Having been given the chance to sample The Crew Motorfest prior to faux E3 in June, I wasn’t expecting any more hands on until much closer to launch, but when Ubisoft offered me the chance to get a little over 3 hours with the game, I had to say yes. The brief hands on got me ready to scratch that Forza Horizon itch and now after this expanded time, I can say it did hit that sweet spot.

One of the questions that I had after my first hands on and the full reveal at Ubisoft Forward was regarding the planes, would they be back. I can confirm that yes, planes and boats are present in the game and you can swap to them at any time, just like you can in The Crew 2. But I am getting ahead of myself, as with the first preview I got to live out a sample of events and while they were the same, it was great to try them out. The preview actually started with the character creator, a chance to pick who I was and what I would look like, the game offered up a dozen or so basic looks, but you can customise it from there. Given that my time was short and this version of me would never live anywhere else but the preview, I just took the one that looked closest to me and it was time to hit the track, well the streets of Hawaii.

The first preview was very limited, I could choose two races and that was pretty much it, this time it was all open for me. The game gave me Cara, the games AI assistant that works much like Anna in Horizon, though with more personality. Cara was eager to help me choose a playlist, the games way of presenting a series of challenges and races and given I sampled two of them in the preview, I went with Made in Japan. The games playlists are not just a way of dropping a bunch of races onto the map, but rather they add everything to it. Made in Japan delivered 7 races, some others have 10 or more, but in addition to races I also got six feats, challenges that you tackle in free drive. Beyond that there were new photo spots to discover as well and fast travel back to the playlists starting location. With one playlist activated the map will seem quite empty, but by the time I got into my third list there were a lot of things to do on the map.

That brings me to the map itself, yes it is set on the main Hawaiian island, O’ahu and features some of the iconic locations that people know from it. It isn’t a 1:1 scale of the island though, as my drive from the Made in Japan starting point to one of the top parts of the island took maybe 10 minutes, but in reality it would take another hour. What the map has to offer, at least from what I saw of it, is plenty of fun places to race. As Hawaii is a series of islands that are volcanic in nature, there are a lot of hills and such to deal with, with one Made in Japan event highlighting that. In fact it was basically a hill climb event and then a downhill race all in one. While I was driving around between playlists, it was here I decided to break out into the plane, to see what trouble I could get up to.

Trouble sadly did not come my way; the default plane controls are not the most advanced and by that I mean banking left or right is not done with the stick. When I first tried it, I ended up ‘drifting’ the plane and that was not me being clever with a word, the game told me that. How one drifts an airplane I have no idea, but its possible here apparently. Now I wasn’t expecting Microsoft Flight Simulator levels of control, but something more than what I got by default would have been great. Thankfully some of the other media playing the game did confirm that you can modify the controls, which is something I will have to do once the full game comes out.

Something else I didn’t expect to worry about in the game were installing the various mods and upgrades that I earnt in races. From new wheels and brakes, exhausts and turbos, there was a lot of mod options and thankfully, like most RPGs they are colour coded and have numbers on them, so you can easily see which is the better option. If there are more in-depth customisation options, I didn’t see them, but I was more focused on the driving aspect.

Speaking of driving, I wanted to talk about the two other playlists I got to enjoy, the first was called Porsche 911 and the second was Vintage Garage. While both of them focused on racing, each had a different hook to them and if all others can do something different, that will be a very welcome change. The Made in Japan playlist was all about driving iconic Japanese racing cars, and as you might guess Porsche 911 is about driving variants of the 911 series. The hook here though was that you had to drive cleanly, as most of the cars are considered to be collectables, and you are not meant to damage them. The game has a meter on screen during those races, so you can see how well you are doing, but even if other folks crash into you, you lose points for damage, so be aware of that. The second was Vintage Garage, which like the earlier taste in the welcome event, has you driving older cars, but this time there was a twist. Navigating the world is done with photos of where you need to turn or drive past, given that those cars were built long before GPS was a thing.

I also got to sample Main Stage, which is the games rotating online challenges, some of them are about clean racing, others about just getting first place. The catch for them is that they are usually modified events you have already done, so if you enjoyed a particular playlist, you might get to try a slightly different take on it. The theme of mine was European sports cars, thus the name European Velocita and the clean racing modifier was attached. I won 5 of the 6 races as I was not that worried about the clean racing aspect. This of course brought my score down, so in the race I didn’t win, I spent more time ensuring I was sticking to the road and not causing any problems to the car, I lost big. The good news is that while the event is active, you can repeat each and every race as often as you like, trying to get a higher score and push yourself up the leaderboard.

Honestly, even though I had more than 3 hours with the game, I feel like I didn’t even scratch the surface of what is on offer. While The Crew offered up a story based racing experience, it was perhaps a little too unfocused and The Crew 2 corrected that with its tv show setting, the map was too large at times. This more focused map and car festival atmosphere might seem quite familiar, but with the modifiers for races, planes and boats to drive and of course, an even evolving online presence, it should appeal to many racing fans. The Crew Motorfest hit all the right notes for me, fun races, an interesting location to explore and a series of ever evolving challenges. Will I feel the same once the full game is out, who knows, I hope so and for now that is enough to help me count down the days to release.