Need for Speed Payback

A decently fun and fairly straightforward racer. Difficulty is absolutely whack and all over the place though. Still, had fun most of the time I was playing.

Need For Speed Payback is the second game in the series since EA decided to reboot the series with a no name developer at the helm with very little experience in making games and this time they decided to rip off The Crew and Forza Horizon 3.

Set in the heavily inspired by L.A. city of Fortune Valley Need For Speed Payback takes you through a story of revenge with a GTA V inspired way of storytelling through three different people with personalities so drab it’s hard to care about anything they’re going through. There’s hardly any backstory given to these characters yet you’re expected to care about them getting screwed over only ten minutes into the game setting up this stupid story about an illuminati-esque organization that owns the cops and is ruining street racing by having A.I. assisted augmented cars. The voice acting goes from acceptable to downright awful with lots of voice actors attempting accents that border on being racist. The story has some moments where it shines as a brainless action game but it takes itself way too seriously for the story mode to be fully enjoyable.

You progress through the game by taking down street leagues/teams working your way up to the leader. The teams specialize is in one of the five racing styles available being drift, drag, race, off-road, and runner, the latter not involving street leagues but working for “hackers” and running away from the cops. You’re required to go through the game with 5 cars, at least one for each race type. The physics between these modes are mostly the same with the only class controller noticeably different being Drag cars since they do wheelies. The world is filled with side activities ripped straight from Forza Horizon 3 like drift trials and speed traps. After beating a certain amount of street leagues/teams you unlock one of the five story missions which have some decent cinematic moments but give no reason to ever go through them again.

The physics model is based of the 2015 reboots but with many improvements. It’s now possible to control your car without it twitching and flipping at high speeds but it’s still an undesirable model. Cars still feel heavy and hard to control and it’s nearly impossible to turn without drifting. There’s no handling upgrades and there’s limited tuning options, usually only two or three options, that you can change on the fly when outside of a race but no matter how much you fiddle with the options your car will still control like ass.

The car list this time around I found to be more interesting than the previous installment but I still found it unsatisfying. You have your typical Nissans and Lamborghinis, but there’s a lack of any Toyota and Ferraris. The derelict system however is handled really well and I think handled better than Forza’s barn finds. To build a derelict you have to find five parts to build it and then you choose which race type it should be. The customization this time around has more options than the last game but still lacking in options in certain areas with the addition of vanity items like neon and tire smoke that can only be found in loot boxes where a big problem I have with the game lies. When upgrading cars you do so by buying speed cards from tune-up shops with stock that refreshes every 30 minutes or by being awarded a speed card on a loot roll at the end of a race you won. If you don’t like the part you won you can trade it in for a part token or sell or trade in lower level parts you own for part tokens too and when you get three part tokens you can do a loot roll at the tune-up shops for a chance at a better speed card. The main way of getting part tokens is through shipments which are this games version of loot boxes. Grinding for these part tokens is an intentional slow grind to coerce you into buying microtransactions. This causes progression problems when going through the story mode since when you eventually have to buy a new car it takes forever to upgrade it up to par. This sucks out a lot of replayability in this game since now it’s incredibly tedious to try out other cars in the game.

The car sounds are okay for the most part and the soundtrack has a decent amount of variety. The problem I have with the soundtrack is that you have no control over the playlist like previous games. Now there are certain songs that only play in certain race types or only in the garage and there’s no way to skip songs without restarting a race so when the horrible songs that sound like only someone who shops at urban outfitters would pretend to like comes on you’re stuck listening to it unless you mute the music.

Overall I give the game a four out of ten. The game lacks a lot of replayability due to the grind. I’ve given up on their ever being a good Need For Speed game after this installment especially given the current state of the gaming industry shoving microtransactions into every triple A game. Just go buy Forza Horizon 3 or wait out for The Crew 2.