The Crew Motorfest can be a Forza Horizon beater - here’s why
Pulling ahead
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Forza Horizon 5was a difficult game to appraise. The experience is pure joy, the car collection is elite, and I still can’t believe how good the tail lights and the bonnet reflections look under the Mexican sun. It’s a riotously enjoyable open-worldracing game, but it was built on incredibly solid foundations that the previous two games laid. It raised the high tide mark… by about a quarter-inch.
Two years later though, the community’s initial frustrations with somelongstanding FH4 gripeshave remained unaddressed, transforming into white-hot rage. Broken multiplayer modes and the interminable onslaught of loading screens that occur between actually taking part in them, frequent server crashes, and suspect account moderation have all played their parts in stoking the fires. So, although it might look pretty imperious up there with its 90+ Metascores on all platforms (which I contributed to with my review at launch), it’s definitely not too big to fail. AndThe Crew Motorfestknows it.
For its part, theCrewseries has never truly nailed the sensation of driving. This sounds like a pretty terminal fault for a driving game, but it’s a testament to how hard the other elements work to keep a grin on your face.The Crew1 and 2 were both in possession of wonderful open-world maps, which may have beenpopulated by nonsensical signagebut sold the illusion of traveling the length and breadth of the entire USA very convincingly. Look, there’s Mount Rushmore! Now we’re drifting through snowy Colorado switchbacks. And here comes the Vegas strip. Incredible.
Rowboats in disguise
The other big weapon in theCrew’s arsenal is the totally nonsensical and silly ability to transform between cars or bikes, planes, and boats, instantly, in real-time. Almost half a decade sinceTheCrew 2’s release, that still feels like too weird a concept for a mainstream, mass-appeal racer like this, the mechanic returns inMotorfestand I have absolutely no doubt that it’ll be just as fun as ever to hurl a motorbike off a mountain and then transform into a stunt plane while in freefall, then do a few loops, fly out over open water and drop down into it as a speedboat.
These two elements areThe Crew Motorfest’s left and right hook in the fight againstForza: a compelling world map, and a completely silly vehicle sandbox.Forza Horizonworld maps look great to drive through, but they don’t give you a sense of journey.FH4gave us the series’ best map, but even then its cross-section of England and Scotland couldn’t quite compete withThe Crewwhen it came to a good co-op road trip.
The world map is definitely smaller, and the devs have been clear that it’s going for quality over quantity this time
Motorfesttakes place in Oahu, which is a full circle moment for Ubisoft Ivory Tower, a studio formed from the ashes ofTest Drive Unlimiteddeveloper Eden Games. The genre started in open-world Hawaii and, 17 years later, it’s returning there. Will Oahu be able to convey the same sense ofTop Gearspecial-tier road trippery? Honestly, at this stage of pre-launch, that’s difficult to judge. The world map is definitely smaller, and the devs have been clear that it’s going for quality over quantity this time.
The consensus so far from the beta phase is that this is exactly whatMotorfesthas achieved. Still, as a 200+ hourCrew 2player, I can’t help but feel a pang of loss at the idea I won’t be able to race coast to coast across the states anymore. Especially because it was only recently, five years into the game’s lifespan, that the developer added custom race creation tools to let me really explore that map and make epic hour-long races of my own.
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AllMotorfesthas to do is facilitate better road trips thanHorizon’s, which isn’t as tall an order as it might first seem.Horizonhasn’t tried a full-scale city since its Australian excursion inFH3, and even then it didn’t feel convincing as an urban center. IfMotorfestcan make you believe that there’s a large population living in this built-up area you’re passing at 140mph, it’s got a chance.
It also needs variety. It needs really distinct biomes, a clear mix of urban and rural roads, and a broad range of road types. Highways. Dirt tracks. City centers full of junctions and 90-degree corners. Tarmac twists up in the hills.
The vehicular sandbox element looks like less of an unknown
The vehicular sandbox element looks like less of an unknown.The Crew 2’s car list looks to have migrated pretty much in totality, along with the other vehicle types of course, and that’s only going to add to its co-op appeal. It’s not that the planes feel likeFlight Simulator 2020, you understand - it’s that their inclusion allows you to mess about in free-roam that bit more inventively and, fingers crossed, create some multi-vehicular custom events in the race creator.
Ubisoft Ivory Tower doesn’t need absolute best-in-class handling in its cars if it can make cars, bikes, boats, and planes feelprettygood. Just a notch up from the slightly strange turn-in behavior and weightless sensation they had inThe Crew 2. That’s all. The ability to switch between them like a superhero transformer will do the rest.
Crews control
Because I have no doubt it’ll be a more seamless co-op experience thanHorizon. Its predecessor already won that battle hands down. You form a crew - sorry, a ‘Crew’ - with your friends, and then one of you picks an event on the map. You’re all teleported to that event. Easy as that.
Admittedly there’s a slightly odd sequence before the race which involves driving through an underground car park or a gated off-road area and up to the grid, but it’s just there to hide a loading screen. And it’s so much better to manually drive up to your race start position than it is to watch your Drivatar doing the Carlton dance for a minute and a half inForza Horizon.
The final asset Motorfest has in the fight is the car upgrade system
The final assetMotorfesthas in the fight is the car upgrade system. This will sound wild, but its loot boxes and RNG are actually a good system. There are microtransactions here, but only for credits. Credits can buy you cars, but they can’t buy you the upgrades for those cars. Those can only be acquired by, you know, playing the game. Quite a lot of the game actually, at a high difficulty, if you want a full suite of maxed-out parts for all your vehicles across all disciplines.
This is where theCrewseries really delivers on that MMO promise. Maxing out a vehicle for each event type - car races are broken down into street, track, drag, drift, and hypercar, for example - feels like reaching max level with each character class in an RPG. You need to commit to it, and, during the grind, you learn that vehicle’s idiosyncrasies. There’s a point to it.
Horizon’s car tuning is pretty excellent too, but it’s a totally different proposition. You’re not just applying color-coded components to it, but really tweaking the individual settings to find speed and performance. Or letting someone else do all that for you. You can simply apply the top-rated tune from the community, pay for the required parts, and bang: you’ve got the ‘maxed out’ version of that vehicle. It’s much more egalitarian, and it makes for some interesting online racing, but it doesn’t deepen your investment in a particular vehicle.
In a co-op and PvP multiplayer context, it means so much more to turn up with a maxed-out vehicle inThe Crewthan it does to arrive on the grid with your Don Joewon Song tuning applied inHorizon.
Ivory Tower’s David really does have some weapons against Playground Games’ Goliath (not that one). It won’t win the Metascore war, but when it comes to co-op and PvP online racing,The Crew Motorfesthas a real chance.
Looking for more thrills? Try out our lists of thebest PS5 gamesand thebest Xbox Series X games.
Ad creative by day, wandering mystic of 90s gaming folklore by moonlight, freelance contributor Phil started writing about games during the late Byzantine Empire era. Since then he’s picked up bylines for The Guardian, Rolling Stone, IGN, USA Today, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, VG247, Edge, Gazetta Dello Sport, Computerbild, Rock Paper Shotgun, Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Xbox Magaine, CVG, Games Master, TrustedReviews, Green Man Gaming, and a few others but he doesn’t want to bore you with too many. Won a GMA once.
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