Need For Speed: Payback !!INSTALL!!

Cars are improved by spending money on playing cards with unexplained car things on them, which allow incremental upgrades, occasionally at the cost of slight downgrades for other aspects. You need to improve your car to be able to compete in later quests in a chain. Cards cost around 15,000 carbucks, and you usually need about three of them to make a useful tune-up. The average race awards 7,000 carbucks, and one card. Can you see what they've done? Indeed, in order to make quite a piddly game drag out far, far longer, they force the player to grimly grind older, previously beaten races, to get enough cash to do the next.

Need for Speed: Payback

Sure, you don't need to buy anything to enjoy the main part of the game. But for a game like this, for the most part, this kind of thing just isn't necessary. The bulk of the experience is single-player, and yet EA has still decided to bundle in a heap of microtransactions.

And it really doesn't need microtransactions. No, it's not pay to win, you don't have to even think about touching them. But that EA even included them turns me off a little. There are very real things to fix with this franchise, and asking people for more money inside the game isn't how you do it.

Need for Speed has recently been rebooted, but on the evidence of Payback, it's not nearly enough. Diehards will enjoy it, and it is a good arcade racer deep down. But what EA really needs to do is come up with something fresh and give us a whole new Need for Speed experience next time.

Parents need to know that Need for Speed Payback is a racing game that's safe for all but the youngest gamers, though parents might want to talk to teenagers who either just started driving or will be soon to explain how this game differs from real-life driving. Especially since this game has you racing real cars on city streets at unsafe speeds, as well as off-road vehicles on dirt paths, along with trying to outrun the police. While there are violent car crashes, you never see the driver being injured, and thus there's no blood or gore. There are also opportunities to set side wagers for events. Otherwise, there's no inappropriate content.

Sort it out EA you really are scum. Where are all these 'it doesnt affect me' people now. Its embarrasing and these games need calling out. Its a disgrace a worse game than rivals can ask for extra money on top of the purchase price. 3/10 all day. Nice one Sammy nobody should feel any inclanation to buy this turd.

..yeah I have to totally disagree with this review... I've had it well over a week now and there's not once I felt I needed to purchase anything more or even grind that much (simply because there's so much to do and so many ways to earn in-game currency)... definitely it's annoying not being able to transfer cards - but by the time you upgrade to a new car, you just sell your old one, get a shed-load of cash for it and the cards attached to it, and then upgrade your new one... I had over 1,000,000 at one point and plenty of cars, and I wasn't even on the second round of races (after the helicopter chase)... and the map isn't dead - once you beat the races, you have racers driving around, derelicts to find, coins to collect, billboards to smash (nice to see those back), all the on-road challenges (speed, jump, drift, etc.) - the map is CHOC-FULL of things to do, and it certainly looks great in 4K... but ultimately the racing is just FUN, there's loads of racing (definitely more than the last version of NFS) - and it's just mindless arcade fun... it's definitely the closest thing we've had to Burnout... since... Burnout! (sometimes you have to try games for yourself to decide whether you like it or not...) :/

So true. These idiots at EA/Activision/Ubi all need to wake up. They're ruining their own industry. We teach our kids not to be greedy yet don't listen to our own advice as adults. They need to halt the greed.

@get2sammyb what difficulty did you olay the game on? Getting a part is mostly random but you can't leave out the fact that you can lock in a part, brand or bonus before you trade in tokens for a part and the part shop rotates every 10 minutes. I've never had any issues of my cars being under leveled and im never out of part tokens because repeating a few races is a part of the game. All reviewers do is complain about grinding because its prevents you from rushing out a review quickly, which is ironic considering I completed the game in 3 days with no car level issues. The game is supposed to last us 2 years and grinding for part tokens to get max level parts with 3 perks each is whats gonna make the game last, it gives the player a reason and incentive, along with autolog, to replay races. I do agree with most of your points about the story but its all opinion based, you dislike the story, I find it cheesy just like every other need for speed story so it didn't bother me

Spread out over an open world, Need for Speed Payback is a game that mixes paint trading street racing, with numerous other speed-related challenges for you to complete. In the races themselves, you'll face off against seven opponents in a no holds barred tussle for first place. Feel free to bash, ram, and spin your opponents on your way to first place, as you'll need to use every trick in the book to get out in front.

While races themselves are well signposted, with frequent checkpoints and large chevron overlays to signify sharp bends, getting around the world itself and finding the next events is a bit more challenging. As there's no route marker overlay on the road itself, you'll need to keep a close eye on your minimap to look out for your turn.

In fact, you earn boost (slowly) whether you drift or not, meaning you can use it almost constantly regardless of how well you turn. You need to lean on the boost, too, because most races sport some very noticeable rubber-banding. Sometimes I would finish a race in second place, only to improve my time on the next attempt and end up finishing in sixth. Thus, personal speed and improvement in any given race becomes less important than just working around your AI opponents. Silly strategies, like hanging onto a full tank of boost for the final straightaway, become necessary to counter last-second sneak attacks from artificially inflated AI.

And aside from a few story missions, every major event in Payback requires a specific type of vehicle: off-road races need off-road cars, drift challenges need drift cars, and so on. The game supplies you with the basics but quickly requires you to find your own contenders for future missions. That means grinding and blowing more money on new classes of car (or spending ages hunting for derelict vehicle parts). Then you still need to spend even more money on more random Speed Cards to juice those up, too.

In Payback, each new race is a main quest, so to speak, where the bump in level requirement is raised significantly. Taking on all the races back to back and you might find yourself under equipped not before long. You will need to play previous races again- which should be okay since this is a racing game- but it is not what one would expect in a Need For Speed title.

Getting derelicts up to snuff will take some time, as they all start from level 100. Be prepared to invest in many Part Tokens before they can get competitive. You will need to put in the time to really get that perfect build. So just hope the dice rolls are in your favour.

Need for Speed Payback has the makings of a solid racing game. It looks good, the driving is solid and there are lots of things to do. Unfortunately, there are all of these odd systems that feel like they were approved in a meeting room somewhere without actually being tested with the core demographic of gamers who play racing games. Forcing us to randomly get upgrades to progress and penalizing us with impenetrable AI and a cast of forgettable annoying characters hampers the fun action movie vibe that we were all hoping for. Do you feel the need for speed? Nope, neither do I. 041b061a72