switching. Being able to go from a car into a plane at the press of a button is dope, while I wish the developers had tuned the controls for all the vehicles instead of just focusing on the cars; I never had a real issue controlling the planes, boats or off-road vehicles. But if you are looking to catch some beautiful Hawaiian sun, drive some of the most beautiful cars you’ve ever seen, then The Crew Motorfest might be for you.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
