I'd like to start my review by pointing out that it is NOT geared towards casuals, people who are going to play races once or twice, do some free roaming then never touch the game again, as they'll most likely not care about the majority of the issues i'll be pointing out later on, as they're only apparent if you're someone who'll be playing this on a regular basis for months to come. (It is a live service game after all.)

Now that that's out of the way, did you ever hear the phrase "It gets better after *insert an arbitrary number here* hours of gameplay"?
In the case of The Crew Motorfest; it gets better after at least 200h of grind (i'd honestly say more like 400-500h but i'm trying to keep this somewhat believable to you), and that's not meant as a joke, i wish it was but unfortunately it is the sad reality of the game as it stands right now..

Lets start with some positives:

+ Free roaming here is possibly one of the best experiences in a racing game period, especially with randoms (unfortunately, the online part is completely broken and only works like 20% of the time, more on that later), this is the first racing game that made me fall in love with endlessly cruising around its map for hours on end, never getting bored, always finding new stuff to explore, an easy 8/10 in this aspect.

+ A great selection of various types of vehicles, decently modeled & handle differently enough from each other. (there are currently 751 vehicles, not all of them are unique with multiple being repeats, so more like 500ish)

+ The graphics are beautiful, even stunning at times, a huge improvement over TC2.

+ A bigger & better selection of songs compared to the previous game. (still not that great or memorable though)

+ The playlists (a set of around 8 races with different vehicles set under a united theme, mini-events if you'd like) are very fun to play, there are way too few of them though.. more of that please!

+ The devs were kind enough to allow people to import their cars & vanities (aka under-glows, special tires, boosts.. etc) from the previous game, a big ++ considering the grind i mentioned earlier could easily triple had you been forced to re-earn everything again.

+ The gameplay itself is very fun & addictive, the handling is also vastly improved over TC2.

+ One of the best maps i've ever experienced in a racing game period, although it is way smaller than the previous one it's much more dense & fun to explore.

+ Very extensive car tuning, great car customization for the most part, countless gameplay sliders & assists to play with.

The meh:

+ They added a new weekly car show where you customize your own vehicle & compete against others, this is the first game that made me give a damn about creating cool looking cars and showing them off so it's a major ++, but i'm putting it here because it's ruined by a group of losers who team up each week to mass vote for each other so they ruined the whole thing for everyone pretty much since launch, and yet IVT doesn't seem to give a damn, oh well 🤷‍♂️

The Bad:

- Cars are extremely expensive here, it can & will take you days if not longer to get a "single" expensive hyper car, i have 484h in TC2, and 367h in this one, 851h combined! and i've yet to own all buyable vehicles, let that sink in. (They also made races pay less money & removed the dynamic discounts you used to get in TC2)

- To be competitive you need full sets of parts that give you various advantages ranging from outright doubling your score in Summits (weekly end-game content) to giving you 50% more NOS (along with other bonuses), this system sucks, and is why you need to waste hundreds of hours for the game to get good, this along with getting vehicles are the one major hurdle you need to get over before you can start to actually have fun.

There are 15 disciplines in this game, and there are 6-7 types of gold sets you need for each of them, they made gold drops a lot rarer here compared to TC2, so now to get these sets the optimal way you pretty much NEED to farm a single 1-2min race for close to 200h non stop, and it's all luck based, it could easily take you more than that, let that sink in too..

- Summits are the end-game content you'll pretty much be doing week after week, in TC2, you needed to be top 4k on PC, top 11k on PlayStation & top 8k(?) on Xbox to get the highest rewards, here they combined all platforms & reduced the number from a combined ~23k people to a meager 10k, they took away over half, and for what? to give less free vanities & encourage more spending? making what was already a massive sweat-fest an even sweatier pile of ♥♥♥♥? (and just to be clear, i haven't missed a single plat ever since i started competing in both games, so save your "git gud")

- In a game that has the word "crew" in its title, you'd expect to be able to play with others, oh you sweet summer child, that was the previous game, we don't do that here. joining races with others only works like a 1/3 of the time, randoms will constantly disappear a few minutes after you see them, sometimes you won't even see any for days, what a joke of a game!

Head my warning, IF YOU'RE BUYING THIS TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS THEN DON'T EVEN BOTHER, IT DOES NOT WORK MOST OF THE TIME AND THE DEVS DON'T GIVE A ♥♥♥♥!

