A new Horizon?
Join a one-of-a-kind festival and enjoy the best experiences car culture has to offer in a beautiful Hawaiian open world. The Crew Motorfest builds on the legacy of The Crew franchise to make it the best open world action-driving experience in the series. Get ready to race through the city streets of Honolulu, go down the ashy volcano slopes, adventure deep in the lush rainforest, drift along the curvy mountain roads, or just chill down on the sunny beach.
I hadn’t actually played a game from The Crew series up till now, so I went in with an open mind and with little knowledge of what to expect other what I’ve seen in clips online. What we end up with is a game that takes a lot of pointers from the Forza Horizon series and that’s not a bad thing in any way.
The cars handle well, the events give you challenges that you would expect and there are plenty of opportunities to buy new cars using money you’ve earned in-game or via microtransactions. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the latter in games like this, but they aren’t the first to do it so I can’t blame them for including it. I would say that the limited fast travel options hinder the experience somewhat, but that’s about the only real complaint that I can come up with.
The game runs at a solid framerate and looks incredible throughout with no slowdowns and load times are short. Hawaii is a great location for them to pick and it does shine here with high-detailed environments and top-quality vehicles including cars, planes and boats to boot.
The Verdict
It may lack originality and borrows a bit heavily from the Forza Horizon template, but The Crew Motorfest doesn’t falter in delivering an experience like it to the PS5 owners and some would argue that it does excel it in certain areas. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with The Crew franchise next, but signs are good.