The Crew Motorfest review

The Crew Motorfest review : When it comes to car racing games, when I look at it from my perspective, I can say that its history goes back a long way. The Lotus car racing series was one of the first games I played when we were playing games on computers with floppy disks. I can say that I played pretty well among my friends at that time. Then, when The Need for Speed ​​came out, I remember being amazed by its graphics.

It was already followed by Need for Speed ​​2, 3 and Porsche Unleashed games. I think I left the series, which I loved playing, after Most Wanted or Carbon. Because playing similar games every year was starting to bore me. In 2006, I was introduced to MotorStorm, one of the first games of PlayStation 3, and played it for hours. In addition to innovative technologies such as motion detection for that period, it managed to take racing games from street racing and put them a little more off-road.

The Crew Motorfest review

Motorstorm didn’t last very long. The game, distributed by Sony, was confined to the PlayStation 3 catalog and was never released again. After years of car racing games, the Forza Horizon series managed to fill the gap for me in 2012. The first Forza Horizon offered a much smaller map and limited roads than today’s games. However, the festival atmosphere it brought compared to straight car racing must have been appreciated not only by me but by hundreds of thousands of players, so the Forza Horizon series reached its fifth game.

The Crew Motorfest review / PS5

I wanted to start the article with a little bit of my own racing game history because I wanted to indirectly explain that The Crew series, the third of which is in front of us today, does not really resonate with me. Just like Forza Motorsport, a flat track game, or Gran Turismo, one of PlayStation’s important games (although Gran Turismo connected me with its oldest games), The Crew series was a game that I tried but did not enjoy very much. Especially, I couldn’t get the enjoyable driving dynamics from The Crew that I got from Forza. That’s why I took a brief look at The Crew 2 and skipped it.

The Crew Motorfest review

When The Crew’s new game was announced, it did not attract my attention at first, but since the name Motorfest first reminded me of Motorstorm and then the gameplay images resembled Forza Horizon, it took its place in my list of games that attracted my attention. Considering that I like these types of games very much and that a new Horizon game is not on the horizon after Forza Horizon 5, The Crew: Motorfest could be a game that could fill that gap for me. So did it happen? Let me explain that part in a little detail.

First of all, The Crew: Motorfest is truly a game that succeeds Forza Horizon. But not in terms of his success, but in the sense of the formula he applied. They have managed to copy all the good aspects of Forza Horizon, from the game’s menu to its introduction, from the selected music to the narrative style, from the type of races to the gameplay itself. Since it is obvious that a good game series will be copied and similar ones will be created, I honestly do not focus on this part and give it a low score. After all, it made me happy to think that PlayStation owners would now have a similar game.

The Crew Motorfest review

As I just said, The Crew is a game that copies its rival in every sense. In this regard, I can say that it is not a simple copy and has successfully implemented many features. There are actually plus points with some details in Zatne The Crew concept. For example, it is possible to use motorcycles, boats or planes in this game. Additionally, a Playlist system has been added to diversify the races and streamline the gameplay. There are concepts of races and cars.

For example, if you choose the American Muscle playlist, we race with American cars on many different surfaces, from street racing to drag racing, from large off-road vehicles to small off-road vehicles. These are sometimes races where we race with many vehicles on a lap-by-lap basis and try to come first, or races where we try to meet the given time. In this respect, I can say that it offers an enjoyable and fluid gameplay.

The thing that a person like me, who has played Forza Horizon for a very long time, is probably most used to is pressing the Y button on Xbox (corresponds to the triangle on PS) to rewind the race where I got stuck. This is actually an issue that kills the difficulty of the game and gets you used to the easy way, but even if it is a bad habit, eventually people get used to using it. While playing Motorfest, in my first race, my hand involuntarily went to triangle and held it down. Before I could even think about what I was doing, I was shocked to see the race rewind.

The Crew Motorfest review

Yes, it is possible to rewind the races in The Crew Motorfest, just like in the Horizon games! However, let me underline that the time is not set back in races where the time has been postponed. Also, when rewinding in Horizon, you cannot stop it at any second you want, it only rewinds certain periods of seconds and does not allow pausing in between. In this game, it is possible to stop the rollback at exactly the point you want. For this reason, I can say that they improved this feature.

