The Crew Motorfest XSX Review 7.5/10 "Hawaii Five Oh!" 🌴🏎️🌴

The newest entry in The Crew franchise, The Crew Motorfest plonks drivers down in the paradise of Hawaii and lets them loose across the many locations of the island, from volcanos and mountain roads through dense foliage, absurd, spiralling racetracks, suburban areas and more.

After creating your driver and choosing your starting vehicle, you are free to roam around the island as you see fit. You can free roam or enter one of the myriad of ‘playlists’ (races) available, these range from drag races in highly-tuned performance cars to old camper vans, monster trucks, motorcycles and even planes.

There are currently well over 600 vehicles across these styles available, and each completed race will see you earning XP, unlocking extra vehicles and parts to replace and improve your various rides, in terms of both performance and vanity items.

There really is a huge amount of customisation available – as well as other micro-transactions that you can pay for to speed the process along, should you wish to do so …I personally avoid these like the plague, although it didn’t impinge on my enjoyment of the game as I was constantly unlocking and upgrading my garage of cars through normal play.

The moment-to-moment racing is fun and engaging, allowing for players of differing skill levels to tweak their game as they see fit to suit their ability (or mood). I was quite happy moving from place to place, jumping in different vehicles and making my way across the expansive islands, swerving into playlists when they took my fancy.

The game runs incredibly smoothly, and I don’t think I encountered a flicker of slowdown - to the naked eye, at least - and this combined with the sheer vibrancy and feel-good vibes of the Hawaiian location makes for a great romp around.

That said, the main problems I had lay in my personal musical tastes and the pretty constant voice work, There are over 140 licensed songs and 25 original compositions, but only a handful appealed to me, very little grabbed my attention and the musical selection, combined with the constantly ‘life-affirming’ approach of the narrator and folks that you encounter on your rides combined to have a sort of forced ‘Saturday morning TV presenter’ energy that I found grating.

I got the same vibes from Sunset Overdrive and Watch Dogs 2 in that I felt the game was desperately trying to prove how cool it was as opposed to actually being cool, and it’s an approach that I find irksome. That said, I appreciate that I’m probably not the target demographic here, although there are only so many comments and jokes that a single commentator can make in a one-way dialogue as you drive around a track.

SUMMARY

The Crew: Motorfest sports great handling, a plethora of modes and vehicles and has an unabashedly sunny and positive approach that entices players to explore the island. If this connects with you, I can imagine that players would get dozens of hours of fun as they smash through the playlists and explore the area for collectables etc.

This game isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel though, and it does bear more than a passing resemblance to some other recent racers that feature open-worlds, with the main difference being that bright, Hawaiian vibe, and a slightly zanier approach than its peers.