Rating momentum
Pretty good: 7.6/10 across 32.2k ratings. Overall vibes are good; safe to add to your backlog.
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Pretty good: 7.6/10 across 32.2k ratings. Overall vibes are good; safe to add to your backlog.
Leans into Sport, Racing — a quick read on whether that fantasy matches what you usually enjoy.
20 media reviews
Need for Speed Payback is a big, competent, and confident arcade racer but it's really let down by its linear cop chases, its overwrought and insidious upgrade system, its dreadful dialogue, and its superficial action sequences. It feels fine and it looks flashy, but Payback really went all-in on its direct-to-DVD revenge tale and it was a bust for me.
Read full review ↗Dull and uninspired, with a relentless emphasis on grinding, Need for Speed Payback is neither fast nor furious.
Read full review ↗Need for Speed returns in this, a grossly unremarkable open world racer that marks another step back for the series.
Read full review ↗Enjoyable arcade handling packaged within a game that gets monotonous long before it rewards your time investment.
Read full review ↗Need For Speed Payback doesn't do many favors for itself. It's a fun racing game whose flashy story would be fine if I felt like I was building a blinged-out career worthy of it. Instead, I felt driven toward pure stats upgrades, heedless of what the car was or what it looked like.
Read full review ↗Need for Speed Payback successfully returns to its Fast and Furious roots with aplomb, but a focus on the grind and a beautiful but empty world means it ultimately falls short of greatness.
Read full review ↗This open world has plenty of racing content, but bad progression, technical problems, and throwaway storytelling make it hard to get invested
Read full review ↗Once the servers for this game inevitably go offline, with no way to obtain loot boxes, earn speed cards or trade tokens, I can't help but wonder if the casual consumer would genuinely ever have the patience to fully complete this game. Need for Speed Payback is another result of EA meddling in the concept of "games as a service" and taking an otherwise mediocre entry in the series and completely butchering it in the process to achieve this goal.
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