It’s been quite a while since we got the last Need for Speed; almost two years to be specific. Electronic Arts made a wise decision of dropping out of the year-on-year releases of their flagship racer. However, after the most excellent Forza Horizon 3, it’s clear that Need for Speed has a long gap to close. We get behind the wheel of the latest Need for Speed Payback and see if the full game is as good as the previews that were shown at E3.
What’s it about?
Payback can be best classified as a cross between the film The Fate of the Furious , and Forza Horizon 3. The story is set in a Las Vegas-style casino city called Fortune Valley, filled with glitz, glamour and illegal street racing. You follow a crew led by Tyler Morgan, who is an ace racer. Mac is a showy Brit with a penchant for offroading. Then there’s Jess, a strong and experienced getaway driver, who is fast and deadly. Together, after a series of double crosses, they find themselves on the other side of the law after some payback against the shadowy racing cartel only known as The House.
An image from Need For Speed Payback
Despite having some really good talent, like Dominique Tipper from The Expanse TV series, the voice acting grates on your nerves. It’s as if the actors have a gun to their heads while they’re reading their lines. Just when you think you’re safe from them in a race, they’re joined by more annoying characters, including a very irritating talk show host. Mac is quite entertaining though, because he has the best lines, but the rest will make you reach for the mute button.
While the storyline is promising, and at times even entertaining, the first few hours keep dropping you into races, behind the wheel of some beautiful cars, only to have a cut-scene wrench control from you, when you could have easily played through it. It’s something which Grand Theft Auto V did perfectly three years ago. They lifted Forza Horizon 3’s introduction to the characters easily; why couldn’t they have lifted the way GTA V handles scripted chases? Need for Speed Payback’s story is a bunch of missed opportunities, that’s mildly entertaining at times.
How does it play?
As a racing game, Need for Speed Payback is all-arcade fun. The cars look beautiful, and somehow, the best part of the game is the camera. It jolts in cinematically as you hit the brake or accelerate. When you drift, the camera pans around slightly, with a nice snap-and-ease-in effect. These little touches really bring that action-movie quality to the experience. Just driving around, drifting around the corner and then hitting a burst of nitrous to boost ahead and out of the curve is an uplifting feeling and makes up for most of the bad parts of the game.
An image from Need For Speed Payback
It’s clear that Payback has taken a lot from inspiration from Forza Horizon 3, though with a lot more of an action movie vibe to it. It’s a format where you find races happening around the map to participate in. It works for the most part. Where it breaks is in the progression aspects and the rewards. To unlock story missions, you need to keep doing races until you achieve enough race cards, which are random rewards in the form of upgrades for your car. So in order to get the right ones, to be ready for that mission, you’re stuck in an endless grind. Sure it’s fun, but the card drops are iffy and they aren’t transferable. Also, like most games today, Payback suffers from loot box syndrome, that nudges you towards using real money to buy better race cards in a series of boxes that contain random loot. Chances are you could end up with the cards you want, maybe something better, or maybe just spare parts.
The race AI is also unpredictable. For instance, sometimes you’re doing great in a race, when all of a sudden a car appears in front of you to claim the first spot. The same way during races, your car may reset in odd ways. Like when you almost miss a crash, but the car still resets you. Sometimes during the annoying valet missions, your car resets its position, but the game forgets to continue the mission for a while. This is incredibly disjointed.
An image from Need For Speed Payback
One of the core experiences of Need For Speed is the high-speed car chase, where the cops chase you as you race exotics. Being a heist game, Payback has not only cops in pursuit, but also goons from The House. While car chases are fun, they seem awfully scripted, rather than being a procedurally generated experience, which feels more organic. If you’ve seen one high-speed cop chase, then you’ve seen them all. Though, the crashes look very pretty, with detailed engine and body parts flying all over the place in glorious slow motion.
Graphics wise, Payback looks fantastic, with incredible-looking cars. The racing experience is well done, with some real heart put into it. It’s fun to find derelicts to fix up or to buy new cars to fill up your garage. In true EA fashion, what would have been a fantastic Need For Speed, has been ruined by business decisions made solely to extract money from the player. There’s still a good game in there, somewhere.
An image from Need For Speed Payback
Should you get it?
At its full price, no. You should look at getting it when it hits bargain bins. At the time of publishing, PlayStation has a sale on, selling the PS4 version for half the price. So watch out for deals. Unless of course, EA, by some change of heart, decides to take a long hard look at Payback, tweaking the game for the good of the player. Then it’s worth it .
Need for Speed Payback
Developer: Ghost Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Price: ₹3,499 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Amazon, and on PC through EA Origin
(The writer is a tech and gaming enthusiast who hopes to one day finish his sci-fi novel)
