The Crew Motorfest – PC Review

Aloha Motorfest!

When you think about Hawaii, the first thing that comes to mind is not necessarily
Racing but instead food, surfing, music and perhaps Elvis Presley. Ubisoft surely
took an unexpected route here with picking the location, but I could not have been
more happy how it turned out.. instead of choosing a larger locale that we have
seen before, Hawaii in a smaller scale turned out to be the cozy gorgeous spot
we all needed for our Motorsports..

Unlike other games in the Motor Racing genere if you are not familiar with The Crew
franchise from before, differs in the sense that it incorporates besides Car racing,
Motorbikes, Airplanes and Motorboats for your speed needs.

Whilst The Crew and Crew 2 were a ton of Fun back in the day, Ubisoft (perhaps)
has not been known in their games for a great feel when driving.
Motorfest fixes that and has restored my faith that they do know how to do handling
properly for all the different motored vehicles you can pick from.

Jumping in to the game, follows the basic introduction & pattern.. pick your first
car and go racing in a league/playlist of your choice and work your way up to
afford the next vehicle, winning races in Motorfest or completing races also gives
you upgrade parts for the car to play around with, Ubisoft has made upgrading easy
here, showing clearly what the part performance is and how it affects the car when
applying said upgrade, making it quick and fun. But you can of course, if you are
a wizard with tuning/setups.. go into the fine details of how all the parts function
and tweek it all to your liking. The options are all there, only dependant on how
much credits you have earned and parts unlocked so far.

Speaking on credits, you have two ways of purchasing items in game, either race
earned credits or Ubisofts own currency. Personally I prefer the first option, even
if it is the grindier way, but hey.. we came for racing, and race we shall.

One big hooray for Motorsport that I have to point out compared to the Forza Horizon
series is that whilst Horizon is fun, after time the constant wheelspins (rewards)
started to slightly annoy me, and there is none of that in your face here..
making it for a more enjoyable experience overall..

Race lengths in Motorfest are just right, not too short.. not too long.. keeping
it quick’ish, stunning, and fun, jumping between locations for the next race can be
achieved depending on your progress with instant travel or how I prefer to do it,
switching to your Airplane to take in the views / weather of Oahu while heading to
the next challenge.. or exploring for photo opportunities / hidden treasures.

So how much racing & other activities is there to do in Motorfest you ask?

You are looking at around an estimate of 24 hours with racing to complete the main game.
Currently there are over 600 vehicles in the game to collect, and this number will
grow over time.. more activities/playlists etc with the year passes to come, so for
an completionist you can definitely add about the same hours on top.

How does it run?

I’ve held off on the review(s) until now, as I had to wait for new computer parts due
to an complete upgrade of my gaming rig, going from an i5-9600k with 16gb of ram on
a 3070 (running at a mix of medium/high/ultra settings) at 1440p for 52-60fps.

To now running an i5-12600k, 32gb of ram with a 3070 still at 1440p, custom settings
of more high than medium, this garnering a more constant 60fps in game without dips.

One interesting thing here is that there is no fullscreen mode, and Frames are locked
to either 30 or 60fps in game. Whilst 60fps is fully enjoyable, I would still like to
see in a future update unlocked frames and fullscreen enabled.

As usual, in the beginning of this review you have a ton of screenshots in game
to display the gorgeousness that is Motorfest.

Final words 

Motorfest is 100% worth playing if you are into racing games, it’s smaller scale,
variety of vehicles that can be used, gorgeous scenery from the mountains to the
city graffiti art, weather, aerial views.. good handling, music makes it a perfect
package to escape to for a virtual race-cation in Hawaii.

Technically a solid package, that hopefully improves further in the future with
unlocked frame rates and more.