The Crew Motorfest Overview: Enjoyable And Irritating

The Crew is a bizarre franchise. The primary sport was centered on a narrative involving automobile gangs and criminals. The second sport saved the map from the primary—a scaled-down recreation of the USA—however ditched the narrative and centered on exploration and including extra sorts of automobiles to function. Now the third sport, The Crew Motorfest, has excised all that to grow to be a Forza Horizon-like open-world racer with its personal massive pageant situated on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. And whereas Motorfest is a beautiful automobile sport that presents a wackier and wilder tackle Horizon’s open world, its odd development hampers a variety of the liberty and doable enjoyable.

It’s unimaginable to speak about The Crew Motorfest, out now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, with out speaking about Forza Horizon. The brand new open-world driving sport from Ubisoft Ivory Tower shares a lot DNA with Xbox’s common franchise that it’s laborious to think about The Crew Motorfest current with out Horizon.

Purchase The Crew Motorfest: Amazon | Greatest Purchase | GameStop

Motorfest opens with flashy and spectacular introduction sequence, very Horizon-like, that has you quickly hopping into numerous vehicles in the course of totally different occasions, offering fast tastes of what to anticipate. As soon as that’s over, you meet some unbearable individuals who discuss how the Motorfest pageant will probably be a lot enjoyable and the way they’re so pumped that you simply’re right here to expertise all of it. In addition they promise that, in the event you drive nicely sufficient, you would possibly find yourself successful the entire thing, though it doesn’t actually seem to be a contest. You then set off throughout the open world of Oahu competing in numerous occasions that characteristic colourful decorations, loud music, and over-the-top moments. If it didn’t say “Motorfest” on the entrance of the field, I’d assume Microsoft had stealth-released a brand new Forza Horizon and slipped it onto my Xbox Collection X whereas I slept.

As soon as previous the intro, I rapidly found how The Crew Motorfest is totally different from Horizon, for higher and for worse.

Planes, boats, and cars

Let’s begin with the good things! Motorfest’s big range of automobiles spans extra than simply vehicles and vehicles, letting you drive boats, planes, dirtbikes, road bikes, and even ATVs. These automobile sorts all deal with utterly otherwise, every with their very own quirks, equivalent to having to handle how out of the water your boat is or isn’t.

Even higher, and in an indication of how Ubisoft’s sport is prepared to be extra wacky than Forza, you’ll be able to swap between your present automobile, airplane, and boat at any level. And I imply at any level. I used to be flying in my airplane and determined to modify to my automobile, simply to see if the sport would let me. It did, and I used to be capable of crash-land my automobile and drive away with no subject. This rapidly grew to become my journey methodology of alternative once I needed to avoid wasting time. I’d fly towards my vacation spot after which swap out the airplane for a automobile and crash into the world like a Ford torpedo. It by no means acquired previous.

Sadly, at the very least within the sport’s first dozen hours, the planes and boats really feel like foolish distractions and never totally developed components of the sport. Most occasions early on don’t use them, and I discovered my speedboat acquired little use because the map doesn’t really feel designed for it. Nonetheless, it’s rad that I can simply fly up into the skies above Hawai’i, flip into a ship, and slam down on high of a soccer area or race monitor and the sport doesn’t punish me in any respect.

Whereas Motorfest helps you to go wild in its open world, dropping automobile bombs and browsing mountains with boats, the sport’s precise occasions and development are the precise reverse.

So many vehicles, so few choices

The Crew Motorfest is stuffed with numerous playlists containing themed occasions that characteristic about seven or so races or different driving segments. These playlists typically characteristic various kinds of gameplay and have hosts that discuss to you in the course of the races. You would possibly do a typical lap-based race, then a drag race with its personal controls and mechanics. After that, you is likely to be challenged with some drifting and even driving a truck that has no brakes by way of an impediment course. Lots of the playlists are a blast, providing up inventive and fascinating occasions.

I used to be shocked by simply how a lot selection is packed in Motorfest. Each playlist feels distinctive, and the sport is continually throwing new concepts at you. At one level I used to be driving F1 vehicles and managing my tires and when to pit, then later I used to be cruising across the coast of Hawai’i in a Fifties convertible utilizing pictures, not a contemporary GPS, to assist information me to my location. And but later I used to be taking part in a Japanese-themed underground racing circuit full with a crew of racers who heckled and praised me as I drifted round neon-drenched streets and alleys.

Purchase The Crew Motorfest: Amazon | Greatest Purchase | GameStop

Nevertheless, each single one among these playlists—I’ve performed by way of the primary seven thus far—forces you to drive a selected automobile which you can’t customise or improve. This makes the vehicles you unlock and improve within the open world really feel much less helpful, and makes it laborious to develop any sort of reference to them. And whereas it’s true that Forza Horizon generally has fixed-car occasions, it additionally options loads of races and different actions that permit gamers select their very own vehicles and develop favorites that they improve over time.

That’s probably not how The Crew Motorfest operates, which is extraordinarily complicated and irritating. I saved questioning why I even had all these vehicles in my storage if the sport hardly ever let me use them in occasions.

When you full a playlist, you unlock the power to replay its occasions with any automobile you need, which is sweet. However I’m undecided why seemingly each single race on this sport must be so locked down. Moreover, when you end a playlist, you unlock challenges related to it and its theme. Weirdly, most of the challenges ask you to carry out particular feats within the occasions you simply accomplished utilizing vehicles from the identical playlist.

Positive, you’ll be able to ignore the challenges, however then you definately received’t progress by way of each’s battle pass-like reward system, lacking out on credit, vehicles, and new automobile components. All of it simply feels very unusual, like the sport desires you to do every thing twice in a small collection of automobiles. This development system feels utterly at odds with the sillier open-world motion that occurs between the playlists.

Forza Horizon: Irritating Version

Different little annoyances additionally begin to grind after some time, like being unable to fast-travel to massive sections of the island till finishing a selected variety of playlists, or what number of challenges ask you to do sure issues in particular areas, however don’t inform you the place these locations are or information you to them by way of a GPS marker.

You additionally begin each session of Motorfest on foot in a bizarre hub space that’s largely empty other than different gamers and their parked vehicles. You’ll be able to stroll round and vote on vehicles you suppose look cool, and uh…not a lot else. This odd purgatory doesn’t add something to the expertise past an additional layer between me and the implausible really feel of driving vehicles at very excessive speeds or dropping Ford Mustangs on mountains.

The Crew Motorfest jogs my memory of an previous, badass muscle automobile that wants some work. It may be enjoyable to drive, it seems cool as hell, and with some endurance, it’ll get you the place that you must go. However it additionally has a foul gearbox, stalls at cease lights, and isn’t dependable sufficient to plan your week round. You need to battle it to take pleasure in it.

And to be clear: There’s a lot to take pleasure in in Motorfest, like its attractive open world or the way in which it helps you to combine vehicles, planes, and bikes in foolish methods. And a few of us would possibly favor the sport’s tightly managed and centered strategy to development. I additionally assume PlayStation gamers would possibly take pleasure in having a Forza Horizon-like sport on their PS5 or PS4.

Nevertheless, I feel Xbox gamers and those that favor extra freedom of their open-world racing video games would possibly simply return to Forza itself as a substitute of placing up with Motorfest’s odd annoyances and shortcomings.

Purchase The Crew Motorfest: Amazon | Greatest Purchase | GameStop