Need for Speed Payback
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| This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Crappy Games Wiki from the Wayback Machine. |
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Payback is really gonna pay for microtransactions.
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Need for Speed Payback is an arcade racing video game, and the twenty-third installment of the Need for Speed series. It was developed by Ghost Games and was published by Electronic Arts for the Microsoft, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Bad Qualities
- A cheesy story with cringe-worthy dialogue throughout the game. This dialogue is interlaced throughout the game, and barely gives you a moment of silence.
- Lack of originality, most of the game's features are inspired by something else: the plot and cinematic moments by Fast & Furious, different builds like The Crew, and Forza Horizon-styled speed traps and barn finds.
- Unrealistic handling; you still need to drift to turn efficiently, brake to drift still remains, even if you have your driving aids active, and it's still twitchy. The poor physics and glitchy roads just make it even more annoying while playing the game (sometimes causing cars to do unintended jumps or crashes).
- Off-road was ill-conceived in this title, as they are somehow more similar to drift events.
- The map is unnecessarily complicated, especially in the Silver Canyon and Mount Providence.
- Manufacturers like Toyota and Ferrari are absent. The former due to Toyota's policy preventing production cars from appearing in 2017-19 released racing games that either are made by non-Japanese developers or games that are about illegal street racing, but Ferrari is left out completely for unknown reasons (most likely because they don't want their cars modified).
- However, Ferrari has made a return in Need for Speed: Heat.
- Other than the BMW X6 M being extremely powerful, and the Koenigsegg Regera with 400+ km/h/250+ mph top speed, pretty much every car shares similar specs when fully upgraded. At least on paper.
- No cops in free roam, while you can explain their absence with the fact that they're corrupt and won't budge unless The House calls on them, this explanation doesn't make the game any less boring.
- Police chases have become linear: instead of using your skills and wits to pull off the unimaginable and outrun the cops, all you'll have to do is to follow a set path and get to the end in-time, making police pursuits look like glorified time trials.
- Bait crate events are too short and lack any real purpose.
- Cops, when you somehow encounter them in missions or bait crate events, are needlessly aggressive, especially on Hard difficulty.
- Performance upgrades feel more akin to a mobile game. There is no specific performance parts; instead, they compiled specific part upgrades from Need for Speed (2015) into 6, almost randomly chosen, "speed card" categories as Head, Block, ECU, Turbo, Exhaust, and Gearbox, with levels from 1 to 18, perks as Speed, Acceleration, Nitrous, Jump, and Brake and fictional brands (e.g. Americana, Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, Outlaw) with each giving a different perk combo when stacked 3-6 of the same.
- With the new part level system, cars also have levels now, and the problem with that is some cars are limited to level 299 (max is 399). Some cars' 299 limit make no sense at all. You can upgrade a Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R (KPGC10) to 399 but you can't upgrade its successor, the Skyline GT-R V-Spec (R34), to 399, or even a Dodge Challenger SRT-8 392, or Porsche 911 Carrera S (993).
- Thankfully, the level cap has been removed and now all cars can be upgraded to level 399.
- Shipments (Loot boxes) that can only be purchased with premium currency. It doesn't help that these look and sound like slot machines, too. This is literally microtransactions.
- The game was unnecessarily hard due to the rubber banding AI and difficulty in upgrading cars. At launch, events awarded players with so little money compared to the prices of cars and upgrades (especially upgrades, since the Tune-Up shops weren't giving decent parts) and it was basically encouraging players to buy shipments. They tried to fix it by increasing the payouts from completing events, but it didn't address the quality of parts in the Tune-Up shops. When they did offer higher quality parts, the event payouts reverted back to their previous amount.
- However, if you're skilled in arcade racing, you can make Hard mode look like Easy mode.
- You can never buy the speed card (performance upgrade) you really want. You have to use trade-in cards for good parts or wait for the card you wanna buy to appear in the Tune-Up shop.
- There was a useful glitch that allows you to replicate the speed cards you want before it was patched out.
- Product placement. This extends to vinyls as well; one such example would be the NVidia logo.
- Just like in Carbon, some of the billboards in the game advertise other real-world cars like the Aston Martin Vanquish S and Lamborghini Aventador LP740-4 S (which was made playable in The Grand Tour Game), yet those same cars are non-drivable here.
- However, the Lamborghini Aventador LP740-4 S became playable in Need for Speed: Heat, replacing the Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4.
