Over the last few years, I've had the chance to play a lot of racing games, from Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, Forza, Grid, Ride etc. And of these games, many had me hooked, such as NFS and GT7, but none of them came close to entertaining me as much as The Crew 2.
It's by far the racing game that I've accumulated the most hours in, and many of these hours have been spent because it's an extremely fun game that can be described as the ultimate racing game. But why? Because the game doesn't just focus on car racing and incorporates less traditional types of racing, such as boat and airplane racing.
At launch, the game was very complete, but Ubisoft did a good job of keeping it up to date for many years. The game had very creative races, with vehicle changes in the middle of the race that took you across land, sky and sea, all with great variety due to the huge number of options that each type of vehicle had.
The Crew Motorfest continues the legacy presented in the previous game, and to my surprise, it manages to be even bigger and more fun than the previous game. This game is one of the most enjoyable I've played in recent years and it's a shame that it can be labeled as not so good just because it's an Ubisoft game. But let's get into the details that make The Crew experience so good...
A festival in Hawaii
Unlike the previous two games, which explored the whole of the United States, The Crew Motorfest takes you to the beautiful island of Hawaii, which is also part of the USA. However, being in Hawaii not only brings beautiful paradisiacal scenery, but also a totally different and rich culture.
This change of scenery was a great choice because it breaks away from the sameness of the two previous games, which, despite being considerably different maps, have many similarities. In Hawaii, although we have urban settings, most of the scenery is very natural.
It goes beyond inspiration
The Crew Motorfest gives this third game a much more festival-like feel than previous games, which, at least in the second one, already had this characteristic. However, in recent years we've had one game in this style that was very successful, and that was Forza Horizon. Ubisoft has been criticized a lot for getting a formula right and sticking to it several times, and for me, the Xbox franchise does the same thing.
Don't get me wrong, Forza Horizon is a very good game, but it's just Control + C, Control + V, with a change of scenery. And The Crew, in the previous games, even repeats the scenarios, but even so, the second game is very original in that it explores the different types of cars that the game has.
But in this third game in The Crew franchise, the inclusion of more forested scenery and with a very prominent festival in the background, makes the comparison with Forza Horizon inevitable. And in my opinion, this inspiration does exist, after all, Forza was a huge success, but again, Motorfest, with the originality of the franchise, goes far beyond inspiration and delivers, for me, a much more consistent and original game.
How does the game work?
As with any racing game, there are, of course, several races which, in many games, would be characterized as repetition, but racing games have this proposal and there are few cases that manage to overcome this bubble, and there is no problem with that, after all, that is the proposal of this type of game.
To escape the sameness, some games use other features to make the experience minimally different. Need for Speed, for example, tries to introduce a gripping story, Forza Horizon races against some unlikely opponents, The Crew introduces the ability to modify cars in a very profound way, and the second introduces sea and air racing. How does Motorfest deal with this?
A legacy that matters, but is not limited
As I mentioned earlier, The Crew 2 was one of the racing games that I invested the most time in because it was so much fun. And in these many hours, I've acquired quite a collection of cars, and Motorfest allows you to import the cars you've acquired in the previous game, meaning that I've already started the game with a very large number and variety of cars.
However, for those who haven't played the previous game, this fact doesn't make much difference, and that's due to the presence of Playlists in the game, the differentiating factor of Motorfest. The Crew 2 has a number of different racing lists, focused on each different type and sub-type of vehicle, culminating in a race against a boss at the end of the list.
Motorfest also has these lists, which are the Playlists I mentioned, but unlike anything I've seen in other games, this mode included in Motorfest makes the experience we have from start to finish very original and varied. It also makes each race exciting.
Each of the playlists, of which there are many, has a theme, for example: we have playlists focused on vintage cars, electric cars, Asian cars, concept cars, duels between certain vehicles, and many others. And although I started the game with a very large number of cars, those who have never played the franchise won't be penalized because the playlists almost always lend us the cars.
In other words, if you enter a playlist focused on Porsche cars, and you don't own a Porsche car, there's no problem because the game will lend you the cars you need. And at the end of the playlists, we're sure to get one, which is very valuable because it gives us the feeling that they're worth playing. Not that this is necessary, as the experience itself is very satisfying.
Unique experiences at every stage
These Playlists introduced in the game are one of the most original and ingenious things I've ever seen in racing games, something that harks back to the freedom that developers had in the past, where realism wasn't the only focus in racing games. In the past we had games like Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, Burnout, Jak X: Combat Racing, Twised Metal, among others, which didn't just want to be realistic, but which used playfulness to make the experience more fun.
The Playlists, although they don't stray too far from the game's realistic proposal (which isn't all that realistic, after all, you can start a race with a car and end it with a boat or an airplane), exploit some elements that make the experience of playing much more satisfying and fun.
For example, there's the classic car playlist, which makes you explore cars from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even the 2000s. And each limitation of these different eras is introduced into the game in a way that impacts the gameplay. In the cars from the 1950s, for example, we didn't have GPS, so the minimap is disabled and we are forced to guide ourselves along the right path using photos that represent real locations.
The playlist focused on electric cars, for example, forces us to pass by places that emit electricity, and thus recharge the car's energy, which would be the game's nitro. What's more, the whole scenario changes according to these thematic characteristics, and these aren't realistic changes that are possible in real life, they explore the playfulness that we haven't seen in mainstream racing games for a long time.
