Need for Speed Payback Reviews
You have no reason to buy this game.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is a game with some good ideas and more than a few bad ways of executing them. The story gives you a good basis for a non-traditional racing game, and aping Forza Horizon isn't a bad way to go about it. The handling is purely arcade in style and fun to play, and the environments can give you some pretty good racing areas. However, even if you discount how bad the story plays out, you'll hate the fact that you'll never get to play the more exciting segments. Worse, the promotion of grinding makes the game drag on far longer than it should, making you want to put it away without even finishing the campaign, let alone try the multiplayer. It isn't the worst racer on the platform by any means, but it's certainly not worthy of the full asking price.
Need For Speed Payback offers a variety of content along with amazing graphic that serves every single detail in cars and epic cutscene. However, the constant grinding and random speed cards upgrade takes away from our experience.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Good fun for those looking for a game that plays like a summer popcorn action flick.
Microtransactions, loot boxes, mediocre characters, boring scenario and lots of grinding. Dear EA, what have you done?
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Arcade racing is what has defined Need for Speed since its creation, and Payback is not an exception to this rule. However, due unbalanced progression and the irrelevant single player campaign, this new iteration seem rather uninspired and lackluster.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Overall, I can truly say that this game has breathed new life into the series. This is a true comeback for the series and Ghost Games has done such a good job providing lots of entertainment and fun with this game. Despite the shortcomings of the game, I have enjoyed my time while playing it and I hope that the series can continue on with the same kind of feel. It was such a rush in a good kind of way and I can’t wait to get the same kind of feeling in the next installment.
Get past some of the poor design ideas, which feels more like an EA intervention than anything else, and there’s a really solid, fun arcade racing game here that’s highly enjoyable.
Need for Speed Payback just reuses its predecessors' formula. Despite having a very weak storyline, it kept me entertained for a few hours with its varied tests and missions.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Despite the microtransactions, the game is still a lot of fun, the driving is nice and easy to lose yourself in, especially with the varying environments and the open world challenges. Pushing yourself to get those 3 star ratings can be extremely fun, and the story is engaging and looks amazing all the while. I would love to be able to shout at you, screaming, “GO GET THIS GAME”! But it’s just not good enough for that; while I do recommend the game. I can’t say that its worth £50.
What a grind! NFS Payback has its moments of joy but it’s being held back by a luck-based progression system built around microtransactions.
Despite high hopes, Need for Speed Payback comes up short. It might be at home in a 1980s arcade, but we expect more from racing games these days and unfortunately, an extra year in deployment wasn’t enough to save this interaction from franchise fatigued.
Need for Speed Payback is a fun but ultimately flawed and frustrating game. I was optimistic going in based on what had been shown prior to release, and while the racing action is indeed as tight as ever (albeit lacking in set pieces which were so prominently advertised), there are just too many issues which add up to drag the experience down. It’s another classic case of quantity over quality, and while it isn’t an inherently bad game, it’s seriously let down by its linear structure, tedious progression and upgrade system, and terrible dialogue.
Despite the cringey dialogue and general over arcing storyline, Need for Speed Payback is a pretty enthralling 4 wheeled crusade. It may contradict itself by featuring linear, checkpoint ridden roads on a wide open, treacherous continent, but the races themselves are slick, chaotic and heart pounding for the most part, and with numerous secondary objectives and challenges to complete, there’s certainly a lot to keep you and your car occupied.
The villains of NfS: Payback are a faceless gang of crooks becoming wealthy through dodgy gambling practices. I am not sure if this level of Kafkaesque irony is sustainable in the gaming industry nowadays.
Ultimately we can say that, although NF Payback is not yet the perfect title, it actually manages to provide us with several interesting features that make it at times better than the previous one. We find a nice story and not too demanding, suitable for the type of game. Even the driving system is not bad and definitely improves, perhaps also because accompanied by a technical sector that, at least in the single player, proves decidedly superior. We do not have all those annoying frame drop that we found instead in NFS 2015 and we manage to play in a calm and fluid way, without any kind of problem. Too bad only for some details that, in our opinion, have a little 'spoiled the title, like the Speed Cards, which we find too random and unidentifiable. All in all, however, a chapter that is able to make us hope for the future, while still waiting for the real Underground 3!
Review in Italian | Read full review
Need For Speed Payback is a step in the right direction in some departments, but a few poor choices where it counts sets the game back overall. If you are looking for an adequate solo affair and don't mind grinding for speed cards to upgrade all the vehicles in your stable, than it is possible to find something worthwhile hidden behind Payback's misguided structure. If thrilling online races and roaming with friends in endlessly customizable cars is more your style, you are better off looking elsewhere.
The whole time I was playing Payback, I was thinking “I’d be much better off just replaying Burnout Paradise or one of the Forza Horizons”, which is sad but true.
Need for Speed Payback is a travesty of a game. Between 9 minute cycles of waiting at a vendor refreshing so I could buy better parts for my car, flying about a map populated with enough meaningless activities acting as filler, and the atrocious ending, it’s hard to pick out a point where I could say genuinely say the experience was fun.