Gaming the system that way isn’t nearly as satisfying as shaving seconds off a run, either through repetitive training or fine-tuning your vehicle. 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. Thus, personal speed and improvement in any given race becomes less important than just working around your AI opponents. Sometimes I would finish a race in second place, only to improve my time on the next attempt and end up finishing in sixth. You need to lean on the boost, too, because most races sport some very noticeable rubber-banding. 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 drift through corners carved out of an open-world to earn boost, then liberally apply said boost in the straightaways. Payback, like the last few years’ Need for Speed games, co-opts its formula from the too-long-dead Burnout series. The basics should be familiar at this point. All such raiding involves street racing of some form or another, because that’s what a Need for Speed must be about, regardless of any seemingly unrelated MacGuffins the plot wraps around it. That indignity is apparently worth the gang getting back together and plotting life-or-death raids against “The House,” a vaguely criminal organization that wants to rig all gambling in Fortune Valley (aka “Fake Las Vegas”).
The betrayed gang members just get different jobs-as a getaway driver, mechanic, valet, and stunt driver for YouTube celebrities, respectively. Nobody dies, goes to prison, or is grievously hurt over it. It's an almost comically low-stakes setup in which one member of a gang of five street-racing heroes betrays the others over a Koenigsegg Regera (that’s a fancy sort of car). The game’s issues begin almost immediately, with the revenge plot that gives Payback its name. It's certainly the worst Need for Speed in some time, which is saying something given the series’ own flailing in the last few years. Unfortunately, even next to relatively weak Gran Turismo and Forza releases, Payback might just be the worst major racing game this year. The stars seemed downright aligned to light the way for Need for Speed’s comeback. The once-annual series had a year off to center itself and looked like it was leaning into a promising premise-a Fast and Furious-like tale of professional car thieves/street racers. Need for Speed: Payback should have been poised to flip that narrative.
Links: Origin | Official websiteDespite being an overall fantastic year for games, 2017 has brought some real lemons in the racing world. Platform: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4
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