the crew feels like the last time you ever saw people really calling ubisoft "ambitious", something they used to be pretty good at, maybe not known for it persay but they sure did try usually before the last gen and a bit where they just felt contented to make the same few games over and over again, before changing the formula a little and proceeding to do exactly the same again, this feels like the last dying breath of a company that actually cared, it's flawed and maybe a little sleazy skinnerboxy with some very blatant product placement advertisements (shoutout the VERIZON XFINITY SPEED CHALLANGE), but it's also a one of a kind experiance that you don't have that long if you want to experiance it, and i'd really reccomend doing so.

the main gimmick here and the reason why i call it ambitious is the map, open worlds usually don't impress me because many are just baron and big for the sake of it, it can benefit a game sometimes but in many ubisoft games they're just kind of generic checklist zones that don't look super appealing or detailed, but here it's the oppsite, it's the reason to play it. the map is a scaled down recreation of the entire USA, bar alaska and hawaii (though one of the sequels did do a larger recreation of hawaii as its sole play area) with most of the major cities here and accounted for along with many of its racetracks, small towns (like salem which is decorated for halloween or puxatauny which has groundhog statues everywhere) and tourist traps represented, making it must have been a real undertaking and its impressive to behold, there's even some postgame cross country races that take you across the whole map one end to the other and these are probably the best part of the game, long and super intense. you got deserts, snowy mountains, tropical areas, swamps and tons of forrestry, it's as varied as the real USA would be and it's somehow even more detailed here than its sequel, which cuts many of the smaller towns and tourist traps, so this is still the most fully realized version of this idea. this world works well with the other big thing the game tried, it's kind of an MMORPG, you share this open world with dozens of other racers and can meet up, compete or do some kind-of PVE sort of events with cop chases and there's a whole "caRPG" thing going on with you being given gear that ups stats and you'll get like +whatever air conditioners and stuff and it makes you go faster or break better, it works, i guess, but i never really felt like it was making a difference because it's all so minor and i didn't even change cars throughout the whole game, the class changes the game has in the form of car bodies makes the bigger difference there, feeling huge differences between the speed of say, the dirt car versus the circut car and each has benefits and weaknesses the games missions shows off, like ones where you have to use a dirt car and go offroad to beat circut cars, it feels like a heavily paired down motorstorm in that way! the map doesn't look the best though, even for it's time it's not the best looking game and you'll find a lot of repeated areas among the map, all the major towns are unique and all of the missions have much prettier bespoke designed areas with much more detail to them but many smaller ones aren't and the scale can be a little funny sometimes, it can also feel very lonely and weirdly scary because of this, drive slowly through areas and you'll see what i mean, it's got an unintentionally scary atmosphere at times because of how surrealy fake the world feels, but to me that's a good thing, it's a unique vibe among open worlds and someone much more talented than me could probably make an interesting video on it, there's still a lot to do anyway as per the ubisoft checklist with mini-objectives along stretches of road that give you small rewards, ubisoft towers and even little tourist markers that give you info on an area, those were my favourites since they actually added to the world in a meaningful way. one other interesting thing is who made this game, ivory tower, a team made up of former eden games staff (also of the alone in the dark reboot) who worked on the test drive unlimited games, of which this is pretty much a successor to, something small but also neat i figured i'd mention.

the game doesn't require you to deal with the MMO aspects though, hell at times i was fully alone on some of these servers like when i beat the game, it might as well be a solo game for the most part as you do barely see people here unless you choose to engage w the PVP mechanics, there's even a whole story here to do that takes you across most of the country and seeing most of its towns and sights, it's a cute story, gritty and edgy with troy baker playing alex yiik (his name is even alex and he looks like him lol) and you get a not-fast and the furious crew and go on a revenge trip infiltrating a gang and going on a country spanning crime adventure, it tries really hard to make you take it seriously and it's really charming in how like, edgy cool it wants to be, i had a great time playing it, it's not a good story but it's a fun one and i'd really reccomend following it to the end, even though the ending is a big nothing. i'm not into the soundtrack though, it's one of the games bigger downsides, while the non-licenced music during the races is pretty good, if a little boring, most of the game is made up of licenced music and it's just not my thing, i don't listen to a lot of the genres provided (most rap, metal and non-visual kei rock just aren't my thing) and the genres i did like i just didn't care for the music provided, so i ended up supplying my own for a lot of the open world driving, which did improve the game quite a bit after the music on the radio got to be too much for me to want to listen to. the game is also on the much more arcadey side with how it actually controls which i do really like, the only sim racer i've played was GT sport and i really didn't enjoy how it played but here it's much closer to a burnout than that and you can reach some ludicrious speeds here and your car can tank tons of damage, there's even stunt jumps and stuff you can do if you find them, i enjoy how it plays a lot.

the big elephant in the room here though is that MMO nature i talked about earlier, it was an early GAAS title and one i remember being massively talked about at the time, but now? well, it's dying in 2 weeks and although there is an offline mode in the games code, we can't really use that and as such when the game is gone,it's gone for good until someone manages to ressurect it, it's a shame, this is a good game and it deserves to be able to be played especially considering how much the game works well alone, even just driving and existing in this world is nice and its very well made, this is the game where the idea was realized its best and the sequel just doesn't seem to hit the same with it, we really will lose something here when it goes away and once the crew 2 also dies, so does this idea, motorfest doesn't even try and have the full USA, just hawaii as i mentioned earlier, we may very soon lose something wholley unique and worthwhile. the games dlc was also a weird spot, when i started the dlc was delisted (along with the full game but this isn't an issue if you have a physical copy which is super cheap to get) but seemingly you could still play much of the dlc in the game anyway, it was very confusing? i'll need to look more into this as the game gets closer to shut down and if i am able to access this dlc i may cover it seperately, it's comprised of two modes, a trick based monster truck mode called the summit and a police-based mode with a little campaign attached, but these too will also go away once the servers are shut down, there is a slim chance we may get a patch that enables the offline mode, but at this point i doubt much will come of it, play it while you can if it appeals to you, the sequel won't quite hit those same notes and some things like the edgy story mode are pretty much exclusive to this one.