Payback is the first NFS game I’ve played and I’m honestly impressed. It was on sale for around €3 and I thought why not give the series a try. It’s hard to make comparisons with other NFS games but perhaps this writing can be helpful for the ones who haven’t given these games a try yet. I’m a fairly casual racing fan who enjoys certain racing games from time to time but I don’t play them a lot. Controlling the cars is typical with differences in feel and strengths based on the stats of a car. A car has 6 equipment slots (turbo, gearbox, head, etc) that can go up to level 18. These slots can be seen as cards where various stats improve. You can upgrade your cars in tune shops. New stock is added every 10 minutes. There are other means to get these cards such as completing story missions and there is kind of a gambling system with a different currency. Then you have 4-6 different car types more suitable for certain missions. See the car types as a job or class system similar to RPG games. The game has 5 main story chapters with lots of missions. There is also plenty of optional content in the form of activities and collectibles (100 chips and 30 billboards). Activities are mini challenges grouped in speed trap, speed run, jump and drift. You need to find them and try to get 3 stars for each one of them. There is more to the game but this is pretty much the main content.

I didn’t expect the story mode to be this engaging. Sure it’s generic and cliche. I wasn’t interested as much at the beginning but the more I played the more I liked it. It’s mostly thanks to the voice actors. There are many of them and I couldn’t wait to hear what they had to say. Mac is awesome and so is the rest of the crew plus enemies. The game even has a couple of full motion videos and I also wanted more music for being so good. I can imagine there being fears about the economy of upgrading cars and buying them. I vaguely remember complaints about this when the game first released but I didn’t notice anything with this current version. Everything was perfectly balanced and you even get more than you need. I did focus on upgrading one car type and a couple of more for specific achievements. I have around 18+ cars. I’m not into collecting all cars, so it might be different with that in mind. It was such a joy exploring the map, find collectibles, challenges, locations and then continue with the story. The map was the perfect size: not overwhelmingly big and not too small either. Enough to feel like you’re getting lost in your playground but not too much to the point you feel like it’s work and therefore demotivating. The achievements were mostly fine and fair. There are a couple of multiplayer ones though. You can get them quickly as long as you find a team.

In terms of negatives, there are 2 main ones. No extensive filter options when using a map and load times. As mentioned before, the game has many cool things to do. There are many different icons. It’s very odd that there is no option to filter out the activities you’ve completed or the collectibles you’ve found. You have to see them while you’re searching for things you still need to do. The game takes ages to load when you start it, but it also loads often enough in between. It was a bit too much for my liking. Lastly you have to deal with EA’s launcher to play this on Steam but at least it wasn’t a big problem here. All the achievements unlocked without any issues.

Payback felt like an RPG game in a sense. It’s crazy because that’s not what I expected before I got involved. But it’s used in the best way to enhance racing imo. I don’t understand anything about car parts but I got more involved with the way this game simplified and presented this aspect. I wholeheartedly recommend Payback for newcomers, ones who want a casual experience, a fun popcorn ride or completionists who want to get all the achievements. It’s a solid game with a lot to offer (over 61 hours spent). It’s on sale frequently, definitely make use of the offer the next time.

Lost the essence of what Need for Speed was even supposed to be. Hard pass on this one, it's terrible.

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