- Way too many disconnects, scrapping parts too fast? disconnect! randomly changing liveries? DC! switching too many affixes? DC! taking photos to finish challenges? DC! you get the point.

- Only 2! multiplayer modes, demolition royal (battleroyale with demo cars) that nobody plays and grand races (28 people races) which are very fun to play as long as you're fine with the toxic rammers you'll surely be facing almost every race (that's an issue with the racing community in general so i don't hold it against the game), after all those years, this is the best you can come up with? really?

- Bugs, bugs & even more bugs, the devs will literally push a patch overnight to fix any money glitches & then proceed to ignore well known game-breaking bugs for months if not longer..

- Very slow updates, meanwhile they'll happily flood you with countless overpriced vanities any chance they get, in a 70-120$ game..

- Very few races compared to the previous title (probably less than a 1/3, if even that), the solution they came up with? add a custom mode where you can replay older races with other types of vehicles, instantly inflating the number of races while doing 0 work, genius.. even worse, if you want any of the previous summit rewards you might've missed (including exclusive cars that are often better than the base model) you'll be forced to grind this "new" mode endlessly (it takes over 100h to finish them all btw).

- If you're here for motorcycles then forget it, unless you love being last they're not viable here.

- No real cross-play either (only in leaderboards).

- Terrible Ubisoft Connect overlay that gets stuck any time someone adds you or invites you to a crew. (after months i finally figured out a fix, disable & re-enable V-Sync and it'll go away.)

- The traffic AI is braindead, it's been broken ever since the last big update & they'll constantly go out of their way to ruin your day. (they even added them to feats in summits, making the "competitive mode" less about skill & more about RNG)

- Your AI assistant gets old & annoying way too fast.

There are more negatives about the game but i'm running out of space, sorry folks.


All in All, the core of the game IS good & extremely fun, but the rest of it is less of a game & more of a mindless/endless grind that only aims to waste your time & keep you playing long enough for them to trick you into wasting your hard earned money on all the flashy but pointless overpriced microtransactions. i really love this franchise, and will probably keep playing both games as i already invested way too much time and efforts into them, but for 70$ minimum this ain't it chief. 4/10, only worth it on a deep deep sale.