We have some personalities from the world of racing on the internet, such as Supercar Blondie and Donut Racing, which bring us themes literally full of personality, focusing on concept cars and duels between well-known cars full of particularities, respectively. As already mentioned, there are playlists focused on specific manufacturers, which also teach us about their history.
And progression through them is organic and extremely fun. Some playlists have prerequisites, such as having a specific car or playing a certain number of playlists. To buy the cars needed for the playlists, you need money, which the playlists themselves give you when you play them. And because they're all a lot of fun, the gameplay loop hardly ever gets tiring, and at least in my gameplay, it never did.
But the game goes beyond playlists
As if the playlists weren't enough, the game goes beyond them by including all the most common types of races we have in more traditional games, and even includes some more different ones. So, you'll find sprints, grand prix, drift, rally, street car racing, hypercar, muscle car, airplane racing, boat racing, time trials, duels, among other things.
The Crew Motorfest will give you hours and hours of content, regardless of what you focus on in the game. In my playthrough, I focused entirely on the playlists, to the point of forgetting that there's a whole game beyond that. There's even a curious battle royale mode that's also a lot of fun.
And after finishing the playlists, we discovered that it's only tier 1, meaning that even if you finish them, you'll still have plenty of content specific to these playlists, as well as repeating the activities you've already done. Not to mention the activities scattered around the scenery, such as reaching a certain speed at a certain point, or performing the slolam (which consists of crossing a certain section of track going from one side to the other).
In short, the game has a lot of content, because in addition to these activities, there are several others, as well as several multiplayer activities. Not to mention the various contents added every week. If we take the previous game in comparison, the game will still have a few years of updates, meaning more content.
What about the gameplay?
Well, in terms of gameplay in racing games, there's not much to it, is there? You can accelerate the car, brake/reverse, use the handbrake, nitro, and control the vehicles, of course. But the game does have some new features, such as some new camera positions.
In this game, the races are a little longer than I remember the previous game being, but the control of the cars is very smooth, which makes each race very enjoyable. In terms of difficulty, we initially have three levels, but when you access the menu, you can choose between five levels, which can be made easier using the accessibility options.
In terms of the AI of the opponents, they are at a very good level, being challenging at every level you play. Especially when it comes to races with hypercars, where any mistake can decide the race, the AI works to keep you tense from start to finish.
There are those races in which the cars are changed in the middle of the race, and in these cases, the vehicle changes happen much more quickly and dynamically than in the previous game. This helps a lot with the progression of the race and doesn't take away from the immersion of the race.
And of course, with various types and subtypes of vehicles available, the gameplay with the different types is very noticeable. As well as the cars with different performance levels, where the difference between them is also noticeable. When you play online, the levels are adjusted to make the race fairer.
Any graphic developments?
The Crew Motorfest is a cross-gen game, so even though we had very beautiful games in the previous generation, we can't expect next-generation graphics and some other technologies like ray-tracing in this game. But despite this, the result we have here is very good, and if we consider the evolution from the previous game, the leap is very big.
In terms of car modeling, in the previous game it was very good, and in this game it remains very good, but nothing much above average, even more so if we take into account that there are monsters nowadays like Gran Turismo 7. But there are some very nice things, for example, there are cars with some items in the trunk, items that have physics and react to the movements of the cars. And one thing is for sure: Motorfest delivers hundreds of cars, all of them unique, with very good visuals both internally and externally.
But if there's one thing that has clearly evolved from the previous game, it's the scenery, which is graphically very beautiful, much denser, diverse and destructible, so as to make a very good impression. The game's change of location was very welcome, as it made it possible to explore various biomes that didn't exist in the previous game.
However, it's not just the graphics that define whether a game is beautiful or not, details also make a difference. In certain places in the scenarios, we can see some imperfections in some parts of the tracks that only appear in a few places, but which visibly show that the game has taken special care.
The scenery is beautiful and detailed, and it's a considerable size, but it doesn't look as huge as the previous map. And that's a good thing, because the developers have opted for a more beautiful and detailed map rather than an extremely large one.
Another thing that contributes to the incredible visuals is the game's dynamic climates. The game has a very realistic day and night cycle, which is greatly enhanced by the various climatic events that take place, which are very varied, and as I said, very well developed, which makes it very good visually.
And how is the game performing?
In terms of performance, the game ran very smoothly in my playthrough, with two modes determined, one that prioritizes visual quality and the other frame rate. When switching between modes, the graphical differences are striking, but so is the difference in frame rate. It's up to you to choose your priority.
And The Crew Motorfest is one of the few games I've reviewed in which I haven't encountered any bugs or even glitches, which is very commendable. The game has been released very polished. And in terms of the interface, everything works well, but I think it could be improved to make it easier to understand in some less visible areas.
As for the sound, I found the music rather weak, but all the other sound effects are very, very good. In the middle of my playthrough, PlayStation released an update that enabled the use of Dolby Atmos, and the game made great use of this feature, which makes a difference that I honestly didn't expect.
After all, is it worth it or not?
Before analyzing this game, I had played a few dozen hours, but I wanted to play a lot more. The game is one of the most fun racing games I've played in many years, surpassing all the arcade games on the market in my opinion.
There are few negative points that I could mention, and you only have to read the review to see that not many have been mentioned. But there is one thing that could be better, and that's the fact that the game doesn't have dubbing, and given the large amount of dialog the game has, it's quite lacking.
But it's a very fun game, with many hours of content, that keeps you hooked and surprises you with every playthrough. And it's very beautiful, much more than I expected, making it one of the most enjoyable games I've had the chance to try out in recent times.
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