Need for Speed Payback deserved more respect... 

How do you rate Need for Speed Payback? It looks and plays better with Unite that's for sure! Thumbnail artwork by IgI24PL# 7071

I been saying this and people called me crazy. This game was fun even thought it had bad physics and the bad upgrade system l. The campaign was enjoyable more than nfs heat for me. The map was also pretty good. I prefer the city in payback more than nfs heat but nfs heat had more tall buildings which i liked. the roads in nfs heat also felt weird. The way they were set up felt unrealistic.

Here’s the issue I had with the payback. They improved on certain things that we wanted, but then removed everything nfs 2015 did well. The atmosphere, the engaging map, even the visuals in some parts and I feel like nfs 2015 captured the need for speed magic that we craved, and no amount of ‘upgrades’ or customisation in payback could fix that for me. The experience was forgettable at best.

Pov : this is what the fast and furious crossroads should have been

Theo: wanting to show Payback is underrated. Also Theo: Makes video of modded Payback instead of a video of unmodded Payback.

1:10 SpeedX is speedcross, that was an expansion they added to the game

There’s a few things I’d love to see. The “abandoned” car feature where it changed weekly, and where you had to find parts to rebuild a special car. I also liked the way each character had a special driving style, Jess the getaway driver, Mac the drifter and off road per and Tyler as the street racer/ drag racer.

The handling model for all the ghost games ruins the fun for me. Anyone else feel this way? Even if the car list and customization is great if you brake your car and automatically drift it's unrealistic, unfun and ruins the whole experience. Even Undercover is more fun because even though it had bad handling, it wasn't brake to drift. Don't forget that this is a MULTI-BILLION pound company, and despite technology progressing so much since 04/05 (and their resources) they're still putting out crap that is nowhere near as fun as MW 05 or U2.

Its definitely under rated. Despite the performance customisation based on speed cards were very annoying, the game was very exciting. Very good storyline and a fantastic map. I love the payback map more than that of heat and sometimes the graphics too Also i cant unsee the simiarity between the story of this and most wanted 05

Everything except the upgrade system in this game was good. Definitely underrated.

For me i love payback more than heat since heat felt like a short demo. Map in payback are so much more alive than heat ghost city. Variety of terrain- huge city,forest, canyon, deserves, mountains. Races are varies and fun in payback. No AI racer in heat are making the city dead. In end game everything is balance you can use whatever car performance cause the game balance yours with the AI. Progression in payback are so much better aka you have to races and beat the crew to beat the bosses. Whereas heat boring easy rep grinding to progress. The only way to grind money is during boring day time only Day time race is so boring due to closed race with no pedestrian, and majority of the race are circuit race. Night race is fun but pointless when max rep and unlock ultimate parts True day2night cycle. Soundtrack are huge and better in payback then heat. The only problem payback has is the lootbox style upgrades but no one complain when the crew 2 have this same upgrades mechanic. Love fighting cops in payback due to zero health aka can ram the cops to fight back. Heat only pros are more car selection (obviously since its latest game that use all payback car and bring more new), exhaust tuning and real performance upgrades. In shorts payback>heat I keep coming back to payback to enjoy the map and races

Payback is pretty barebones, if it had better multiplayer and more interesting things to do then it'll be better.

I am still surprised they didn't add Rav's Beetle as *the* unlockable off-road car in Heat, instead of the random FEM Ford we got instead. That and the starter Mustang seemed iconic enough to have been a decent choice there. Then again, this is the same EA that didn't let us unlock the cover car Polestar in Heat at launch 💀

i like how every body at release of payback called it trash and now its a gem that everybody liked somehow

I’m still playing this gem. It’s my go to when I need to relax

It really is an under-appreciated game. Sometimes I just want to take a break from sim racing and have fun in an arcade game and Payback is the game that does it for me. Simple racing without worrying about and setups besides the basic grinding and upgrading. Going through it the first time was a unique experience that reminded me of when I first played NFS Underground 1 and 2, not to mention the variety in location. Their music tracks are also spot on and suits the situation you are in (garage, cruising and racing). Personally I find this more fun than Heat and 2015.

I love how you upload this video and suddenly everyone loves payback

I would love the driving feel of Most Wanted 2005, the drifting feel of pay back and the Drag racing feel of Pro street.

