The Crew Motorfest review - occasionally spectacular

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The Crew Motorfest, the 3rd introduction successful Ubisoft’s open-world racer series, differs rather drastically from anterior installments. Instead of racing crossed a pared-down approximation of the full United States, Motorfest dials successful a much focused approach, offering up the authorities of Hawaii arsenic your caller playground. It’s a quality-over-quantity attack that helps Motorfest’s map consciousness some vibrant and richly detailed.

Throw successful a genuinely singular assortment of events, encompassing everything from Japanese thoroughfare racing cars to wilderness treks connected motorbikes, and Motorfest is genuinely rather afloat of surprises. In a batch of ways, The Crew Motorfest comes adjacent to being a Forza Horizon 5 contender. Unfortunately, determination are truthful galore small frustrations present which each adhd up to yet connection a beauteous unpolished experience. 

For one, the game’s handling exemplary has immoderate alternatively frustrating quirks. When this is paired with AI that often can’t determine however accelerated oregon dilatory it wants to be, the resulting racing is unsatisfying. I besides ran into galore crashes and game-breaking bugs during play and, to apical it each off, The Crew Motorfest requires an online transportation astatine each times. Yes, adjacent erstwhile you’re playing solo. 

Rolling hills

But let’s commencement with the good; the worldly The Crew Motorfest gets exceptionally right. Ubisoft’s racer intimately mirrors that of Playground Games’ Forza Horizon series. However, determination are immoderate things Motorfest does that outclasses the Xbox Series X|S exclusive racer.

There’s a large accent connected lawsuit assortment successful The Crew Motorfest, to the constituent that you’ll beryllium experiencing thing antithetic successful astir each race. Races are divided into categories here, named Playlists, which connection a enactment of trails for you to contention connected with a preset enactment of vehicles based connected the Playlist’s theme. 

Made successful Japan, for example, volition enactment you down the instrumentality of the country’s thoroughfare racing icons similar the Honda NSX and Nissan Skyline GT-R for a bid of nighttime circuits. My favorite, by far, was the Hawaii Scenic Tours Playlist, which features a bid of much laid-back races, including 1 that puts you successful a VW Camper for a leisurely sunset stroll astir the island. This Playlist successful peculiar did an fantabulous occupation of highlighting The Crew Motorfest’s drop-dead gorgeous visuals, which truly came to beingness via the game’s HDR support.

If it wasn’t wide already, each contention besides sees you driving a antithetic vehicle. This is an attack I enjoyed greatly, arsenic successful Forza Horizon 5, I often recovered myself sticking to a prime fewer cars I’d upgraded, contempt that crippled rewarding you with cars similar there’s nary tomorrow. In Motorfest, you’ll get to thrust a monolithic chunk of its 600+ conveyance roster, which besides includes bikes, open-wheelers, boats, and planes. 

Most races are beauteous lengthy, too, truly playing into the strengths of The Crew Motorfest’s gargantuan representation size. Races are mostly successful the ‘get from A to B’ format and typically past anyplace betwixt 5 to 10 minutes. It’s really acold little of a slog than it whitethorn sound, arsenic the game’s gorgeous environs supply a compelling inheritance to contention across. Especially truthful arsenic Playlists each diagnostic unsocial elements and objects to marque them visually distinct.

Completing 3 Playlists unlocks the Main Stage, which features 3 avenues of progression for further rewards. These volition person you revisit races you’ve completed, enactment successful dynamic events, oregon research the land for hidden secrets similar treasure boxes oregon photograph opps. And this is wherever you tin instrumentality your postulation of cars and use upgrades to them for a importantly antithetic benignant of racing. Yes, you’re retreading contented a batch with Main Stage, but being capable to alteration up your conveyance for these events injects immoderate other beingness into them.

One past facet of The Crew Motorfest that some impressed and amazed maine was its incredibly responsive UI. Compared to galore different racing games, Motorfest can spot you hopping into the paper and betwixt vehicles successful a substance of seconds, with small to nary load clip successful between. Additionally, the game’s load times wide are brisk, particularly connected current-gen systems. 

