Need for Speed Payback Reviews
Need For Speed Payback feels like stepping into the latest Fast and Furious, and it's a great ride.
A step back that betrays the good gameplay of the series and the excellent achievements of the 2015 reboot.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Need for Speed comes back stronger than ever with an open-world game that has a great story mode and gameplay mechanics adapted to every player.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is an epic racing game thanks to his cinematographic style. Fans of the franchise will be very satisfied with all the content that awaits in the game.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is another miss for the franchise. The racing feels good, the presentation is great, but everything surrounding it is absolutely abhorrent.
Need for Speed Payback feels like the natural evolution of the series, and that’s a good thing considering the game ends with a great tease for a potential sequel. While I finished the story in around 15 hours, it’s worth noting that there are a ton of side events and collectibles that I failed to collect in that time. I could see myself easily doubling my time within Payback, and do so with a smile on my face the entire time.
A famous name in need of fresh ideas
Whilst there are moments when the arcade racing feels like fun, there is an omnipresent sense of Déjà Vu, that you've played this all before.
Ultimately, there's nothing outstanding or innovative enough here: it feels too much like the designers took a bunch of features from other racing games, threw them all into Payback and added a few Hollywood action sequences.
Need For Speed Payback squanders its potential, favoring grind, gambling, and loot boxes over gameplay, story, and progression.
Need For Speed: Payback had all the chances to become a good game, but strange physics, boring competitions, a stupid plot and rough graphics spoiled the final impression. Of course, a good soundtrack is still in place, the desert landscapes look atmospheric, but an endless grind that does not give any pleasure, discourages any desire to play further.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is a real-world example of microtransactions gone wrong. As an open world racer, the game's inoffensively average – but when paired with its bafflingly bad progression system, it's frankly an embarrassment. It's scary to think that publishers are quite literally sabotaging their own games in pursuit of a bonus buck or two these days.
The driving and actual gameplay is still fun and well done. There's actually a very good open world racing game in here, it's just bogged down by level progression and needless grinding that is only there to extend the gameplay time and to get people to spend real money to potentially get upgrades for the cars.
It can feel like a bit of a drag at times unless you enjoy cruising the open world.
There's a perfectly fine racing game somewhere in this mess of half-baked ideas. A fun arcade racer has been drowned in enough ‘one more thing' additions to fill the entire run of Columbo, and the result is a rather unpleasant muddle of bland story, stop-start driving, and player control being ripped away just as things get juicy.
The new Need for Speed has some serious problems that need to be addressed: mainly, the over-use of loot boxes (and microtransactions) and a broken progression system that relies too much on randomness and grinding. The story is cringeworthy, full of bidimensional characters and annoying catch-phrases. All that being said, the arcade driving model is accessible and extremely fun as always, and the open world is pretty big and full of activities that can keep the player engaged for a long time. Oh, and you're gonna spend a lot of time in the garage pimping your ride.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is a well-designed sandbox that's at its most entertaining when you ignore what's supposed to be the core of the game. The story is dud, and the game's Ultimate Team-inspired upgrade system is an attempt to force a square peg into a round hole, but there's no denying tearing down desert roads at 180 mph in a souped-up 1965 Mustang is a blast. Need for Speed Payback is a fun joyride, but it doesn't quite hold up over the long haul.
Like the so-called reboot from 2015, Need for Speed Payback is better and more fun than it really should be. In fact, Ghost Games latest creation is the most entertaining Need for Speed game for many years, making it an extra pity that the final polish is missing.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
Need For Speed : Payback is a game that everyone hoped might put the series back into the limelight of seat-of-the-pants racing. Instead, the game has middle-of-the-pack graphics, weak storyline, emotionless driving and a poor upgrade system. This game is definitely a car in full-throttle reverse instead of speeding off in the right direction.
The game sacrifices specificity of environment, story, and characterization so as to ensure that the car is king.