Here’s an example of live service being executed excellently, then: The Crew Motorfest’s forthcoming Year 2 update almost looks like an entire new game. For existing owners of the acclaimed racer, you’ll get access to a brand new island, inspired by Maui. This effectively doubles the size of the title’s open world, and you won’t be paying a penny for the privilege to explore it.
Available from 6th November, the map will also be accompanied by the addition of a new Playlist, which for those who don’t know are themed mini-campaigns packed with events. Made in Japan Volume 2 will build upon the blueprint introduced in the base game, and will see you drifting your way through Tokyo-style decorated streets against familiar faces.
Once you’ve completed all of the main races, you’ll unlock the Rivals Race Board, allowing you to take on all 11 foes on the open roads in randomly generated spints. Earn the top score to unlock rewards – again, all completely free for owners of the base game. More Playlists will be added in the future, as developer Ivory Tower has committed to another year of support.
For those looking to get even more value out of the game, though, the Year 2 Pass will include an entire new mode and campaign, called Chase Squad. This goes a little Need for Speed, and sees you recruited to the police where you’ll need to complete pursuits to take down criminals. You’ll need to track your targets by following clues, and then chase them down.
As you’d expect, there’ll be a ton of cars to unlock as part of the new mode, while the Year 2 Pass will also provide you with a new vehicle every month. It’ll all get started with the BMW M5 CS and Nissan Skyline GT-R R32. So there’s an absolute metric ton to look forward to here, especially if you already own the game.
Remember, the developer is also working on offline modes for both The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest which will ensure they remain playable long after their live service support ends. Are you excited to get back behind the wheel of Ubisoft’s flagship arcade racer? Sound your sirens in the comments section below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 47
Way to go ubisoft! And they announced that the crew 2 and motorfest will have offline modes available later. Its rare to see such ubisoft wins
Crew 2 79p on the store at the moment
Bought Crew 2 after hearing the news about offline mode, for £0.79 and although it’s not a great racer it’s good to just go wherever in the USA.
Wanted to like this game but the handling is eh.
@trev666 @Onearmbandit I really like The Crew 2. Like you say, it's fun driving around the entirety of USA.
Love motorfest, but has a lack of playlists so this is a very welcome update. It's a much better game than the Crew 2
@MrPeanutbutterz Handling is the best I've experienced in an open worlder for a long time. Never enjoyed forza's slippery and lofty physics. Also road cars get beached on the sand, whereas in forza they can just fly over any ground
I never really put much time into Motorfest (apart from a bit with the trial version), loved The Crew 2 but long since finished with it, perhaps with such positivity from people and a massive update it's time to dive in.
@SlipperyFish Yeah I agree it's better than Forza Horizon in that regard at least (FH for my money is one of the most overrated franchises to exist in gaming).
@get2sammyb
To be fair I haven’t played much at all so I will give it more of my time. Just wanna ride n chill.
May have to pick motor fest up. Often around £20 and getting an offline mode too
@MrPeanutbutterz I agree. Motorfest's cars at least all feel different, and how they're supposed to feel, like a 50s American feels wildly different to a Ferrari SF90. Open world racing physics is always a difficult balance, if you like super realistic or super arcadey racers then I definitely understand why it's not for you
I have played a lot of Unbound. But that post launch development "soon" will end. Installing now that Trial version of Motorfest. Lets see how it feels.
Just bought the ultimate edition as it was on sale.
Thing about these always online games is that the tone is aimed squarely at the terminally online. We either end up with "How do you do, fellow kids," or something rocking a fedora. Or something that THINKS it is rocking that fedora. Or maybe no fedora...but it's still got that fed-aura.
@SlipperyFish Yeah my main racers are usually GT, a rally sim, twitchy arcade racer like Wipeout or Burnout, and some form of Mario Kart. Though one of my all-time favourites is NFS Most Wanted 2012 - not necessarily an unpopular game, but one I seem to hold in higher regard than most.