Crash course

Unfortunately, for everything that The Crew Motorfest gets right, it gets different facet arsenic wrong. For starters, it has 1 of the strangest handling models I’ve ever experienced successful a modern open-world racer. One particularly irksome quirk is that cars person a wont of overcorrecting themselves aft a crook similar they unnaturally ‘snap’ to a lane erstwhile the crook has finished. This often leads to you needing to readjust your racing enactment and means you tin ne'er rather instrumentality corners oregon consecutive optimally. And yes, this adjacent occurs with driving assists disabled.

But that’s not the extremity of the handling model’s woes. Unlike Forza Horizon, there’s precise small quality betwixt however antithetic surfaces impact your car. You’ll glide crossed tarmac, gravel, sand, and mud similar you were conscionable traveling down a freeway. That would beryllium good were The Crew Motorfest strictly an arcade racer, but it’s not, arsenic you bash person entree to tweaks similar torque spot and brake bias.

There’s besides hardly a harm exemplary to talk of successful The Crew Motorfest. Your cars volition get a small dinged up, certainly, but it’s each purely cosmetic (there's nary enactment for simulated damage, either) and amounts to immoderate airy dents and overgarment scraping. Similarly, driving done dirtier surfaces hardly muddies the car beyond a fewer airy speckles. Granted, this isn’t precisely a dealbreaker, arsenic much sim-like racers similar Gran Turismo 7 also opt for airy harm and wear. But it does instrumentality immoderate immersion distant from Motorfest’s sublime Hawaii map. 

Another quarrelsome facet is AI racers’ quality to aggressively rubber-band. That is, to artificially velocity up oregon dilatory down to make an illusion of difficulty. Even playing mostly connected the second-highest trouble level, AI drivers could seldom triumph races connected their ain merits. More often than not, I would drawback them slingshotting into archetypal place, gaining 2 to three-second leads successful grounds time. The other is true, too, arsenic I often witnessed the AI noticeably slowing down arsenic the checkered emblem approached.

All this, though, frankly pales successful examination to my biggest gripe with The Crew Motorfest. The crippled requires an online transportation astatine each times, adjacent erstwhile you’re conscionable racing by yourself. Much similar the Forza Horizon series, Motorfest employs a semi-online exemplary that populates your league with different drivers, successful lawsuit you privation to contention oregon enactment up with them. But adjacent Forza lets you disconnect and contention purely offline if that’s your preference. 

There’s nary of that successful The Crew Motorfest, so if the servers spell down for immoderate reason, you’re bang retired of luck. And yes, that besides means the crippled doesn’t play bully with console features similar Xbox Series X|S’s Quick Resume, arsenic you’ll beryllium thrown retired of your league erstwhile you instrumentality the crippled retired of standby.

There is simply a batch to emotion astir The Crew Motorfest. It features 1 of the astir beauteous open-world racing maps I’ve ever seen, and I emotion the magnitude of assortment connected connection erstwhile it comes to the racing. But the issues I’ve highlighted, arsenic good arsenic its inclination to either clang oregon disconnect from the server, means I often can’t bask it arsenic overmuch arsenic I privation to. Future patches and updates volition apt assistance creaseless implicit the cracks, but arsenic it stands, The Crew Motorfest’s frustrations thin to outweigh what it gets right.

Accessibility features

As is the lawsuit with different Ubisoft titles similar Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Crew Motorfest features a decent magnitude of accessibility options. Subtitle size and inheritance opacity are here, arsenic good arsenic enactment for 7 antithetic substance languages. There are besides 3 antithetic colorblind settings, arsenic good arsenic options for a high-contrast HUD. Players tin besides minutely set the spot of the controller’s vibration and, if playing connected PS5, the spot of the DualSense wireless controller’s adaptive trigger feedback, too. 

How we reviewed The Crew Motorfest

I played astir 20 hours of The Crew Motorfest on PS5. Being an open-world racing game, it was paramount to absorption connected the assortment of races and challenges disposable successful the game, arsenic good arsenic the prime of the wide handling exemplary compared to immoderate of the champion racing games around.

If The Crew Motorfest isn’t rather what you’re aft for your adjacent gaming spell, see checking retired our best PS5 games and best Xbox Series X games lists for apical recommendations, arsenic good arsenic our usher to each the upcoming games we cognize about.