GSY Review
PS5
Xbox Series X
PC
The new year of content for The Crew Motorfest began this week, and today we're going to take a look at the very first playlist dedicated to street racing, whose atmosphere is obviously very reminiscent of Need for Speed. Before we share our thoughts, it's worth noting that this new content is available for free, and while you do need to purchase the BMW M3 with in-game credits to participate to it, it doesn't require you to spend your real world money. As for the previous two years, the $/€29.99 Year Pass gives access to a list of twenty cars, which will be added to players' garages as soon as they become available in the game.
Verdict
To kick off this new year of content, and until we can discover the RC cars and the Trackforge in the coming months, the Street Riders playlist will keep you busy for about an hour. As we explained in our French preview a few weeks ago, two types of races are included here. There are clearly marked tracks with easy-to-spot checkpoints and a few shortcuts, but there are also challenges where you are given a little more freedom to reach the next flare. It's a nice idea, although we sometimes found that we just needed to follow the main road to get there. There are shortcuts as we said, but they have generally been well thought out beforehand by the developers, which means that you may come across a jump ramp at the end of some of them, for example, which is designed to take you back to the main route. Because you'll take part in street races, you will be systematically offered the chance to bet on the upcoming race, which will add a few penalties (imposed difficulty level, no nitro, manual gear, damaged brakes, no mini-map, etc.), but Street Riders also introduces some new features in terms of car customization. The new options focuses on the wheels, with new types of visually appealing rims, but also the ability to adjust their height (front and rear independently) or the wheel camber, for example. This is in addition to the rest, which was already present (hood, fenders and spoilers, front and rear bumpers, lights, exhaust pipes), and, though some might think it's not a big deal. customizing your cars (you can do this for all of them once you've completed the playlist) turns out to be a lot of fun. Even more so as it's always possible to create your own liveries or acquire those of other players. Coming back to the races in the playlist, the tracks are really eye-catching overall, with color choices that enhance the game's visuals and times of day that add variety (you start the playlist during the day and finish it at night). Ivory Tower hasn't skimped on jump ramps to make the events more dynamic, but we would have liked the last few races to have a few more curves instead of relying too much on segments where you can speed along at full throttle. Despite this minor drawback, the experience is quite enjoyable for arcade fans, and we still think that the playlist concept is a really great idea for Motorfest because of the freedom it gives the studio to create varied atmospheres. This, we're eagerly awaiting the next one, which should arrive in the coming weeks. Dedicated to BMW, it will undoubtedly be a little more restrained in terms of visual presentation, but you never know, we might be surprised. In short, if you already own Motorfest, this is a great opportunity to revisit it and rediscover the thrill of good old arcade racing games, and if you've never been tempted to try it, with all the playlists now available in the current version, now might be the perfect time to give it a go.
- On the upside
- Very enjoyable races
- The "flare races"
- Great art style
- New customization tools
- Two new BMWs
- The playlist is totally free
- Cons
- Not always enough interesting curves
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