Racing games follow one another and tend to be similar; Following the original idea of the first The Crew, in which we drove at full speed from one end of the United States to the other, Ubisoft is back with Motorfest, a celebration of gasoline consumption and skidding noise confined to the territory of the small island nation of Hawaii .
Therefore, instead of focusing on an endurance race, we are offered almost every type of car racing you can count: drifting, drag racing, off-road, Formula 1… Enough driving styles and tracks to master to satisfy even the hungriest fans to represent the genre.
Between different sections of the game, each of which has its own driving style and category of vehicles, the player is invited to travel a large part of the Hawaiian territory, this time in his own car, to discover an open world containing many different species of games offers activities that, of course, revolve around the car, as extreme and powerful as it may be.
On paper, this idea of offering everything at the same time, rather than making a game reserved only for, for example, fans of Japanese-style car racing or fans of muscle cars, is good: we can go from one event to another, just to to get the hang of it and eventually collect enough experience points and money to move on to the “real” game, i.e. the game where you compete against other players.
Except that the Motorfest sins where it wanted to attract attention: by wanting to hug too much, hugging very badly, as the established expression demands. We search in vain for the spirit of the game, what drives it, beyond “Here are cars and racing styles, have fun”.
And that feeling of going around in circles while desperately trying to find a common thread isn’t made any better by this excessive monetization that’s being thrown in our faces even before the game’s release ( including continuing the challenges of smooth operations). course of the universe).
Once we get into the game we don’t really know where we are and a mosaic spawns several events and additional content, content that is obviously paid for. And as soon as we manage to exit this screen and notice very faintly in the bottom right that we have to hold down the B button on our controller to exit this menu, we end up in the game’s “Social Club” where you can buy cars can (virtually, of course) or even admire personalized vehicles.
You still have to leave this area to eventually get to the main area of the game, where you can drive and take part in events.
We will also largely ignore this possibility of recovering (or of course purchasing) various parts to modify your vehicle, since the preliminary rounds – and there are many of them – are held with “borrowed” cars that are much better than the selection on offer Beginning the game, we honestly wonder why it is necessary to gain experience and podiums to improve a vehicle that has been widely used for a long time just to get from point A to point B.
With a solid core structure, Motorfest could be a great game. Unfortunately, the title is lost in uninteresting mechanics and aggressive microtransactions. Ubisoft has created a game that consumes its own energy.
The Crew Motorfest
Developer: Ivory Tower
Editor: Ubisoft
Platforms: PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series, Windows (tested on Windows/Uplay)
The game is not available in French