Date: 9/10/2023
“The Crew Motorfest, right from its initial trailers, seemed poised to be a rival to another popular racing game, Forza Horizon, with numerous similarities. These included taking players to racing festivals with spectacular car performances and a wide array of stunning vehicles that players could use.”
The Crew Motorfest brings you the Car Meet, where you can use your avatar to drive around, meet and interact with other players, or explore various car models. Here, you can also access the Custom Show, where you can vote for the car designs of other players to help them earn prestigious titles within the game. While your avatars may not be the main characters of the game, compared to character creation, the focus on cars is a world of difference.
Digging deeper, you can access Playlists, which compile events in The Crew Motorfest that you can participate in. This part of the game may feel familiar if you’ve played Gran Turismo 7, as it operates similarly to the coffee shop section. Each event has different requirements, such as using a specific car type or cars produced during a particular era. These tasks may occasionally pose challenges if you’re not accustomed to them, like when you have to drive classic cars that don’t allow Nitro or even GPS, making navigation and control more challenging. The game’s control mechanics are relatively user-friendly, as it follows an arcade style, making it easy to adapt to. The controls are quite responsive, allowing you to handle sharp turns with ease. Similar to the previous game, in The Crew Motorfest, you can easily switch between cars, boats, and planes, making exploration more exciting. Each mode of transportation offers a unique experience.
But thanks to getting lost numerous times, I had the opportunity to appreciate the game’s graphics. When driving at high speeds, the car models are beautifully detailed, accompanied by well-executed lighting effects. Many gamers will likely enjoy driving along the long coastlines, witnessing the beautiful rays of light at the horizon as the sun slowly sets. However, if you slow down and approach banners up close, you might notice their somewhat simplistic design. Perhaps that’s why the developers intentionally used various lighting effects to mask this limitation. These effects not only apply outdoors but also when you enter urban areas. Neon lights, combined with the adrenaline rush of driving supercars, make every scene look dazzling. Overall, I would say that the game’s graphics are quite impressive.”
One more aspect of The Crew Motorfest that I didn’t like is that the game is now fully online (well, not entirely online, but it uses Denuvo anti-cheat, and in any case, the experience is pretty much the same). This means that with my current internet speed during peak hours, I can only play the game stably after 10 PM. While this is somewhat acceptable, there’s one decision by the game that baffled me: the mixing of AI-controlled cars with player-controlled cars in the game. Well, saying “player-controlled” isn’t entirely correct because these cars are mostly just player data (ghosts), which you can pass through, but AI-controlled cars are solid and will cause collisions. This led to many comical situations where I was peacefully cruising through, only to unintentionally crash into another car.
Furthermore, The Crew Motorfest made another puzzling decision in the Playlists section. If Gran Turismo 7’s Coffee Shop succeeded because it always created opportunities for owners of new cars, sometimes even providing the right car for the upcoming event, allowing you to freely customize your style with cars used in these events, The Crew Motorfest didn’t do the same. Worse yet, even if you have cars that perfectly match the event’s requirements, the game forces you to use the cars it provides, making the Playlist experience somewhat awkward. If you’re playing on a PS5, I recommend using the Performance mode because for some reason, the game tends to experience more lag in Resolution mode, which can make the gaming experience quite unpleasant.
So, for me, The Crew Motorfest falls somewhere around the average mark. If I need an arcade racing game, I can turn to Forza Horizon, and if I want a simulation experience, I’ll choose GT7. The Crew Motorfest is reserved for moments when I need a change of pace (or when the game is deeply discounted). Despite making accurate choices in terms of features, it lacks depth and player-friendliness. Therefore, I would naturally opt for something better.
