It launched as a 250km open world, and now it’s expanded with additional free maps and content to keep us going for another year – The Crew: Motorfest

When Ivory Tower announced The Crew Motorfest in 2023, all of us who have been following the development of this particular driving MMO knew what the Lyon team was looking for: to follow in the footsteps of Forza Horizon, literally. It’s not bad to be inspired by successful games. In the prequel we already saw how the French team laid the foundations for much more arcade conceptfestival-oriented and in which the good atmosphere takes precedence over the travel experience. And now, a year later, Ubisoft comes out on solve one of the “problems” which were assigned to this third batch: open world expansion.

Repeat a third time for USA It would be strange. In The Crew and its sequel, Ubisoft Ivory Tower experimented with the idea of ​​a large-scale country, where, although the distance between Las Vegas and Los Angeles was covered in a matter of minutes, overall it was an outstanding piece of design, encompassing over 9,000 square kilometers at scale 1 :36, which gave us no less than 5,000 square kilometers of automotive experience. The problem with Motorfest was that while Ubisoft honed its hardcore ethos and driving mechanics, mitigating the weak points of the first game’s somewhat archaic system by setting it on the island of Oahu, Hawaii

entailed a significant reduction in its size to 250 square kilometers.

Now, with Year 2, which thanks to Ubisoft I had the opportunity to test a few days before its release, I can say that, although there is still a long way to go before reaching the heights of the original, the Gauls do not give and are only just finished. Expand your map by another 125 square kilometers. Yes, half of what was played before and, best of all, for free. That’s what he is like Second year of The Crew Motorfest.

New Maui Island and New Opportunities

Ubisoft never had a problem expanding the game map if it depended on it. improve your initial experience and ultimately ingratiate yourself with your community of players. As I mentioned, while Oahu’s size data is misleading, since the Hawaiian island has terrain that is difficult for vehicles to navigate and a lot of water around it, there was an apparent consensus in the community: the Motorfest map was 20 times smaller than the original.

For this reason, in anticipation of the second year, Ubisoft took a look at the geography of the North American state and narrowed it down to scale 1:13 an island with a much rougher topography in terms of road usage, but a paradise for driftingHe rally And off-road driving. Unlike its predecessor on Oahu, Maui offers roads with bumps and curves in the style of Forza Horizon 4 and its miniature Britannia, which elevates the driving experience away from what is already known. The island, designed by Julien Hammer and his team, strives to capture the essence of “car paradise” without real world restrictions, offering roads adapted to high speed and risky maneuvers.

The new Maui map complements the Oahu experience, which remains accessible to all players, creating duality of the environment of both islands. WITH suspension bridge What connect both locationsso even a beginner doesn’t need to buy air or water transport to get there, we can experience the change of pace in real time, going from the more urban and flat roads of Oahu to the rugged mountains of the Pacific jungle and beyond Haleakala Volcano. This transition ensures a complete and smooth experience, giving the game a greater sense of scale and variety and ensuring that gameplay does not become repetitive over time.

In addition, purely visually, although there have been no huge changes in the graphical processing of the game over the year, it is noticeable that the uniqueness of the Ubisoft studio under the graphics engine, in this case Snowdropfollowing Massive’s work with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, many elements and stylistic treatments were applied to Maui. Finish of the island, its volcanic surface and wilder than Oahu gives the project a much more unique experience.

Horizontal expansion, as well as vertical expansion due to the refinement of certain mechanics.

I’ll admit, although The Crew stole about 180 hours from me, I found The Crew 2 and Motorfest strange. The experience of piloting motorcycles and planes in the very high-concept Forza Horizon didn’t seem to sit well with me, so this latest installment of Ivory Tower didn’t stick around on my PC for long until I got rid of it. Still, Ubisoft’s achievements in improving controller control, while better than the roughness of the first game and the experimentation of its sequel, feel like something incredible. there is room for improvementand here is the answer. Mechanically, Motofestival “Crew” not reborn, but It also does not stand still.. The European team made some driving adjustments, changed the weight of some cars and improved the statistics.

Of course, besides the geographical changes and the driving feel (in this case driving a Logitech G29), Ubisoft has included new content that enriches the experience, e.g. Pursuit Squad – in this case, it’s not free for example, a new island or cars, This is part of the annual pass.— which involves police missions in which players must strategically track down and corner criminals, raising the tension before they can physically confront them. This modality adds a touch of fictional realism because, after all, we’re not talking about GTA or anything like that, but The game brings the game very close to the Need for Speed ​​saga.especially Hot Pursuit or Most Wanted.

The idea, as I said, is different from the usual “travel the world and compete.” On Maui we will have why narration this police squadwhere the organization of Motofest needs some control after several somewhat unusual actions from competitors. Best of all, these chase missions, while scattered and somewhat brief, have a curious degree of fun: we won’t be patrolling islands like a law enforcement agent, but rather we’ll be given tasks to stop. Instead of diving straight into the chaos and clatter of chassis and wheels across the island, we should wait for permission to act And beat him upsimulating a real police procedural that gradually builds up emotions while we earn points the closer we are to the criminal or the sooner we get him out of the way.

Addition Rival system This also brings a deeper dynamic to the game: we can compete against a specific target on the map and, if we manage to defeat him, we will unlock his personalized car as a conquest trophy. This feature is similar to the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor, where AI will identify certain NPCs which we must overcome based on our skills and what we did before, creating a sense of reward and constant competition, as well as increasing interest in exploration and finding new challenges in the open world. Although some of them are a little more difficult, which prevented me from completing them all in 6 hours. According to Ubisoft, cars won include exclusive editions such as DeLorean DMC12 And Alfa Romeo Giulia GTAm.

Ubisoft has managed to extend the life of the game through the concept of mechanical content, map expansion, and objectives in a curious case of “games as a service” that expands not only horizontally, but vertically as well. Instead of releasing a full-fledged sequel, they decided to expand and improve the original experience, keeping players interested. Will this be enough to keep us glued to the steering wheel for a while? Yes, although with a but. In these kinds of racing games, anyone who’s put in a hundred hours needs near-constant content, and Motorfest Year 2 fills that need. If Ubisoft follows this trendand it is possible, given the Hawaiian archipelago, we may encounter a “ship of Theseus” where the final design eclipses the one that came to market, I’ll get it. At the moment, I believe that the second year of Motorfest is the best way to get into the game.

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