OverTake | Live: First Look at The Crew Motorfest


Hawaii is calling! The Crew Motorfest is racing to PC and consoles this September, so taking a first look at the game is in order - which is exactly what OverTake is going to do in a live stream tonight: Join René Buttler and Michel Wolk as they explore O'ahu on four wheels, starting at 7 pm CEST/5 pm UTC.

Image credit: OverTake

After focusing on the Contiguous United States in The Crew 2, Ubisoft's open-world racer takes the action to the Pacific as Motorfest takes place on Hawaii's most populated island. Hang on, an open-world racing game set on O'ahu? That sounds familiar - and for good reason: 2006's Test Drive Unlimited and its successor Test Drive Unlimited 2 both called the island home as well - several developers of Ivory Tower, who are behind The Crew Motorfest, have worked on the first two TDU titles.

Meanwhile, the game's premise is a festival celebrating cars and car culture - so a similar theme to that of the Forza Horizon series. Meanwhile, players will be able to import their vehicle collections from The Crew 2 into Motorfest, provided they are available in both titles. They also have the choice of starting from scratch in Motorfest if they prefer. The import feature works for multiple platforms, so players with The Crew 2 save files from different systems will be able to import a combined version of their collections to Motorfest if their respective games are tied to a Ubisoft account.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1682359288642121728

If you want to get your hands on the beta version of The Crew Motorfest, checking out the live stream should be well worth your time: René and Michel will be giving away 15 beta keys during the broadcast - so tune in if you want to hit the Hawaiian roads early as well!

Motorfest is due to launch on September 14th, 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, and Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

Your Thoughts​

Does The Crew Motorfest look exciting to you? What were your impressions from the live stream? Let us know in the comments below!
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Yannik Haustein
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

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Comments

SB83
It's basically FH Hawaii. Has the same annoying "drive x km to this event" thing (very little fast travel allowed - guess they want you to marvel at the scenery...) while annoyingly chirpy commentator keeps talking. Closed beta has superpowered AI issues in some of the races too. However, main deal killer so far is lack of DLSS...seems to be another AMD game. Wish AMD would stop doing this until they actually have an upscaling algorithm on par with DLSS.
 
H
yeah tried the earlier version hated it.
The amount of bright colors and weird avatars is nauseating .
This is marketed to teenagers hard pass for me
 
GRaFkiyv
I expected the worst, but it looks nice.
Because of the problems with recording only 30 fps and incorrect HDR recording, I did not like the AI bots that do not see your disabled abs, pbs, nitro ... you can sit until the TDU3 exit.
 
D
How many bad Forza Horizon clones do we really need?
 
Trebor901
Andrew_WOT said:
How many bad Forza Horizon clones do we really need?
Click to expand...
Apart from its not bad. Downloaded the closed beta earlier. Works better with a wheel than forza ever has. Cars feel more realistic with a wheel than forza ever has. And it looks far nicer than forza horizon. Some people need to take their forza tinted rose glasses off.
 
R
I"ve tested the beta after not having been convinced by the preview videos (95% being the same boring game introduction, why Ubisoft???). I also must state that, watching videos, made me regret the darker and more photo realistic look of the TDU games (same map).

I was wrong, the game looks good. I don't think it is groundbraking though. The gap with the Crew2 is not that big (more detailed textures and no pop in, the latter being a big issue sometimes in TC2). The view distance is great with these mountains axay. Watching the sun rising on the sea and the beach from the volcano is a true holiday oostal card, but watching the sky killed the immersion ve 1uqe it was absolutely atrocious, I assume it is something that will be fixed. One thing that look awful : the tunnels, their lighning isn't immersive at all, it is really strange.

The driving experience seems solid, although I'm not really found of the drift tendency added to the physics ;
Indeed the pandulum effect is heavily sensitive. It is a way to please drifting fans, who are quiet a lot in these open world racing games. Apart from that, ir droves pretty similarly to TC2, cars have huge brake power (ABS was on though, the only help I kept activated). It's enjoyable overall. It seems there's a bit more FFB coming from the suspensions. I cant say how it compares to TC1 (which was less simplified than TC2) becausei haven't launched TC1 enough recently. I haven't played TC2's openwheelers but those of Motorfest, in the intro, are really good. The racing track with that big banking in a turn is great, the flow is great (fictious racing tracks in TC2 were good, a major talent of Ivory Tower apparently).