I actually bought a Series X just for FH4 and 5, boy was that a letdown. Hands you hyper cars after an hour and you can drive them through stone country walls at 400km/h... yawn. The Series X did afford me the chance to revist Sonic And Sega All-stars Racing Transformed at 60FPS, so there was that at least.
@MrPeanutbutterz Most Wanted 2012 is a love it or hate it game. As a massive fan of old school NFS, me and many other fans hate MW2012 for being nothing like a NFS game. If you seperate it from the NFS brand it's a good game at it's core, but there is a lot of bitterness around it.
NFS underground 1/2, Carbon, Most Wanted 2005, and ProStreet are all favourites of mine, along with Inital D PSP, the entire GT franchise, Burnout 3/Paradise, Dirt 2 and 3, Automodellista, TDU 1 and 2, Midnight Club, Dirt Rally, the earlier Grid games (1/2/autosport), PGR4, and one of the best, Forza Motorsport 4.
The racing genre kinda sucks these days, I don't play many modern racers other than mario kart, GT7, and Motorfest. The hot wheels games are pretty fun, and I try a lot of the indie racing games which are hit and miss. Hot shot racing and Art of Rally are good fun though.
I also love the Initial D and Wangan Midnight arcade games, there's nothing quite like racing salarymen under a McDonalds in Shibuya... really wish they'd port those games to console and localise them
Sorry, love talking about racing games. Thanks for listening to my tedx talk
I’ll wait for an offline mode, my internet is terrible
I got comfortable not owning Ubisoft games anymore.
^top comment and I completely agree
The Gran Turismo franchise spoiled me. I own all of The Crew games and vast majority of NFS, but the arcade physics never hook me long enough to finish any of them. I might, just might, download Motorfest and give it another shot because of this update AND because TD Solar Crown looks like it missed its mark.
@MrPeanutbutterz Racing Transformed is nearly perfect. It's like the Smash Bros of Sega games. It just needs some dicey shortcuts.
You know your racers, so I imagine you have heard of Deathsprint 66? It's an original from Sumo. Looks nuts.
Yeah it is , and for those that don't have a series X lying around , get it on a sale on steam , looks even better (much better if you've got a decent tv)
It's so good I hardly ever play Mario Kart anymore !
I really enjoyed Motorfest, and recently installed it again, so this is welcome news.
Once you've adapted to its little idosyncrasies, its a fantastic open world racer which I found even more enjoyable than Forza Horizon 5. I dont say that lightly either as Im a big fan of Forza Horizon..
I see its also getting ps5 pro support, Id love a 120hz mode.
I'm surprised at how close Motorfest got to mimic the driving feel and festival atmosphere of Forza Hozion 5. It even went overboard in how annoying/ unnaturally cheery the NPC presenters are.
Platinum’ed this a while back. Enjoyed it a lot, especially the made in Japan series, the art style and filters on that playlist were proper eye candy👍
@SlipperyFish Lol, I'll happily attend a TED Talk about racing games.
Funnily enough, the first NFS game I played was a demo of the original on PS1, and then... nothing until Hot Pursuit in 2010. I only hopped in on that because Criterion were developers, and it's also the main reason I got MW 2012 at launch. But I can see why it's not liked by many.
I've had most of those games you listed - bar Automodelista. I remember looking at it in a store but was neck-deep in university exams at the time so never got around to it. PGR4 was one of the reasons I bought a 360 to go with my PS3 (used to play PGR3 heaps at a friend's, and their grand daddy MSR). The epochal FM4 came with my 360, so was happy with that.
Am a big fan of most of the Burnout games too. Burnout Revenge was the first game I bought digitally on my Series X.
Actually the last racer I went all in was Hot Wheels Unleashed. Enjoyed it so much I 100%'d it on PS4, PS5, and Series X 😂 HWU2 felt like a step in the wrong direction.
