Need for Speed: Payback (for this terrible game)
/If you’re a fan of arcade-style racing games and thought about giving Need for Speed: Payback a try, let me save you some time: It’s not good.
At its heart, the game seems to be trying to pull off a Burnout: Paradise-like open-world schtick, but it’s done horrendously badly here. Like ‘trying to bake a cake but forgetting to turn the oven on and now it’s too late because your inlaws are almost here and you're getting yelled at by your wife because she promised amazing cake and now she looks like an idiot in front of her parents’ bad. If you enjoy that sort of cutting-edge gameplay (open-world racing - not the cake thing), you'd be better off with the wildly amazing Burnout: Paradise, or practically any other open-world racing game quite frankly.
Normally I'd give a non-commital schlock of an answer like "try it for yourself", but, honestly, don't waste your time. The two most important things in an open-world driving game - the driving and the open world - are terrible. The world is empty and sparse, and the cars handle like greasy boats. Need I go on? I will. There is little sense of speed, the 'action' is shallow and pointless, and navigating the world without constantly glancing at the minimap is about as effective as the voice acting (that is: not very).
There is an alternative to the minimap; a beacon also shows the way to the objective, like a lone star in the night. It even works when you set your own waypoint. Only problems here are that a) tall buildings frequently obfuscate the beacon, and b) driving straight toward the beacon (only the minimap offers turn-by-turn directions) can lead to dead-ends, wasting time by forcing you to drive back the way you came in search of another route. That’s counter-productive! I'd prefer to be able to play an open-world game like this without a minimap to constantly look at, but without UI elements to guide the player throughout the world, like a breadcrumb trail highlighting your way (ala Watch Dogs 2) or onscreen flashing streetsigns and car blinkers (seen in Burnout: Paradise), you're stuck staring at the minimap, or pausing and bringing the fullscreen map.
Near the beginning of this post, I implied that this is an arcade-racer, but the fluff you need to get through to even get to the open world makes it seem more like a D-grade movie with an unlimited budget, rather than a cool racing game with cars and an open world. It does the typical ‘start you off in the middle of a heist/job/event’ thing, and it's easily 30 minutes before you're even in the open world. Not that it matters, because even when that happens, you're forced to either engage in specific story events one at a time, or just drive around the empty world not doing much of anything at all. What's the point of a open world, then?
I'll give the developers some credit, though: The music was done very well. Not the soundtrack itself, mind you - it's largely generic 'action' music - but the way that it's delivered. It does this neat thing where the volume is tied to the speedometer, so the soundtrack is silent at idle, and then gets louder as you gather speed. Very well done. I haven't seen a soundtrack this dynamic in a driving game since OnRush dynamically adjusted the soundtrack in real-time depending on what your vehicle was doing moment-to-moment (flying, landing, boosting, etc). OnRush did it better, but Payback did it well.
With the few good things out of the way, let’s get back to complaining: Whoever called this a D-grade movie is right - the acting sucks. The lines are audible, yes, but unbelievably flat, like interns were delivering them while scrolling Instagram on their lunch break during their first week at the company. Game development is a concurrent process; motion capture or audio work does not take time away from other parts of the game. It certainly does take money, though. Rather than insisting on including non-gameplay cutscenes or a half-baked “revenge” narrative and messing them up anyway, that money could have gone toward making a game that’s actually fun.
Not that more money would have made for a much better game. Criterion Games was involved in making this game. You might know them from Black, the 2006 shooter that set the bar, and, a mere 2 years later, Burnout Paradise. One of two things happened here: Either the publisher (Electronic Arts, known sullier of good things) pushed for an unreasonable deadline, forcing their developers to push something out half-baked, or, equally as likely, that Criterion isn’t the same company responsible for Black and Paradise - those people are just gone. Either way, it’s a damn shame.
There’s more! Even with developmental and gameplay shortcomings, there’s a very serious technical issue to do with the driving. It isn’t a framerate issue, it’s an input lag issue. Bad news is that will never be actually fixed, because mainstream players don’t notice input lag. Good news is that there’s a simple fix. It’s a temporary fix but it’s a fix. Note that I played on the PS4 so your Xbox mileage may vary (Xbox may not even experience the same issue). On PS4, just follow this sequence: Settings > Devices > Controllers > Communication Method > Use USB Cable. Now just plug a cable into your controller and you’re good to go. The cable will improve responsiveness in any other game, too.
I started NFS: Payback looking for some fun arcade car racing action, but all I found were gokarts with sticky steering control, technical issues, and a terrible movie. Steer clear. Also I know about the puns.
