The Crew Motorfest is Ubisoft's attempt to overtake Forza Horizon

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if that's the case, Playground Games must surely be blushing quite a lot right now. After going hands-on with a press demo for The Crew Motorfest, I can safely say that Ubisoft's upcoming open-world racing game shares a heavy dose of DNA with the popular Forza Horizon series.

In my preview video (above or on YouTube), you can hear my thoughts on the game based on the short demo I played through last week. Although when I say 'played', I really mean 'drove around like an a-hole, crashing into everything for science'. The demo itself kicked off with a vehicular montage that, just like in the recent Forza Horizon games, sees you jumping between different vehicles as you race around eye-catching locations from the games' open-world map.

Rather than being let off the leash to explore the gorgeous looking island of O'ahu, Hawaii though, I was only allowed to try out a couple of fixed tracks on a playlist of my choice. The available playlists included Vintage Garage, which gave me the chance to race classic cars, the Legendary Playlist that featured supercars aplenty and the Motorsports playlist which had a slightly more focussed racing experience aimed at more serious racing fans. In the end, I chose to try out the neon-tastic Made In Japan playlist, but only because I wasn't given the option to play my favourite playlist, Offroading Addict which, based on the intro montage, featured longer, open tracks and some super cool stunt jumps.

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