Swooping right into a thriving pageant sprawled out over a tropical, summer season paradise. Checking in with a hip, younger public relations rep for the next step, which is straight into a automobile and onto the accelerator as firmly as potential. What racing collection am I speaking about? Properly, up till now there was in all probability just one reply. Now there are two. After experimenting with an unlawful, underground road racing premise within the 2014 unique and pivoting to a sanctioned, TV present racing format for The Crew 2 in 2018, The Crew Motorfest developer Ivory Tower has flipped the script but once more.
This time the studio has opted for the flamboyance of a flashy pageant of pace for the inspiration of this third instalment of the franchise. It’s mentioned that imitation is the sincerest type of flattery, but when there was any extra Forza Horizon DNA within the opening part of The Crew Motorfest, Playground Video games would possibly take into account asking for a paternity take a look at.
If there was any extra Forza Horizon DNA within the opening part of The Crew Motorfest, Playground Video games would possibly take into account asking for a paternity take a look at.
Admittedly, The Crew Motorfest doesn’t keep on with being a straight facsimile of Forza Horizon solely, and after an roughly three-hour hands-on it appears Ivory Tower is working to curate the racing expertise much more through its themed Playlists.
The Playlists, every of which might be described as a mini-campaign of themed racing and driving challenges, do seem like loosely just like Forza Horizon’s ‘Horizon Tales’ (that’s, they place gamers in particular automobiles to finish sure goals, and usually educate us trivia concerning the historical past of those automobiles within the course of). Nevertheless, Playlists appear much more core to the general Motorfest bundle, slightly than facet missions.
There shall be 15 of those Playlists out there in Motorfest upon launch. A number of of those Playlists have been out there in our preliminary preview final month. These embrace Made in Japan, which highlights fan-favourite Japanese sports activities automobiles and boasts a late-night neon aesthetic befitting its underground road racing origins. There’s additionally Off-Roading Addict, which naturally takes place in probably the most rugged sections of the map, and Motorsports, which introduces tyre put on and pit stops to the equation. Classic Storage focuses on automobiles from the ’50s by way of to the ’80s, and Automobili Lamborghini takes you thru the historical past of the long-lasting producer.
Nevertheless, a handful of others have been out there on this heftier slice of Motorfest, together with Hawaii Scenic Tour, which seems like a good, introductory bundle to get a greater style of the map following the scripted prologue because it explores O’ahu itself slightly than the automobiles concerned. There’s additionally one other with a slender lens on only one producer: A Porsche Story: 911 Legacy. As you’ll be able to possible inform, 911 Legacy focuses purely on the historical past of the 911 and highlights a handful of probably the most memorable variations of the mannequin, from offshoots just like the 911 GT1 to the 959 rally automobile, and the GT3 RS to the fully cupholder-less Turbo 3.6.
Progress by way of the Playlists will unlock what Motorfest calls the Principal Stage, which is one other tier of occasions that shall be modified month-to-month. Because of this, Motorfest appears poised to obtain a prolonged marketing campaign of post-release assist – similar to The Crew 2 loved. I’m notably within the Hoonigan month teased in a latest video. Talking with Ivory Tower Content material Director Julien Hummer after the hands-on, he wouldn’t be drawn into an excessive amount of element about what that individual month will contain, however he did notice we must always count on one thing completely different to what Hoonigan has carried out with its many earlier online game companions. Hummer additionally mentioned that increasing the breadth of the place The Crew’s automobiles come from across the globe is one other space they’re searching for to develop, so hopefully we’ll see some automobiles from nations that don’t often get loads of love from most racing video games.
Whereas the Quick Fav system launched in The Crew 2 was not lively for our demo final month, it was out there on this construct. This meant we have been capable of change between air, sea, and land automobiles with the push of a button. Ivory Tower confirmed that boats and plane have been making a reappearance in Motorfest through the announcement, however it was good to get again within the air after tweaking the default flying settings. There’s an plane dealing with help that routinely locked a few of the flight axes, however the flying feels much better with it toggled off. As an unapologetic WWII plane dork I definitely loved zooming round Honolulu in Motorfest’s new Vought F4U Corsair, which seems like the proper Pacific warbird so as to add to the hangar right here.
If I had any considerations, although, it’d be that the flying does expose the numerous dimension distinction between The Crew 2’s continental USA map and Motorfest’s extra intimate O’ahu. In fact, the good thing about a smaller map is that it does appear to be larger on element and decrease on nonsensical storefronts that appeared to have been generated by some sort of faulty AI.
That mentioned, there have been just a few areas that positively appeared a bit of extra petite than I’d anticipated. Pearl Harbor’s Ford Island, for perspective, appears to simply be 4 quick streets with a battleship moored subsequent to it. Nevertheless, Ivory Tower has admittedly all the time been clear that Motorfest’s map will not be a 1:1 recreation of the O’ahu. I charted an improvised course anticlockwise across the full coast in an exceedingly fast Lamborghini Revuelto in a bit of over quarter-hour – which is lots faster than it took in my final high-speed vacation to Hawaii in Take a look at Drive Limitless – however I’ll want to attend till I get loads of time to completely discover all the atmosphere earlier than I can correctly appraise Motorfest’s new map philosophy.
With Take a look at Drive Limitless Photo voltaic Crown now confirmed to have slipped to 2024, The Crew Motorfest ought to roughly have the streets to itself this September. We’ll learn how it fares in simply a few months.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN opinions crew. You’ll be able to chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.