The Crew: Motorfest Review (The One Free Man)
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Got this game randomly gifted to me by a friend as a birthday present. I've had Ubisoft on my blacklist for like a decade, I simply refuse to financially support scummy companies anymore, there's simply no excuse for players to do it, and it's even more saddening how many will always defend shady practices no matter what.
The last game I ever actually bought with money from Ubisoft was The Crew 1, and we can see how well that turned out.
Ever since the original Forza Horizon came out, it's like every game now wants to just copy the car festival formula, and it's been that way for a long time. Hell, in this release they even copied the Rewind function. Kind of feels like they're not even trying to hide it at this point, if I'm honest.
The game is absurdly expensive for what you get, and it's not even the full price. There's a "Year 2" season pass coming out that's gonna cost even more, nevermind the fact some folks have already spent over $120 on this game.
So as for the game itself:
The progression is terrible. - For some reason AAA companies have completely forgotten how grinding in games works. Grinding needs to be balanced, and companies will either make a game way too ridiculously easy (probably due to complaints and younger generations getting upset because they can't get their favorite Bugatti quick enough), or make it way too ridiculously hard, though the latter is for other reasons. In this game, it's got the same issue that plagues the later Forza Horizon games, where the game will constantly give you a bunch of random cars in the first like 10 minutes of playing, but if you actually want to save up money to buy a car you actually want, it takes forever. The payouts for events are meh as it is, but then on top of that the cars are all over $100,000 each for like no apparent reason.
Microtransactions. Gotta love 'em. - This game seems to have a heavy emphasis on Crew Credits, the game's "premium" currency, which can be earned in-game (albeit in pennies), but there's a bigger emphasis on buying the currency with real money. Things like vanities and a lot of other stuff is locked behind this currency. I mean could you imagine spending over a hundred bucks on a game only for the company behind it to continue to coerce you to spend even more money? It's ridiculous. People often say "just don't buy the MTX", but that's entirely besides the point.
Sure, you can choose not to spend money on it, but it's a false veil. Just because you can ignore it still doesn't hide the fact that the game is actively designed around those microtransactions, and under the expectation that you will buy them. If you don't, grinding in games either gets extremely bad, or you're constantly being reminded by the game that you're going to miss out on all of this content where you better act fast or it's gone forever, so either pay up to get it or spend excessive amounts of time playing to try and get it. It's like a casino. In a casino, you can technically walk away at any time, but everything is designed to make you feel like the next game might be the big win, keeping you engaged. Similarly, games with microtransactions give you the option to not spend money, but the design subtly pressures you into thinking that spending will significantly enhance your experience.
Ubisoft will (illegally) take this game away from you. - I think it goes without saying that there's no point in paying full price (and an expensive price at that) for a game that a company will just take away from you whenever they feel like. It doesn't matter if it's physical or digital, this game requires a constant internet connection just to leave the title screen, so you can't even access the main menu and settings without a connection. When this game gets shut down just like The Crew, the game will instantly become lost media just like that. Ubisoft have no plans for offline patches. If a company came to your house and snapped your disc in half, you'd be in an uproar. That's what happens with digital games, and if you own it on physical, shutting down servers and making your disc unusable is the next best thing a company can do to achieve that.
For those who say "you were licensed, not sold", you don't understand what licenses actually are/what they mean/why companies say that. Same thing for those who say "you signed an agreement that lets them do whatever". ToSs and EULAs are not the law of the land and are subject to law just like anything else. If a contract has anything regarding something illegal, that contract is automatically void. I have a full Steam Discussions page dedicated to all of my findings over the past several months, after researching legal documents both in the US and overseas, and talking to many international lawyers, law firms and organizations. Please give it a read (and don't just skim through, please ACTUALLY read it) if you're curious on what your rights as a consumer actually are, and how the legal system works. If you want to take action against this practice, please visit the AccursedFarms channel or visit Stop Killing Games.
The Crew Motorfest is an improvement over 2, but is still flawed. - There's a lot of things Ivory Tower learned from The Crew 2. Credit where it's due, there's a lot of things that are neat about Motorfest like the attention to detail and what-have-you. Physics is better than 2, sounds are better, controls, etc. But it still feels like a clunky game to play. For some reason, unlike every other racing game in existence, instead of starting from the bottom (roughly) and making your way up the ranks to become the "best driver", and having a sense of progression, this game forces you instead to play "playlists". These playlists focus on specific themes, and force you to drive specific vehicles. You're always given a "loaner" vehicle for each race. Some playlists require you to buy a specific vehicle first, but after you buy the vehicle, the race that requires it still gives you the loaned version anyways, making the requirement redundant and pointless. You also cannot make your own races and race routes, you can only replay playlist races with different weather options.
All-in-all, The Crew Motorfest feels like just another soulless corporate cash-grab trying to ride the still-ongoing Forza Horizon tidal wave. While there's a handful of things I do like or find interesting about the game, it's just so heavily outweighed by all the cons. And it's not that I don't want AAA games, I just miss when AAA games actually meant something, you know? I don't like seeing franchises that had previous games that were held to such high regard, now being a money-hungry husk of what they once were. AAA publishers got where they are today because of the amount of passion they originally put into their games back then. But money is money, and companies can't get enough of it. I genuinely wish that Motorfest was something to write home about, but it just isn't. And I feel if Ivory Tower didn't constantly have Ubisoft breathing down their necks all the time, they might've been able to give us a really amazing and enjoyable experience.