I will readily admit that I was skeptical of Motorfest at first. As the itch for a good racing game crept up on me when my apathy for Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Motorsport achieved its peak, and having just tried Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown (which, to my substantial disappointment, was terrible in so many more ways than I could imagine), I took a gamble on The Crew Motorfest, buying it on sale for a very reasonable $14. Having been moderately disappointed by the hollowness of 2018's The Crew 2—Motorfest's predecessor—I will note that I came in with low expectations of the third entry in Ubisoft's series of arcade racers. "So," I said, loading into the game after importing my car list from The Crew 2. "How bad can this be?" Five hours later, I realized the sun had set. The Crew Motorfest—more than any modern racer I've played—absolutely oozes with passion and detail; from your character who luxuriantly rests their arm on the rolled-down window of their car at low speeds, to the paddles and stickshifts that actually move and react along with your character's hand, to your brights turning on along lonely country roads and back off again when cruising around in an urban center. While these small details may seem minor, it is the gross sum of all of these bits of personality that make the game feel truly real to me—it just needs a TDU-style car function panel and interactive dealerships, and it's basically my dream game. Still, I've not even mentioned the most important thing—how the cars actually sound. And holy COW, do they "sound." After playing hundreds of hours of Forza Horizon 5 and Motorsport combined, I didn't realize how starved I was of quality. While cars in Horizon 5 and Motorsport sound like pale imitations of their real world selves—sometimes not even resembling them at all due to the copy-paste nature of Turn10 and Playground's approach to audio design—I was shocked when cars in The Crew Motorfest actually sounded like their real life equivalents. Mind you, this is not just me stating "Well, it's an improvement from Forza..." Genuinely, the cars in this game are in a league of their own. They sound so incredibly good that I spent hours just comparing the in-game versions to recordings of the real deal. If Forza's vehicles are anywhere between 40%-60% spot on, Motorfest's vehicles are 85%-95% spot on. They're utterly incredible! Would you like to know what this translates to? An actually enjoyable driving experience. I'll cut this review short as to not crowd you with too much information, but I would like to inform you that, despite this game being published and developed by Ubisoft, it feels like it is made by a genuinely passionate team of people. The corporate feeling of many modern AAA titles is not evident in Motorfest, and it is a genuinely fun and enjoyable game. I wholeheartedly invite you to try this and feel the passion seeping out of every aspect of this game as you play. You don't even have to buy the year 1 or year 2 passes to get the cars from each of them—in a twist of fate for a Ubisoft title, the game is actually very fair in its expectations of the player. While hypercars will take a fair amount of game time to acquire, there are plenty of other vehicles to enjoy on the climb up to that grand moment of picking out your very own Bugatti or Koenigsegg... and the vehicles you do use on your way will each charm you thoroughly with their very own unique personalities, which you can actually distinguish compared to games like Forza where 40 audio samples are stretched over 800 cars. Before I conclude this review, I'll cover some areas of improvement, as well as a few weak spots that I've noticed in my playtime so far when stacked up against this game's competitors. Firstly, the physics model—while better than I expected, and certainly better than The Crew 2's—is heavy, clunky and awkward. Cars do have a satisfying weight to them that you certainly notice in your playtime, but this weight does not translate very well to high-speed cornering feel. While Forza is snappy and responsive, deftly reacting to your controller's inputs, Motorfest's physics model feels more akin to a black hole than a precision instrument. Cars cannot decide whether they have a tendency to oversteer or understeer, and the corrections you make to counter the unruliness of the vehicles often feel as if they are being swallowed whole by the void somewhere between your controller and the screen. Drifts can't decide whether they are taking place in Need For Speed or Gran Turismo, and can feel equally as punishing as they can sometimes feel rewarding. I think you should consult your horoscope for if today is going to be a good day to take a high-speed turn in Motorfest before you proceed to do so, because I honestly can't tell what the game is thinking with my inputs sometimes. On a similar note, the difficulty. There are five difficulty levels, with the first containing braindead AI and the fifth containing boost junkies carrying 500 lbs. of nitrous in the trunk of their car. I enjoy high difficulty in racing games, and I have hovered around at difficulty 5 and difficulty 4 in Motorfest—which is where this next points comes in. The AI difficulty is inconsistent. Sometimes, difficulty 5 AI can lag behind significantly and pose only a minor challenge, while at other times, difficulty 5 AI decide to unleash an additional 12 cylinders hiding somewhere adjacent to their 4-cylinder engine on straightaways as they tap the nitrous button. It is genuinely absurd how powerful their nitrous is compared to the player's, and I'm not sure how many others have noticed this. This is not a major issue as you can simply lower the difficulty, but it is a minor gripe of mine that constantly causes me to oscillate between difficulty 4 and 5 depending on how many lines of coke the AI have decided to snort that morning. Finally, my last "issue" with the game so far is the lack of any meaningful world interactivity. Sure, the cars sound great and are a joy to experience, and the documentary-style "playlists" that constitute the game's campaign are actually surprisingly enjoyable, but there's no... hmm. Life? Pedestrians are missing from Motorfest where they once ambled around in The Crew 2's world, and while I'd take Motorfest's beautifully dense Hawaiian environment over 2's diluted America any day, there is a certain "thinness" to the feeling of the world itself that I wish would be fleshed out. Pedestrians, dealerships, player-ownable properties/houses, more manual car functions, and even some generic, non-story races would do the feel of the game world a lot of good. For now, however, it is simply just eye candy—and unlike Forza, ear candy as well. These components of The Crew Motorfest, among others, still make it the best modern arcade racer on the market right now—and one that you should certainly experience for yourself, especially when it goes on sale for the very reasonable prices it has been trending towards lately. I highly recommend it! (Oh, P.S., Motorfest is sadly another "always online" live service format game, and very frustratingly lacks an offline mode. Ubisoft have claimed to have learned from the backlash they received from pulling the plug on The Crew 1 entirely, so if they are to be taken seriously, expect this game and its predecessor to have an offline mode by the time they reach their end of life. Not ideal, but something for your consideration as you decide on your purchase.)
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