Two games in, and the core gameplay of The Crew has taken a very different direction. The first was a racing heist/revenge tale in the same vein as some of the Need for Speed titles of the Xbox 360/PS3 era. The second followed the life of a future racing legend on land, sea, and air via a television series. The only common thread between them was the fact that both were open-world titles, much like a majority of Ubisoft's titles. The Crew Motorfest once again changes things up for the series, and we had a chance to check out the latest closed beta for the PS5.

The game opens with a helicopter flight over the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where a giant motorsport festival is taking place. After taking in the sights and seeing racers of all types come in, you're introduced to the festival, which has transformed Oahu into a giant racing playground. After selecting and modifying an avatar and selecting your car, you go and soak in the experience.

From the opening cut scene, you can immediately tell that the influence for this iteration of The Crew comes from Forza Horizon. From the festival setup to the cast of characters to the constant XP gain for performing tricks in the open world and multitude of challenges that pop up every few miles on the map, this takes the blueprint of Playground Games' successful racing spin-off and gives it a new coat of Ubisoft paint. This isn't bad at all, especially if you consider that the PlayStation family of consoles hasn't had anything like this for a long while. Racing fans on the PC and Xbox console family will immediately recognize what's going on in Motorfest.

Having said that, there is one change to the formula that shakes things up: playlists. You'll need to travel to certain locations on the map to start each playlist, but each one acts as something akin to a mini-campaign with a specific theme. The beta had roughly five of them from the beginning, whether it takes on cars and racing styles from Japan, goes off-road, races only with electric cars, races only with vintage vehicles, and goes through the history of Porsche. Unlike Forza Horizon's Festival Playlists, completing these are the only way to progress through the campaign, since they unlock even more playlists to explore in addition to main events that are set to change every month. Discovering and starting playlists is also the only way to fill the map with side activities; you can't stumble upon any of these things if you just drive around.

At the moment, one thing that might bug players is how often you'll switch cars in any given playlist. Each stage provides a specific car to use, so it alleviates the need to go to the dealership and buy the car you need, but that is still an option if you want to unlock certain playlists. While the game's overall handling for vehicles is tighter than ever, each car still handles differently enough that you might struggle to get through some parts of the playlist until you get better with each car — or take the offer of lowering the difficulty when the game offers it to you.

Fans of The Crew 2 will appreciate that Motorfest hasn't abandoned some of the traits of that title. The most notable is the presence of boats and planes that you can pilot. There were no playlists in the beta that let you pilot these exclusively, but the island featured various challenges that let you take advantage of those vehicles, so it'll be interesting to see if the final game focuses on cars or ensures that these sea and air vehicles aren't mere side attractions.

Motorfest looks quite stunning, from the lush jungles with loads of vegetation and waterfalls to better-looking cityscapes. The focus on a relatively smaller area compared to past games means that there's more of a focus on making things look prettier, and that's exactly what you get. The vehicles look shiny, but don't expect to see much damage aside from dirt on the body, and the people look good, even though you only see them in cut scenes and in the post-race sequences. The PS5 iteration sports two modes, and while the Resolution mode looks a tiny bit better, the drop to 30fps will make you head to Performance mode, where the bump in frame rate doesn't have a significant impact on the overall appearance.

The sound is similar in quality to the graphics. Characters in playlists tend to provide relevant facts or history about the cars or locales, and the delivery is good, but there are moments when the dialogue makes it feel like they're trying too hard to be funny. This is especially true of the ever-chipper AI assistant that sometimes cracks jokes that fail to be humorous. The soundtrack is varied when you're driving through the island. You get a good mix of rock and electronic tunes pumping throughout, but it really elevates when you start up a playlist and get stuff that's appropriate to the theme. For example, you'll get Japanese-tinged drum and bass when playing the Made in Japan playlist but Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" when going with the Vintage playlist, really nailing the mini-campaign feel of the playlists.

The Crew Motorfest acts as a very nice homage to the Forza Horizon series, which is a boon for PlayStation-only fans who have never experienced the five entries thus far from Playground Games. The racing has the right feel, while the playlists keep one focused despite the open setting. There's enough in the beta build to get players excited for the game's full release in a few months, and we can't wait to see if it lives up to our expectations.