The Crew Motorfest

The Crew Motorfest is a fun game that gives up its trademark. It presents a huge map of the United States in miniature, compressing everything into a smaller, more detailed map of Hawaii where fun and the variety of activities are its strongest point.

The Crew Motorfest is exceptional. To simply say that it improves upon its predecessor is a gross understatement, as it took a flawed foundation and turned it into the smoothest of rides. The presentation, the improved handling and the excellent playlist feature all come together to make it a top-tier racer. With this new entry, Ubisoft not only sets a new standard for their own open-worlders, but they’ve crafted an experience that can stand toe-to-toe with the finest racers on the market. Like a souped up 2021 Toyota GR Supra blasting through the finish line on a crowded street, this is truly a sight to behold.

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 a very satisfying, constantly surprising racing game with a great single player campaign and an engaging multiplayer mode. Sadly, microtransactions significantly slow down the process of unlocking new vehicles and the interface can be distracting while driving. The developers of the Forza Horizon series can still rest easy, but they need to be aware that a worthy rival has joined the race and in some respects overtook their creation.

The Crew Motorfest is a great addition to the franchise, but it's also a title that may disappoint some fans, especially those who continued playing its predecessor for so long. Although the game is full of fun activities, the focus on multiplayer may leave many unwilling to follow the continuous evolution that will come in the coming months and years.

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.

The Crew Motorfest is a strong, kitchen-sink arcade racer that executes evocative racing and car culture experiences without actually requiring the level of pressure, know-how, or commitment to fully enjoy them. The feeling of being able to quickly and easily jump in and enjoy the sights, sounds, and different flavours of vehicular action is a boon all on its own.

Overall, I’d say The Crew Motorfest is a big step up from the prior games in the series, and gives some hope for additional variety in open world racers in the future. Granted, it sticks pretty close to the same formula that Forza Horizon has, but there’s enough differences between the two to make this still feel like a worthwhile use of your time. It’s a gorgeous game in motion as well, which doesn’t hurt. As far as complaints go, mine are pretty minor, in that I don’t care for the limited fast travel system that’s only tied to the intro areas for each Playlist, and I wish the server didn’t time out as quickly as it does when you go idle. Outside of that, I’ve really dug Ubisoft’s latest attempt at an open-world racer, and I think you will too.

It’s unfortunate that pervasive online requirements and microtransactions sully what is otherwise a chilled out, holiday vibe in The Crew Motorfest, but I had a good time regardless. Hanging out on O’ahu, learning about various car cultures and driving some awesome-feeling vehicles over varied terrain and event types is just damned good fun.

The sights and sounds displayed throughout The Crew Motorfest aren’t its only selling point. Motorfest is fun. Period. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel and certainly won’t scratch the sim-racing itch you may find yourself with. But, for what it’s trying to achieve, Motorfest mostly nails it. I desperately miss the ability to race across the entirety of the United States. And with a more focused setting, I hoped the narrative might receive more attention than it did. That said, Motorfest may be what you’re looking for if Forza Horizon 5 has overstayed its welcome.

The Crew: Motorfest is by far and away the best Crew game yet. Yes, the Forza Horizon comparisons are hard to ignore, but Ubisoft has done a great job of ensuring Motorfest stands tall on its own with a gorgeous world, varied catalogue of events, and general sense of fun.

The Crew Motorfest crafts a stunning playground for its refined array of vehicles but never fully realises the potential of its new toys.

The Crew Motorfest is an enjoyable racer that shows more developers can tackle the open-world arcade racer genre. While it doesn't do anything new or surprising there is very little to fault with the varied gameplay experience and the luscious island of O'ahu Ivory Tower has built here.

The Crew Motorfest turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Driving a firebird through night mist or speeding in a F40 while listening to Blondie stays in your head. Because, ultimately, these small moments are all that matters - and there's a lot of joy here.

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 exactly what you expect if you have played the previous parts. A large, open environment to race around in is never boring. The game is rich with vehicles and various activities, good for dozens of hours of fun. It is notable, however, that the side activities exceed the number of races in volume, which is a somewhat odd balance. Also, the ghosts of other (AI) racers are confusing and the menu is chaotic, but that does not take anything away from the fact that there is a lot of fun to be had in this game.

