I’ve been playing The Crew: Motorfest for a few days now and one thing has really stood out to me – Motorfest really, really wants you to get into car culture. The festival setting of the game is a gateway so many different aspects of car culture. The team at Ubisoft Ivory Tower want you to understand why some people go absolutely wild for anything with a motor and wheels.
So far most of my time with Motorfest has been in the game’s Playlists. Short and to the point, these are lists of themed events that invite you into a subculture to share the passion of some very passionate characters – some fictional and some from the real world.
As someone who grew up with The Fast and the Furious I gravitated right to Made in Japan with its modified cars, mountain tracks and drift competitions. This one has you joining a crew of Japanese racing enthusiasts as they lend you their cars and show you around some of the different aspects of Japanese racing culture.
If you fancy yourself more a Dominic than a Brian, the American Muscle playlist brings you into muscle car culture. Your guide talks about the origins of the muscle car in the 1950s and important models from then to now. All this to the background of road and off-road races with the cars he’s talking about.
Motorfest took me by surprise with it’s inclusion of real-life motoring influencers. A lot of car enjoyers get their fix via YouTube and other online platforms these days so collaborations with Donut Media and Supercar Blondie make a lot of sense. They add a neat personal touch to their playlists. Mighty Car Mods for a future season maybe? I live in hope.
Even as a car person, Motorfest so far has given me an appreciation for types of cars I never really saw the appeal in before. Learning that muscle cars originated from the ingenuity of greaser types in the ‘50s throwing big engines into economy cars to make them stupidly powerful gave me an appreciation for the art. Knowing how far back the rivalry between Ferrari and Lamborghini goes makes their back-and-forth moves exciting to follow.
It’s a bit early to give a full review of Motorfest as a whole, but the way it invites everyone into getting a taste of the many different communities built around passion for motorised transport is exciting to say the least. Maybe Motorfest will awaken the hidden car nut some people never knew they had inside.