Need for Speed Payback Reviews
Microtransactions, loot boxes, mediocre characters, boring scenario and lots of grinding. Dear EA, what have you done?
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Need for Speed Payback is a decent racing game held back by a weak story, grinding, and micro-transactions. If you can live with these elements, you will have a lot of fun in this game.
If you stick with it you'll find a decent racer here but getting past the inane narrative, broken progression systems and longing for racers past takes some doing.
Terrible narrative aside, Need For Speed: Payback is a fun addition to the prolific racing franchise
Despite Need for Speed Payback’s accessible and gratifying approach to arcade racing, the time needed to progress in a satisfactory manner regresses the joy of the rubber meeting the road to a grind that ironically brings the pace of the game to a grinding halt. Need for Speed Payback totes itself as a romp of reckless abandon but ultimately lacks the longevity, charisma and conviction necessary to make it a ride worth taking.
Need For Speed Payback squanders its potential, favoring grind, gambling, and loot boxes over gameplay, story, and progression.
Need For Speed Payback is fun when you're behind the wheel, but is constrained by questionable design decisions like an emphasis on a mediocre story and a wonky car upgrade system.
Like a nice car that comes with an aftermarket spoiler that doesn’t quite match, Need for Speed Payback is a game with some interesting parts that don’t quite mesh into one synergistic package. Its open world is beautifully vast and its diverse car selection will have something for everyone. Unlikable characters, however, combined with grindy gameplay with a hint of mobile gaming elements stall the momentum of a game with potential.
When you're racing, drifting, off-roading or being chased, Payback feels like a fine arcade racer in the classic Need for Speed mould. It doesn't have the glamour or the handling of Forza: Horizon, but it's scores big on variety, speed and thrills.
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.
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.
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
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
A famous name in need of fresh ideas
In an effort to adopt the stylings of other popular, open-world racers, Need For Speed: Payback presents some fun ideas with poor execution.
Despite it's flaws, I still found Need for Speed: Payback quite a likeable arcade racer. Just having a narrative sets it apart from the other, more serious offerings this year, even if it's not delivered with much panache. Sadly it's attractive visuals, and alternate take on the genre, can't disguise a gamut of poor design decisions, some of which serve to make the enjoyable racing less than enjoyable.
Need for Speed returns with another flawed entry. There's the core of a great racing game here and when you're just driving around the open world, it's wonderful. The progression system encourages grinding and the basic story is delivered with B-movie seriousness, taking away from the racing pleasure. There's a better game inside of Payback, but you have to go through everything else to get to it.
This open world has plenty of racing content, but bad progression, technical problems, and throwaway storytelling make it hard to get invested
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.
If arcade racing is what you're after Need for Speed Payback will deliver in loads, but don't expect to fall in love with each and every discipline in the game that's obscured by a frustrating upgrading system.