Redout 2 has really messy track design, and I enjoyed Pacer until the AI craft started using flashbangs that actually blind the player - you can tell the devs only ever tested this on a little monitor at a workstation, and not sitting in a dark room in front of a 65" OLED.
Racing games are indeed in poor health at the minute. Solar Crown looks like a swing and a miss. Probably gonna pick up Super Woden GP2 next. But might fire up DriveClub for the first time in a while now. Cheers!
@LikelySatan Ha, yeah it really is. The sequel wasn't quite as good, but still enjoyable.
Have indeed seen DeathRace. Bit of me thought "would it kill you guys to use anti-grav crafts" lol.
@MrPeanutbutterz if you've only played the criterion NFS then yeah that makes total sense. A NFS game with no car modding makes no sense to me, however I did play 2012 on my dad's PS3 and remember enjoying it except from finding a new car, and it being blocked behind DLC. I did prefer 2015 despite the cringe cutscenes and janky physics, but felt like a proper NFS game. Payback and Unbound are pretty terrible, and I played a lot of Heat but it really lacked polish. I think we might never see another NFS game honestly.
Automodelista I've only emulated, it's pretty rare and expensive to buy, but also a pig to emulate. I love the style of the game and the fact you can even customize your garage, such nice detail.
Shame about HWU2 as I've not played it yet, and I need to get myself a copy of Driveclub. Super Woden gp2 looks pretty cool as well.
A real shame about TDU Solar Crown, the map looks really cool - finally an open world racer with narrow, twisty roads. The physics seem OK too, but terrible performance, server issues, and seemingly bad progression let it down a lot. Hopefully they can patch it to something playable
@SlipperyFish Yeah honestly I approached the Criterion NFS games as extensions/offshoots of Burnout instead of NFS games. And I rather enjoyed NFS Rivals as well - in fact I still have it installed on my PS5 external hard drive despite originally playing it at PS4 launch. 2015... I played the ass out of that as I had recently moved, started a new job and wanted a proper "switch brain off for an hour at night" sort of game and really enjoyed it. Got bored of Heat and Payback in no time, but did finish Unbound.
Didn't realise Automodelista was rare! I think one of the boys has it in his attic...
HWU2 isn't a bad game per se, but it feels like change for the sake of change, to add a list of "new features" to the back of the box. Being able to jump adds nothing to the game, neither does being able to tweak stats. The open-ish map checkpoint races are no fun. HWU1 was a much purer experience while 2 has these superfluous bits that add nothing. Definitely still worth a buy these days with the dearth of racers and the fact it's frequently super cheap.
Gah yeah I had my eye on Solar Crown but have been burned far too many times with pre-orders, so I said I'd wait and here we are. Hope it gets fixed for sure.
@MrPeanutbutterz Rivals is an interesting one for sure, it's the one that was made by Criterion and Ghost, before being handed over to Ghost. I actually played in on PS3 and was pretty blown away by the graphics. I did buy it for PS4 for like £2 on sale but haven't played it yet as I learned there's no manual transmission which takes a bit of fun away for me. Unbound I saw the car list was exactly the same and I wasn't a fan of the graphical features (I know they can be turned off though) so I didn't want to pay £60 for the exact same cars.
Yeah man, Auto Modellista frequently goes for about £40 for a decent condition copy. I almost bought it a few years ago for £20 but passed, now the prices have shot up for it. Probably got featured on some YouTube video or something. But there aren't too many copies up for sale
I played HWU on switch but I think I have it from PS Plus as well, thinking of replaying it. If I come across a cheap copy of HWU2 I'll give it a shot
Most of TDU's original developers moved to Ivory Tower to develop the Crew which is interesting. TDUSC is developed by the old WRC developers (before EA got that license) so I thought it would have a better launch at least
The Crew 2 currently at 80p is an absolute no brainer. Fantastic support from Ubisoft for both games btw. Other publisher's take note.
As much as I enjoy them though, the Forza Horizon games are in a league of their own when it comes to open world racing.