- Just like in Carbon, some of the billboards in the game advertise other real-world cars like the Aston Martin Vanquish S and Lamborghini Aventador LP740-4 S (which was made playable in The Grand Tour Game), yet those same cars are non-drivable here.
- Though you can now have as many cars as you want, you are limited to 100 wrap slots, and even just changing your cars' color takes up a wrap slot!
- It was originally 50 wrap slots prior to being doubled in an update.
- Some graphics look bad in certain places. In some backgrounds, cars have inexcusably low texture rendering and polygon counts.
- Speaking of the graphics, the low texture rendering and polygon counts make the game look like a Wii U game, even the Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) have better texture rendering and polygon counts.
- The game often freezes and stutters when loading parts of the map. This includes cutscenes, too. And other than that, general performance is sub-par on standard Xbox One and PS4.
- Buying cars with real money lacks value. For example, the two DLC cars - the Aston Martin DB5 and the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am - cost $3.99 each, and have substandard performance.
- Some visual glitches, such as foliage or bystanders spawning in mid-air. There are also many cutscenes where cars are seen traversing across a fixed plane instead of over the ground surface, making it looks like as if they're levitating.
- Multiplayer is a mess. At launch, free roam was absent, and speed lists were more luck based. If the terrain didn't get you, other players certainly would! If you didn't get beaten up by players, there is a chance that you can win the race. Multiplayer net code is still as atrocious as ever. You can see cars lag switching through you though there is no lag actually.
- While free roam was eventually added, it is empty and lifeless, with nothing do to in it, and even a lack of co-op play despite 3 major updates you can't do the campaign races with your friends.
- Several special license plates (eg. Battlefield plates, other Ghost Games Need for Speed titles) were wiped out from players' accounts by a bug that was not fixed meaning, players permanently lost these special license plates.
- The game is nigh-unplayable on PC if played on a wide screen with 3080x1080 resolution setting since the camera doesn't show the entire vehicle when following from behind.
Good Qualities
- It has a proper progression system similar to previous NFS titles.
- The career mode is offline, meaning that the ability to pause and mod the game has returned.
- The day and night cycle returns after it was made absent in the previous title.
- The game features similarities to the classic Need for Speed titles. Like garages, discrete Tune-Up shops and stuff.
- Drift races are decent enough to be enjoyable and competitive (not the multiplayer ones).
- It features more manufacturers and cars including better super cars and hyper cars than the previous game. Not only have hyper cars like the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder returned, but also new models that make their series début like the 2016 Acura NSX (NC1), the 2017 Ford GT, the Aston Martin Vulcan and the Koenigsegg Regera.
- Customization is deeper and simpler compared to other racing games despite the wrap editing/vinyls still being a bit limited, and its microtransactions.
- Also, the NISMO LMGT4, which can only be equipped to the Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec (R34) in NFS 2015, can now be equipped to any Nissan car.
- Though the story is cheesy, it's based in the same universe as the old Need for Speed games like Most Wanted, Carbon or even ProStreet and Undercover. At some points, you encounter some of those old characters, some of them as rivals, some of them with just hearing their names.
- It can be played completely-offline unlike the last few games in the franchise.
- The soundtrack is pretty decent, especially the atmospheric theme song. (Almost all story songs are composed by Joseph Trapanese, who worked on The Crew's soundtrack too.)
- The engines sound pretty good, especially in cutscenes.
- While not as good as The Crew, this game's photo mode is decent with its filters and options.
- Jake Paul's recent addition to the game actually provides a good opportunity for those who hate him to smash up his car; the NFS community on Reddit has even held a take down Jake Paul competition.
- It also had a Burnout Paradise Easter egg which is the wrecked version of the Civilian car from that game.
Reception
The game has received mixed or average reviews from critics and fans, some critics were more critical, on Metacritic, the PC version has a score of 62/100 and a user score of 3.8, the PlayStation 4 version has a score of 61/100 and a user score of 4.3 and the Xbox One version has a score of 61/100 and a user score of 3.9.
Metro GameCentral considered it as the second weakest Need for Speed game of the modern era along with the 2015 reboot, Destructoid said it is another result of EA meddling in the concept of “Games as a service” and taking an otherwise mediocre entry in the series, GameCritics wanted this game to be good.
According to The NPD Group, it was the eighth best-selling title in the United States in November 2017.
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