With the wacky challenges and amazing location, I can’t deny that Motorfest is not just a fast ride, but a good ride. With your car stereo blasting, and your engine roaring, you will most likely find at least one thing to enjoy about the game. It may not end up being game of the year, but it is a game worth your time.

There is an exceptionally solid foundation here for some great racing, especially in multiplayer with friends. And if you take the game on that value alone, The Crew Motorfest is a fantastic game that has some great tracks and scenery to soak in as you race around this truncated version of Hawaii. Unfortunately, the single-player experience and general annoyances throughout the game took away from this focus and left me feeling small doses of frustration throughout.

Despite not standing out from other open-world driving games, The Crew Motorfest is certainly a fun, fast, and flashy arcade racer that has a wealth of content to keep gearheads busy for a long time to come!

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

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.

Beautiful, rich in content, varied in what it offers, The Crew Motorfest is a very good 100% arcade open world racing game. Riding on the heels of Forza Horizon, it is currently one of the most successful clones of the genre leader, even if this means that the French studio preferred to take the lead from its British competitor rather than plow its own furrow. The Ivory Tower software is more effective than surprising, but its qualities are numerous enough that we do not look at its predecessors, in retro, with regrets.

Comparisons to the Forza Horizon series are excruciatingly apparent in The Crew Motorfest, with it almost sharing more DNA with its competitor than its own predecessors. That said, the learnings are almost all for the better, with Ubisoft presenting an arcade racer that’s very close to being just as fun and comprehensive. If you’re an Xbox player, Forza Horizon remains top dog. However, The Crew Motorsport is undoubtedly one of the more pleasant surprises of 2023, cementing itself as the best arcade racer option for those on PlayStation.

An open world racing game that doesn't leave players wandering around lost, The Crew Motorfest has landed on a slightly derivative but much more propulsive structure with it's new playlists. With a ton of interesting events, a fun setting, and a wide swath of vehicles to earn, there is a wealth of content here, and most of it feels curated and fun.

The Crew Motorfest‘s beating heart is its diverse playlists, exemplifying the vast beauty of Hawaii and its many racing opportunities. Extolling the virtues of car culture and history, players will interact with unique scenarios meant to hone their skills and extract blistering speed out of a massive roster of vehicles. With one of Ubisoft’s best worlds to date and a constant stream of rewards, The Crew is in top gear.

The Crew Motorfest is an absolute blast, offering endless hours of excitement thanks to its stunning O'ahu-inspired map and an impressive array of events, vehicles, and settings. Sure, there are a few hiccups like the occasional empty open world and wonky difficulty spikes, but if you're a car enthusiast, this game is a celebration you won't want to miss.

When we assess The Crew Motorfest in comparison to its predecessors, the evolution is quite evident and worth it, especially if you enjoyed the previous titles and are a fan of arcade-style racing games.

The Crew Motorfest exudes passion for motors and everything that surrounds them. Not just mechanisms, sticky oil and metal, but also emotions, history, engineering and pilots. The title does not abandon the arcade nature of its predecessors, on the contrary, it strengthens it with a driving system that is easy to approach but more refined and interesting to master, convincing even if not realistic physics and a very respectable graphics sector. Furthermore, on PS5, Dualsense is a very high added value. It's a shame that to have fun even as a solo player you need to always be connected to the Internet, especially because so close to the launch it's difficult to get an idea about the long-term validity of the online game, which for now is promising but less interesting than the solo component. It's also disappointing for the lower recreational impact of vehicles other than four-wheelers and for the rather derivative soul. Certainly, Ubisoft seems to have revived the fortunes of an IP that risked being forgotten and which has now, instead, stepped on the accelerator.

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.

With The Crew Motorfest, the Ubisoft franchise finds new vitality, primarily thanks to a proudly arcade-styled driving system that also embraces online challenges.

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.

After plundering into its depths though, Motorfest loses traction due to its dogged determination to provide excess over a properly immersive racing game experience that makes the most of the Oahu Hawaii setting.

