Vincent DeLuca

The Crew Motorfest is just a worse Forza Horizon 5, and it really is not worth your time, or your money. I was very disappointed with this game. The Crew 1 was unique and they absolutely should’ve stuck with the direction and themes it had. Instead, Ubisoft decided to just shamelessly ripoff Forza Horizon, almost down to the UI. The car handling is inconsistent, with gravity planting the cars so rigidly to the ground that it makes catching air on a jump, or even just driving over a speed bump so disorienting. Every vehicle in the game either has too much understeer or too much oversteer, making navigating winding roads a chore. Drifting feels slightly improved from the last game, but that’s literally the ONLY improvement they made to the handling from The Crew 2. It’s a step down in nearly every other aspect. This mentality also applies to much more of this game than you would hope. The Crew 2 had the entirety of the United States to explore. Motorfest restricts you to just Hawaii, an incredibly tiny and uninspired location that has been done much better in games like Test Drive Unlimited. The overall campaign, story, and ideas this game presents are exactly what you’d find in a Forza Horizon game. I know I keep mentioning it, but it’s blatantly obvious that Ubisoft couldn’t be bothered to try something original. I’m not going to act like the Horizon games are a godsend for the racing genre. They have many of their own problems, however they are far more polished and far more worthwhile games than this bland and uninteresting mess. The structure of the progression is very strange and needlessly complicated. The game gives you “playlists” in which you’ll be given a car to complete races with. However, you’re loaned these vehicles for the events, so when you go back to the open world, you won’t have them anymore. This also means that any vehicles you buy for yourself cannot be used in events, which makes zero sense. The vehicle list itself is pretty decent, as there is quite a lot on offer here, including a lot of interesting vehicles you’d rarely find in other racing games. However, with the incredibly dumb way the campaign is structured, there is really no reason to ever buy cars. The only opportunity you’ll really have to drive these cars is in the open world, which as I previously mentioned, is incredibly bland and uninteresting, and will leave you bored to tears after 15 minutes. Car prices are also ridiculously inflated, with even some of the lower tier vehicles costing upwards of 200k. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Ubisoft game without premium currencies, and microtransactions, the cancer to the video game industry. In short, The Crew Motorfest is an uninspired, uninteresting, and incredibly disappointing racing game that completely shamelessly rips off the Forza Horizon formula without even trying to hide it. However, said formula is executed worse here than just about every other open world racer of this ilk. There is really no reason to waste your time, or your hard earned money on this game. Nearly everything you can find in this game is done far better in Forza Horizon, or Need For Speed Unbound. What disappoints me the most is that The Crew 1 was unique, and had ideas that were fresh. And yet, when that game failed, they decided to go the cheap route and ripoff of the successful formula instead of trying to improve on the one they had built. This game is not The Crew. It’s a bastardized Horizon clone that showcases all of the problems with the modern video game landscape.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 was way ahead of its time. It is a fantastic game that I still periodically go back to 9 years later. They did Forza Horizon before Forza did, and in my opinion, they did it better. It may not have the best graphics or handling model, but it is still one of my favorite racing games of all time. This game allows you to explore a diverse open world, racing, buying cars and houses, customizing your character, etc. They had features in this game that most modern racing games still can't do properly, such as having indicators and the ability to roll up and roll down the windows in cars. You weren't forced to race in this game, you could do whatever you want. The map of Ibiza was replicated via satellite mapping, and was almost identical to the real thing, and once you reached a certain level, you could go to the airport and fly to Hawaii, the map from the first TDU game. It was perfect. It really was unlimited. Unlimited freedom to do whatever you wanted to. Definitely a must play for any racing game fan. It really was a racing game ahead of it's time.

A fantastic game. There isn’t more to say. This is the pinnacle of the arcade racer. This game has the perfect combination of gameplay, cars, and soundtrack. This is a must play for anyone who enjoys racing games. In fact, no matter what type of game you’re into, Burnout 3 Takedown is an absolute must play. It’s the closest thing to a perfect game that I can think of, and it is a masterpiece, that you must have in your collection.