I'd like to start my review by pointing out that it is NOT geared towards casuals, people who are going to play races once or twice, do some free roaming then never touch the game again, as they'll most likely not care about the majority of the issues i'll be pointing out later on, as they're only apparent if you're someone who'll be playing this on a regular basis for months to come. (It is a live service game after all.) Now that that's out of the way, did you ever hear the phrase "It gets better after *insert an arbitrary number here* hours of gameplay"? In the case of The Crew Motorfest; it gets better after at least 200h of grind (i'd honestly say more like 400-500h but i'm trying to keep this somewhat believable to you), and that's not meant as a joke, i wish it was but unfortunately it is the sad reality of the game as it stands right now.. Lets start with some positives: + Free roaming here is possibly one of the best experiences in a racing game period, especially with randoms (unfortunately, the online part is completely broken and only works like 20% of the time, more on that later), this is the first racing game that made me fall in love with endlessly cruising around its map for hours on end, never getting bored, always finding new stuff to explore, an easy 8/10 in this aspect. + A great selection of various types of vehicles, decently modeled & handle differently enough from each other. (there are currently 751 vehicles, not all of them are unique with multiple being repeats, so more like 500ish) + The graphics are beautiful, even stunning at times, a huge improvement over TC2. + A bigger & better selection of songs compared to the previous game. (still not that great or memorable though) + The playlists (a set of around 8 races with different vehicles set under a united theme, mini-events if you'd like) are very fun to play, there are way too few of them though.. more of that please! + The devs were kind enough to allow people to import their cars & vanities (aka under-glows, special tires, boosts.. etc) from the previous game, a big ++ considering the grind i mentioned earlier could easily triple had you been forced to re-earn everything again. + The gameplay itself is very fun & addictive, the handling is also vastly improved over TC2. + One of the best maps i've ever experienced in a racing game period, although it is way smaller than the previous one it's much more dense & fun to explore. + Very extensive car tuning, great car customization for the most part, countless gameplay sliders & assists to play with. The meh: + They added a new weekly car show where you customize your own vehicle & compete against others, this is the first game that made me give a damn about creating cool looking cars and showing them off so it's a major ++, but i'm putting it here because it's ruined by a group of losers who team up each week to mass vote for each other so they ruined the whole thing for everyone pretty much since launch, and yet IVT doesn't seem to give a damn, oh well 🤷‍♂️ The Bad: - Cars are extremely expensive here, it can & will take you days if not longer to get a "single" expensive hyper car, i have 484h in TC2, and 367h in this one, 851h combined! and i've yet to own all buyable vehicles, let that sink in. (They also made races pay less money & removed the dynamic discounts you used to get in TC2) - To be competitive you need full sets of parts that give you various advantages ranging from outright doubling your score in Summits (weekly end-game content) to giving you 50% more NOS (along with other bonuses), this system sucks, and is why you need to waste hundreds of hours for the game to get good, this along with getting vehicles are the one major hurdle you need to get over before you can start to actually have fun. There are 15 disciplines in this game, and there are 6-7 types of gold sets you need for each of them, they made gold drops a lot rarer here compared to TC2, so now to get these sets the optimal way you pretty much NEED to farm a single 1-2min race for close to 200h non stop, and it's all luck based, it could easily take you more than that, let that sink in too.. - Summits are the end-game content you'll pretty much be doing week after week, in TC2, you needed to be top 4k on PC, top 11k on PlayStation & top 8k(?) on Xbox to get the highest rewards, here they combined all platforms & reduced the number from a combined ~23k people to a meager 10k, they took away over half, and for what? to give less free vanities & encourage more spending? making what was already a massive sweat-fest an even sweatier pile of shit? (and just to be clear, i haven't missed a single plat ever since i started competing in both games, so save your "git gud") - In a game that has the word "crew" in its title, you'd expect to be able to play with others, oh you sweet summer child, that was the previous game, we don't do that here. joining races with others only works like a 1/3 of the time, randoms will constantly disappear a few minutes after you see them, sometimes you won't even see any for days, what a joke of a game! Head my warning, IF YOU'RE BUYING THIS TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS THEN DON'T EVEN BOTHER, IT DOES NOT WORK MOST OF THE TIME AND THE DEVS DON'T GIVE A FUCK! - Way too many disconnects, scrapping parts too fast? disconnect! randomly changing liveries? DC! switching too many affixes? DC! taking photos to finish challenges? DC! you get the point. - Only 2! multiplayer modes, demolition royal (battleroyale with demo cars) that nobody plays and grand races (28 people races) which are very fun to play as long as you're fine with the toxic rammers you'll surely be facing almost every race (that's an issue with the racing community in general so i don't hold it against the game), after all those years, this is the best you can come up with? really? - Bugs, bugs & even more bugs, the devs will literally push a patch overnight to fix any money glitches & then proceed to ignore well known game-breaking bugs for months if not longer.. - Very slow updates, meanwhile they'll happily flood you with countless overpriced vanities any chance they get, in a 70-120$ game.. - Very few races compared to the previous title (probably less than a 1/3, if even that), the solution they came up with? add a custom mode where you can replay older races with other types of vehicles, instantly inflating the number of races while doing 0 work, genius.. even worse, if you want any of the previous summit rewards you might've missed (including exclusive cars that are often better than the base model) you'll be forced to grind this "new" mode endlessly (it takes over 100h to finish them all btw). - If you're here for motorcycles then forget it, unless you love being last they're not viable here. - No real cross-play either (only in leaderboards). - Terrible Ubisoft Connect overlay that gets stuck any time someone adds you or invites you to a crew. (after months i finally figured out a fix, disable & re-enable V-Sync and it'll go away.) - The traffic AI is braindead, it's been broken ever since the last big update & they'll constantly go out of their way to ruin your day. (they even added them to feats in summits, making the "competitive mode" less about skill & more about RNG) - Your AI assistant gets old & annoying way too fast. There are more negatives about the game but i'm running out of space, sorry folks. All in All, the core of the game IS good & extremely fun, but the rest of it is less of a game & more of a mindless/endless grind that only aims to waste your time & keep you playing long enough for them to trick you into wasting your hard earned money on all the flashy but pointless overpriced microtransactions. i really love this franchise, and will probably keep playing both games as i already invested way too much time and efforts into them, but for 70$ minimum this ain't it chief. 4/10, only worth it on a deep deep sale.