@__jamiie I mean 80 pence in case anyone was confused. Although seeing a game run at 80p resolution would be incredible. 😂
@MrPeanutbutterz Death sprint 66?
Can anybody tell me how the the crew motorfest plays with a steering wheel please? Also is it all cars or does it force you into other vehicles?
@get2sammyb it’s one of my favourite racing games for sure. I have close to 1000 hours I believe. The multiplayer is nice and quick.. in and out and kept me hooked for a nice while!
However then I got a Thrustmaster t300 rs and the handling sucked in it for wheels. Got gt7 and now it’s hard to go back to controller once you’ve used a good wheel.
@SteveJaye I have the thrustmaster T150 and it's taken me a bit of tweaking but I've got the settings just right for me and I'm having a blast (I just bought it in the sale.) I have the steering lock set to 360 in the options and I'm using mode 1 on the actual wheel base itself. All assists off. Very nice game and is so like TDU which is one of my fave racing games. I agree that once you use a steering wheel you never go back to the pad especially on GT7 and EA sports wrc. I'm looking to upgrade my wheel soon but I'm waiting to see what thrustmasters new direct drive unit is like before I buy the gt 2 unit. What is the T300 like as the over heating reports put me off it?
Didn’t really look at this at launch but might give it a go now it’s on sale. £20 or £30 for deluxe. Is the season1 pack worth it?
@Northern_munkey ya they fixed that problem with a firmware update that lets you keep the fan on the whole time. I’ve played it for like 6 hours straight and have had no problems. I was gonna go with a direct drive too but after playing around with the t300 I can’t feel any of the gears and it’s very smooth. Not 100% smooth but you can’t even notice it. The Logitech g29 is grindy and loud.
With the crew 2.. for me it just never felt as good as gt7. It’s hard to go back to arcade racers but I’m sure I will get the latest one at some point.
Only one new playlist? That's disappointing.
@SteveJaye the crew 2 was awful with a steering wheel. I was asking on here if anybody knew if motorfest was any good with a wheel but nobody responded so I just bought it yesterday and it's great..really responsive but its no gt7..its pure arcade racing like dirt 5.
@Northern_munkey yeah that’s what I figured. Damn it’s just so hard to go back to controller for racing. I thought I remember reading that they focused a lot more on wheels for motorist but I guess it wasn’t enough.
@SteveJaye it's actually really well implemented in motorfest. I haven't tried planes,boats or bikes and I'm not sure I want to but the cars handle really well and I quite liked trying to replicate the millionaires challenge from TDU (1 lap of the island in under an hour.) It's worth a go for £20 or whatever the Canadian dollar equivalent is.
I dowloaded the trial last night. I enjoyed the first game, but did not like the 2nd game at all. Cool that they are supporting the game with free stuff.
Can we agree to leave the phrase "live service done right" alone? 2nd article in a week in these lines.
@LikelySatan Oops, yeah that one. Looks nuts for sure.
@SlipperyFish I quite liked the gadgets in Rivals, ditto the handling to the point where I was playing Hot Pursuit Remastered and it didn't hit the same.
HWU2 was about a tenner on PSN recently. Sorry I didn't pick it up as I do enjoy noodling about in HWU1 regularly and 2 would suit the same sort of casual half hour sessions.
I wasn't aware of that about the devs! Had high hopes for Solar Crown as I quite like the WRC games (once they came to PS5 and moved to 60FPS at least), but alas.
@MrPeanutbutterz Rivals was a proper cops vs racers kind of game. Frustrating at times but definitely felt better than Hot Pursuit imo. However I might get Hot Pursuit on switch since switch lacks any proper racers outside of Kart racers.
HP2 on PS2 was an absolute banger though.
Yeah the WRC games are good, especially since the main dirt series is dead. I suppose it was the teams first online open world thing, definitely something I'll pick up when it inevitably has an insane sale and hopefully it improves as a live service title.
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