EDIT : I forgot to mention that late braking can generate understeering a bit less catchable than in TC2 due to some extra weight feel. So racing line is a bit more important than in TC2. Similar physics with more understeer and more oversteer, coming from TC2 you feel at home with a few adjustments to your driving.

The map : in a few minutes I went from the souh west of the island to the north, in a straight line (mainly on road), crossing 30cm deep rivers, with diverse and good looking environments. After an event it the north I've driven along the east coast, go through the volcano to go in the center of the map. It feels absolutely too small after being used to TC1 and TC2. But this is not a fair comparison, it would be better to compare the map to other games' maps. There are nice landmarks and landscapes.

The real star of the game should be the events diversity, I did not have time to experiment many of them unfortunately, but it is pretty clear there will be more than in TC2, which was already full of events.

In short, the game mechanics look promising, the map is small and lack big urban environments (a question of taste though, but imo urban environments give more roads and then increase distances, and facilitate settings diversity).

I personnally would have liked The Crew to keep on going big, with another big area : countries from Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, there's a lot of amazing places to recreate potentially.
 
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McClutch
In short, I was not impressed by the closed beta teaser. I Imported the cars from TC2, but none of them really had the traits you would exspect from them by their specification. All cars simply have to much grip and can be drive "digital" in a full throttle full brake style even with all helps off. (T300 for steering) Compared to this, even FH5 feels like a full blown hardcore Simulator. The Island looks bland and generic but colours are rather too funky.

Addendum: I noticed that the Game stressed my PC a lot, it went louder with The Crew than it ever did with ACC.
 
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SB83
McClutch said:
Addendum: I noticed that the Game stressed my PC a lot, it went louder with The Crew than it ever did with ACC.
Click to expand...
Yes, performance was not great...having DLSS would've helped but this seems to be another "AMD" game.
 
R
SB83 said:
Yes, performance was not great...having DLSS would've helped but this seems to be another "AMD" game.
Click to expand...
Well, it seems there was not any AMD and FSR options. I may be wrong and both DLSS and FSR will be available in the final version, who knows? There is some bluriness like in TC1 though. I remember having solved the issue by replacing the software anti aliasing by nvidia's one. I haven't tried that in TC3. It didn't bother me that much. I would expect that kind of bluriness if DLSS or FSR were activated though, that's why it is weird. I don't know why I couldn't put the game in 4k, the resolution xould be set to 1080 max.
 
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R
McClutch said:
The Island looks bland and generic but colours are rather too funky..
Click to expand...
I still can't understand why a preview video had stated the island felt more alive than TC2's map, which is said to be empty (it is true that TC1 is more detailed). But in the Motorfest beta there were no pedestrians and no wild life. With coyotes, eagles, condors in TC2's Arizona desert last time i've payed the game, it felt much more alive than Motorfest, the huge setting was epic in comparison. Although the condor didn't look right, like a mix between the real Californian condor and the Andean one ; well, French developpers (which other racing game deals with wildlife like this???).

My opinion is obviously biased though, since the main appeal for me of TC1 and TC2 is the big USA map to explore.
 
SB83
roadyroad said:
Well, it seems there was not any AMD and FSR options. I may be wrong and both DLSS and FSR will be available in the final version, who knows? There is some bluriness like in TC1 though. I remember having solved the issue by replacing the software anti aliasing by nvidia's one. I haven't tried that in TC3. It didn't bother me that much. I would expect that kind of bluriness if DLSS or FSR were activated though, that's why it is weird. I DON't know why I couldn't put the game in 4k, the resolution was in 1080 max resolution.
Click to expand...
Yes, and capped to 60fps also. Seems like console code roughly ported to PC.
 

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