The Crew Motorfest

The Crew Motorfest is an interesting racing video game that is committed to the open world, variety and spectacularity, but unfortunately it forgets to offer more polished driving and does not quite find its own style. If you are looking for entertainment and an arcade experience you should give it a try, but if you ask for more you will end up disappointed.

The Crew Motorfest is the best racing game Ubisoft has ever made, but it's still behind much stronger competition. If you've driven all Forza Horizon games or just want something similar but on PlayStation - then you've come to the right place.

The Crew Motorfest provides plenty of fun arcade racing, though it does very little to break new ground for the genre. There's plenty to get your teeth into, but there are some annoying design decisions and a few technical issues that take the shine off it. Still, I can see it finding plenty of fans, particularly on PS5 where the only competition from a 'Horizon' game involves robotic dinosaurs.

Even though the competition is on another level the newest entry of The Crew franchise is a perfectly adequate choice in the open-world racing genre. Especially for PS5 owners it benefits from being the only game of this particular genre. Hopefully, a potential sequel will also prove to be a worthy competitor to Forza Horizon.

It's not a frustrating game, nor is it a bad proposal, but it does fall halfway down the road by failing to stand out. The open world that invites us to go through the playlists, before unlocking fast travel, is aesthetically appealing, but it feels like a ghost town where nothing happens and our gameplay loop lacks basic fun. The playlists are a great aspect, but not all of them are interesting to explore, leaving aside the strong offering of vehicles with anecdotal experiences that aren't all that worthwhile. On the plus side, it continues to appeal to arcade adrenaline. While it wants to copy something that was previously successful, it doesn't end up being a meaningless copy.

The Crew Motorfest is flashy, beautiful and varied in its many unique racing disciplines, but the condensed map and lack of player interaction leaves a lot to be desired.

The Crew Motorfest marks a change for the series, delivering a smaller but highly appealing open world and improving its driving model in favor of a decidedly more solid and interesting simcade approach. The obvious references to Forza Horizon have a bittersweet taste, as Ivory Tower's racer can't offer the same experience, losing sight of some of the series' defining traits and introducing a controversial progression system.

The Crew Motorfest is an acceptable reproduction of the Forza Horizon concept. If you focus on the thematic playlists and roam the colorful open world listening to the radio, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of the game. There’s enough content here to last you well over 20 hours between events and exploration. However, apart from the ability to change vehicle types on the fly, the game is unfortunately short on original ideas. The limited multiplayer, lack of compelling side activities, and restricted crossplay also hold The Crew Motorfest back from passing the finish line ahead of the curve.

The Crew Motorfest continues the franchise’s legacy of delivering a fun and exhilarating racing experience set in a visually stunning open world. It’s packed full of cars, customization, and content, which is sure to cater to both casual gamers and harcore racing enthusiasts alike. However, it does suffer from some poor design choices and repetitive grindy gameplay that keeps it from achieving the heights of its inspirations.

The Crew Motorfest is a competent and genuinely fun racer that while introducing some interesting activities and online features, does struggle to live up to the heights and levels of immersive realism that separates the good of this sector of games from the truly great ones.

Motorfest is an odd beast - in some ways one-upping Forza Horizon 5, but in others cribbing from its notes a little too shamelessly. It's a great time, though, and its Playlists feel like a smart way to package up this sort of all-action driving game.

An open-world Hawaii and a generously spirited racer, chafed by always-online irritations and a lack of originality.

The Crew Motorfest has plenty of moments of joy and wonder as you traverse its open world rendition of Hawaii. The massive variety of events and stunning presentation, however, are held back by a general lack of polish, an unsatisfying handling model and some truly outrageous AI behavior.