All things considered, The Crew Motorfest makes variety its strong point and its postcard views a perfect setting for experiencing everything it has to offer. An open world a little bare of significant secondary activities, which however excels in atmosphere and functions as a link between the playlists, the true strong point of the production. Of course, not all driving systems have succeeded in the same way, but the possibility of changing elements and gameplay so quickly allows you to always keep curiosity and the desire to race high, simply because apart from GTA, a completely different genre and mood, there are no other series that offer such a great variety of engines. Quantity, thus, also plugs certain qualitative holes. What remains is the feeling of holiday, persistent and precious. Maika‘i ka huaka‘i!

The Crew Motorfest is easily the best entry in the series to date and serves as a new launching point for the franchise. It has needed an identity of its own for a long time and while it may seem odd, going back to what made the first couple of Forza Horizon games work well while keeping some of The Crew 2’s vehicle variety intact winds up being a winning combination. Every race type is executed well, with the street racing and open-wheel being true standouts, while the visual design shines and accents the audio with a slick soundtrack and impressive sound design.

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.

Even with questionable aspects such as the premium currency, The Crew Motorfest has tons of style and quality flashes, with a solid proposal that can connect with the most eclectic speed lovers (one race you are in the mud, the next on F1). Too bad that aspects such as the improvable multiplayer, or the "always online", affect the final result.

With its abundance of playable content and a very attractive setting such as the island of Oʻahu, The Crew Motorfest attempts to chase the success of Forza Horizon 5 by proposing the same structure proposed by the racing game developed by Playground Games. The result is all in all positive, although Ivory Tower's gaming experience fails to stand out for originality or being qualitatively flawless.

The Crew Motorfest is the best in the series to date. While some may miss the enormous US map of old, O'ahu makes for a much more inviting setting with its tropical vibes and varied environments. The handling has never been better either, somehow feeling good no matter what you're driving. A wealth of things to see and do is made manageable thanks to the addictive Playlists, although some presentation decisions can make the game feel a little scattershot sometimes. Even with a couple of potholes, though, Motorfest is an entertaining drive and, knowing Ubisoft's track record with live service, will only get better over time.

The Crew: Motorfest offers a good racing game experience on a platform like the PlayStation 5, where Forza is completely absent? Absolutely yes! But is it a better game compared to the competition? Absolutely not! I can only say that it's a nice Forza replica.

The Crew Motorfest cleverly takes inspiration from Forza Horizon and yet somehow manages to maintain a unique identity. The result is not only a worthy competitor to the Playground Games series, but also a great racing sandbox that anyone can enjoy, regardless of their platform of choice.

The Crew Motorfest is undoubtedly the best entry in Ubisoft’s open-world racing game series yet. Not only that, but it goes toe-to-toe with Forza Horizon 5, perhaps even beating it in numerous ways. The island of O’ahu is stunning; a varied place that feels natural and teeming with things to do. But more importantly, the gameplay, the simple act of driving, is rewarding and fun. Whether you’re exploring the world or taking part in a heated race, The Crew Motorfest puts a smile on your face, even if only because of the beautiful surroundings. And while they’re somewhat put on the back burner here, it’s nice that you can still jump into a plane or boat to explore without limits.

The Crew Motorfest is still not a real competitor for Forza Horizon, but in itself it is an entertaining open world racing game that plays well. Hopefully in a possible next part it can finally skip those ancient consoles and then go all out with switching between vehicles during events, then The Crew will have an attractive face of its own.

Ubisoft have copied Playground Games’ homework and have made just enough changes, with a few spelling mistakes on the way, to make this a fun, rewarding experience.

I really wasn’t expecting Motorfest to be that big of a step forward for The Crew, but I’m pleased that I was wrong. All the major aspects of gameplay have been massively improved from its predecessor with the racing engine, events system, and reward loop each being better than before. While The Crew 2 only attracted a niche fanbase because of its unique gimmicks, Motorfest has a much broader appeal.

Metacritic: The Crew Motorsport is fast, feels good and delivers a various bunch of playlists in a beautiful open world. It still features some of the mechanics that made the series special, but gets much closer to the Forza Horizon formula without overall reaching Microsoft's open world racer.

The Crew Motorfest is a fun open-world racing game and the best part of the series.

A pub band cover version of Forza Horizon 5, that despite a few unique ideas doesn’t come close to the fun and variety of its inspiration.

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.