The game takes place on the island of Hawaii. I can say that almost the entire island is accessible. They designed a very large and full map. I must also admit that I like the map system. When I press the middle button on the DualSense, a close-up view opens, as if it were a three-dimensional map of Apple Maps. If we want, we can zoom out and turn it into a flat map, or we can navigate it in close-up as if we were flying closely with a drone. Perhaps my favorite feature in the game was this map section.

The Crew Motorfest review

The inside of the island is full of various mini games, just like its rival. There are points such as speed limit or photo taking point. One of the innovations he introduced was Slalom. We are trying to complete the track by passing from left to right of the specified points within a certain area, which looks quite fun.

The game also has a Formula vehicle section that we can drive entirely on the tracks. In addition to the engines, boats and planes I just mentioned, it is also very enjoyable to drive formula cars. There is even a pit stop section. I enjoyed it very much because it had a more arcade-oriented Formula part, rather than a simulation-oriented one like Formula 1 games. Even different Red Bull vehicles from the past years are also included in the game.

The indispensable feature of a racing game is vehicle driving dynamics. In this regard, I did not enjoy The Crew game that I played before, and even thought that the vehicle driving in many Ubisoft games, such as Watch Dogs 2 and Legion, was bad. Frankly, I approached the game very cautiously in this regard. Although I must admit, I approached it more prejudiced than cautious.

The Crew Motorfest review

I said it was bad anyway, I said, ‘Look, it’s bad when you’re driving the vehicle,’ I said, ‘They couldn’t even use the DualSense’s vibrations properly. But the game misled me the more I played it. I can’t say that the vehicle’s driving dynamics are perfect, but I must admit that it is not bad either. It gives you more pleasure as you play, which allows you to enter the game more easily. However, when I compare it to its rival, I can say that it is at least 1 shirt, maybe even 2 shirts behind. By the way, regarding vibration, I recommend that you definitely set the vibration settings to 100 in the menu, this way you will have a better experience, but the lack of the DualSense-specific ground vibration feature is a big minus.

It’s not too bad in terms of vehicle catalogue. When I started the game, there were around 160 vehicles, but this number will increase with vehicle packages in the future. In addition to famous brands such as Ferrari and Lamborghini, even DeLorean is included. However, when we look at it brand by brand, I can say that it is one click behind its rival. Maybe it will get better as tools are added. After all, while the Forza series has been improving itself for 5 games, the Crew series is trying this festival format for the first time.

The Crew Motorfest review

I tried to list some of the things that The Crew: Motorsport does better compared to its rival Forza Horizon. To summarize, we can list features such as a nice map system, fun playlist structure, stopping rewind whenever we want, different vehicles (formula, boat, plane, etc.). In fact, it is a nice detail to be able to experience the vehicle we want from the vehicle catalog for 2 minutes without purchasing it. But besides these, there are also points where it falls behind. For a person who plays Forza Horizon, it does not make you say yes, it is perfect. If I had to choose between the two, I would definitely prefer Forza.

But bringing a similar game to the PlayStation platform is also a good initiative. It also lags behind Forza in terms of game richness. Details such as wandering ghost vehicles and the addition of artificial intelligence make you feel like you are constantly playing Forza. Let me also say that artificial intelligence remains very human-like. While in Forza the artificial intelligence could convince itself that it was a robot, here the artificial intelligence remained very much like a human dubbing.

The Crew Motorfest review

I would also like to briefly touch on the graphics. Although it has very good graphics in quality mode, it cannot offer a smooth racing game experience because it limits itself to 30 fps. When we put it in performance mode, we get very good performance with 60 fps (it does not go above 60), but this time we compromise a lot on graphics. Playing the game in 1080p makes you feel.

Let me finish the article without further ado. When evaluating The Crew: Motorfest, it is necessary to divide it into two. Does the former offer a good racing game experience on a completely Forza-free platform like PlayStation 5? Definitely yes! It is a very enjoyable and entertaining game that you can play alone or with your friends. It wouldn’t be a lie if I said that you can see what you were deprived of in Forza with The Crew on PlayStation. So, is it a better game compared to its rival? Definitely not! I can only say that it is a good Forza replica. It could have been a bad knock-off, but it was a nice replica.