The Crew Motorfest Preview – A horizon full of Hawaiian racing
Video games are building up quite a tradition of letting us race exotic cars in equally exotic locations, giving players the fantasy racing scenarios that go far beyond the daily commute through Romford in a Ford Mondeo. With that pretty cars in pretty places ethos in mind, The Crew Motorfest leaves the US mainland and North America behind, taking players to the Hawaiian island of O’ahu for a celebration of all kinds of car culture.
With the full game out in September, we got to go hands on with The Crew Motorfest ahead of this weekend’s closed beta, set to run from 21st-23rd July – sign up here if you’re keen to dive in.
In some ways, it feels like The Crew is still trying to settle on its identity as a game series. After the self-serious story of gangs and revenge in the original, The Crew 2 shifted to feature a very broad multi-class racing series, but now The Crew Motorfest is putting on Forza Horizon’s mask, featuring a big festival of racing in a part of the world that will be exotic and new to most players.
As a framing device, it’s one that just works, giving an easy (if utterly implausible) excuse to go hooning around in all manner of road cars. The Crew Motorfest doesn’t disappoint in that department, with the ability to import a car collection from The Crew 2, in addition to the new additions that Ubisoft Ivory Tower are making to the line up.
The main method to get you to engage with different cars comes through Playlists. These pick a theme and run with it, dropping you into a variety of loaned vehicles and racing along to explore particular corners of car culture. One of the first playlists you can select is the Made in Japan series, which hands you the keys to a clutch of Japanese greats and transforms the
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