The Crew Motorfest Review

"Sandy Beaches"

Campaign

September 13, 2023 at 7:13pm
By Jason Stettner

The latest entry in this open world racing series is a bit of a spin-off where players head to the sandy beaches of Hawaii. I mean, the terrain is certainly more varied than that but it helps paint the vibe that you’ll probably expect when heading into the game.

It’s essentially The Crew meets Forza Horizon and they definitely do not shy away from that aspect in the slightest. You’re instantly met with some cheery musical mixes and you then customize your character. Once that’s out of the way there’s a demo play of the island and you begin doing whatever you like. From that point you’re ushered towards doing the playlists if you so choose and I imagine that’s how most will spend their time.

These playlists make up the meat of the experience with something like fifteen available at launch and more on the way afterwards. These all provide at least an hour worth of gameplay depending on how well your performing though they can be much longer.

Speaking of performance, there are many tiers of difficulty adjustments to choose from so this can be as easy or hard as you want it to be. The playlists all offer a different taste of motor vehicle action. You get everything from scenic adventures to the history of some vehicles such as with 911 Legacy, A Porsche Story.

There’s a mix of cinematic elements and in-game commentary to provide you with further context of what the vehicles are and their historic influence. I do wish a little more time was spent with the boats and planes, those are sort of thrown into one mini playlist.

These playlists also go further when completed offering challenges and various extra events across the island. Moving past playlists there are also main stage events and other seasonal aspects that seemingly adjust getting swapped out over time. There are also large scale multiplayer events to take part in such as Demolition Royale or a Grand Race.

You could instead opt to just explore the open world island though keep in mind fast travel takes awhile to unlock since you need to complete so many playlists to gain access to that. Bit of a padding element quite honestly as it can take awhile to go from race to race.

Gameplay

This is indeed an open world racing game meaning you can go anywhere, at anytime. The benefit of this being from The Crew is that you can also instantly transform into a plane or boat at anytime if you’d prefer to get around with those methods. This offers very similar adjustment and tracking options from The Crew 2.

On top of that an extensive map to see everything in action and one beautiful always adjusting time of day. That’s right, you get both day and night racing alongside some wild weathering conditions that keep things fresh. If are coming from The Crew 2 there’s also a car import option which will help you on that path to collecting the six hundred or so vehicles that are present.

The game is rather stacked with content and things to do and with the long term plan similar to the previous game I imagine this one will only grow over time, but of course I can only speak for what we have now. Racing wise I do feel as though this is a refinement over the previous entry offering differing types of vehicles that all handle uniquely depending on the terrain.

You may think of Hawaii as being just beaches but the terrain here is varied. You get some jungle areas, ashy volcanic mountains and of course sandy beach areas too. There are tons of track options from those within the terrain to some more scenic Hot Wheels like scenarios. The playlists also vary the type of racing you’ll do.

Some are more serious and professional whereas some are more laid back. They all have a bit of a gimmick to them and that helps keep the scenarios fresh. It’s a fairly detailed world as well offering cities, open country sides and rock cliff areas.

They all run well, particularly on the Xbox Series X with two graphical options. The first is the performance mode that I recommend. It provides a dynamic 1440p resolution at 60fps. It’s actually smooth in the fluidity level though some pop-in is present but they hide that well. The other option is a quality mode which is essentially a native 4k resolution with some dynamic elements which is at 30fps.

The Conclusion

The Crew Motorfest offers a scenic easy going open world racing game that refines upon elements of The Crew 2 with a great selection of content backing it. It doesn’t really re-invent the wheel in regards to this style of game and it’s not quite at the level of what we’ve seen with Forza Horizon. It still offers something fun, expansive and aesthetically pleasing to take in.

I think most will have a fun time playing this as it’s that usual mix of Ubisoft open world style mixed with a wide selection of colorful racing options. It’s nice that I can change vehicles on the fly too, although I wish more of a push was made for flying and boating since those seem really secondary here. The car aspect is of course the focus, but it makes the mechanic of switching seem less necessary if there isn’t much to do with those categories.

I liked the playlist variety, and I liked that they used the island space of Hawaii space effectively to keep the experience mixed up across what I was doing. I think there’s a little bit of something for everyone here. It can be a high octane ride, or an easy going venture. The choice is really yours and what you want to do within this one.

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The Crew Motorfest Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Ubisoft

Rating Overall: 8.0