The Crew Motorfest

The Crew Motorfest is a 2023 racing video game developed by Ubisoft Ivory Tower and published by Ubisoft for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is the sequel to 2018's The Crew 2 and the third game in The Crew series, and was released on September 14, 2023. The game is set in an open world environment; a scaled-down version of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It received generally positive reviews from critics and is considered an improvement over its predecessors.
Gameplay
The Crew Motorfest is set in a scaled-down version of the island of Oahu in Hawaii. It is themed around a festival that will serve as the main area for accessing the various events in the game, which is similar to that of the Forza Horizon series of games. Its gameplay is similar to that of the previous games in the series, featuring online multiplayer features referred to in game as a "crew", as well as being able to control vehicles other than cars such as planes and boats.
The main part of the game is "The Playlists", as of September 2023, there are 15 playlists, each with a different theme such as Vintage cars, Lamborghini and collaborations with influencers such as Supercar Blondie, and Donut Media.
Another popular mode is the Grand Race, a long race which is approximately 10 minutes long with 28 players online which is split up into 3 sections for 3 tiers of racing, the sections and tiers for each race is chosen by random and swaps every 30 minutes, while the race route is random for every race.
The Main Stage contains a monthly theme, with unique limited time rewards, with each week of each month, which involves filling up the Revisit, Racing, or Explore timeline, after filing up one of the main stage timelines, the player unlocks the "Legend" timeline, filled with limited time rewards.
Every week a sub theme of the main stage theme will be used for the "Summit Contest", a weekly themed contest where players compete in 9 challenges to earn points, the top 10.000 players with the most points can receieve an exclusive prize including limited time summit exclusive vehicles or titles to display on the name of the player in-game, and the person in 1st position for each week can have their player name carved into a star for all players to see in Festival Tent, where every player loads into when loading into the game every time.
The "Custom Show" is a weekly contest where players can customize their vehicle to the weekly "Summit Contest" theme and let players vote for which vehicle they like, at the end of the week the players with the most votes gets rewards.
Development and release
Motorfest is being developed by Ubisoft Ivory Tower. It started life as a DLC expansion for The Crew 2, although that changed when several ideas for changes in progression structure weren't compatible with the current game engine.
It was internally known as Project Orlando during development until October 2022 when the title and setting of the game were leaked. Before the Motorfest name was decided, it was tentatively entitled The Crew Motorcamp.
It was announced with a teaser trailer released on January 31, 2023. A closed testing period for Motorfest on PC began on February 1, 2023, with testing for consoles coming at a later date. The game was released on September 14, 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Journalists noted the similarities between Motorfest and the first two Test Drive Unlimited games (2006 and 2011), which several developers from Ivory Tower worked on previously and also share Oʻahu as a main setting.
Reception
According to review aggregator Metacritic, The Crew Motorfest received generally favorable reviews from critics.
It debuted at the second best-selling game of the week in retail the United Kingdom. It also became the fastest-selling entry in the series.
Notes
References
External links
2023 video games
Open-world video games
Persistent worlds
PlayStation 4 games
PlayStation 4 Pro enhanced games
PlayStation 5 games
Racing video games
Ubisoft games
Video games developed in France
Video games set in Hawaii
Video game sequels
Windows games
Xbox One games
Xbox One X enhanced games
Xbox Series X and Series S games
Multiplayer and single-player video games