The Crew Motorfest is a brilliant Horizon-like for PS5 owners, but it’s a baffling substitute for The Crew 3

Upon The Crew Motorfest’s reveal at this year’s (frankly bizarre) Ubisoft Forward in June, I think I had the same dismissive reaction as most people: some variation of “we have Forza Horizon at home”. I’m pleased to say I was hasty, and wrong, in this initial assessment. To be clear, The Crew Motorfest is a fine open-world racer, and in my view is actually better than Microsoft’s flagship driving game in a lot of ways, particularly in terms of its structure, but also because it at no point makes you drive through Edinburgh.

Sure, the Horizon inspiration is clear and undeniable. All the bits are there: the glossy Instagram-fresh presentation, the optimistic sunshine, the infinite-budget “motoring festival” that takes over an entire territory for an indefinite amount of time. The boffins at Ivory Tower can forgive us for our healthy scepticism.

But you could easily argue that Ivory Tower are actually reclaiming the genre from Forza, given its origins as the team behind Test Drive Unlimited: a seminal open-world racer which people loved because it was a great road trip simulator with interesting life sim elements, despite being a bit of a rubbish racing game with a driving model that left a lot to be desired. That’s a description which, incidentally, applies just as well to The Crew and arguably The Crew 2, games which were very much conceived as spiritual successors to TDU.