Nfs: Makes a bad game Players: This game deserves more respect! Forza: Literally 1 car sounds inaccurate Players: This is the worst series ever!

payback has had the best drifting ive seen from the newer nfs games by far and i honestly liked how parts worked too you built cars like a rpg with different stats for how u wanna drive

Carbon was one of the best NFS the customisation the canyon duels was an epic game

This game is just one of the pinnacle of EA's greed, so no i don't think he deserved more attention

Payback was the first nfs game I ever played, I loved it

For me the biggest problem with the upgrade system in this game was that you could upgrade nos and brakes only with perks

It was the first need for speed since MW 2012, to not be only in online-mode most of the time, and that made me play the game until the end. I hated how Rivals and 2015 only were online, meaning that you couldn't pause it or anything or else you'd lose etc. I liked the storyline and variety Payback had. I beat the game in 2018, and it was pretty fun and cool game to play.

Great NFS video Theo!! @5:26 *Theo malding*

Story mode was way longer then all the others which I loved!!

I don't think it's a bad game but a buggy one. I loved the "Cross" easter egg in one of the missions. Good video Theo 🔥

Still did not deserve more respect than NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT 2 for PS2 RELEASED 2002. 20 years ahead of its time my guy.

Not really, I did not like the handling, the performance upgrades being a lottery was obnoxious, idk... Not my thing.

I just loved the GHOST era, i'm gonna miss it. I don't have too much hope for criterion :c

Any NFS game that has a Slot machine performance upgrade system doesn't deserve praise

I grinded the hell out of Payback and did the buy every car challenge. I do wish it had better visuals though that was a big thing I didn't like I recently got it on PC and also installed Unite as well as some card upgrade and money mods to basically fix the upgrade issues people had with it.

Tbh I feel Need For Speed 2015 deserved better.

You have to pay me back if you want me to play this.

Honestly, nfs payback is one of the games that started my love for cars. I loved the story, characters, customization, car selection, locations, playability, and everything about it tbh. It will always be one of, if not my most favorite racing games!

5/10 honestly speaking dude i hated this game

Oddly enough a friend of mine bought this again for his PS4 recently and I've been playing it. I've actually enjoyed my experience and I think it's a solid game to look back on. Guilty pleasure - the drifting was fun. The storyline was still cheesy though haha

I would like to see the side bets thing come back. It was a nice addition to the game, in my opinion.

I remember playing this all the time with my cousin back in the summer of 2019

I feel like they were trying out a lot of new things w payback and then were just missing something to bring it together. I got this game as a Christmas present and I played it all the way up to the next Christmas. Loved this game💪

It really didn't. It created a terrible base to build off of for NFS Heat, lowered the standards of online play in arcade racing games (Notice how many games that came out after had missing online components? Yeah.), has barely any replay value, has a lack of direction, very boring handling (2015's was jankier, but Payback kept the B2D many hate while making every car feel extremely easy to drive), some of the most boring story and characters in a racing game, a graphical and presentation downgrade which also carried into NFS Heat (with issues such as no shadows under car wheels, very basic menu style with black & white squares making the game look cheap IMO), and quite honestly to me cursed the franchise. After years of the franchise going in many different directions, 2015 was supposed to be the direction of the series and Payback broke that right afterwards. Regardless of expectations it's quite a bad game. Every time I try to play it again it tends to put me in a worse mood, and doesn't offer much unique compared to NFS 2015 or Heat other than the missions. It's the most disappointing AAA arcade racer I have ever played, and I wasn't hyped for the game. It's also the worst game in the entire Need for Speed series to me, with Undercover and Rivals right afterward. EDIT: I forgot about the cops and upgrade system... I can go on about this game for a long time and forget a whole part or two that contributes to making it so bad.

Id respect it more if would be called NFS: Cashback. But unfortunately, the money ive spent wont come back.

I dont know why people criticize the card system since the game practically gives you a lot for free if you are connected. And even if you arent, while the amount you obtain is noticeable lower, i still managed to complete the game without too much problems by managing well my money. I like also how cards are winning for the car you use since is like an experience system, similar to an RPG. The physics for turning or drifting could be much better, but compared to Heat or MW2012 is great.

We need more of this

yeah I remember then I love it. but I had this weird glitch where I couldn't do the cool missions

I can’t even explain how long I was waiting for a nfs payback video

I actually recently played Payback and enjoyed it greatly. EA really made bad call with the card system as that put a lot of people (myself included) off from buying the game at launch.

The reason you can’t control the runner car is beca it’s naturally set to heavy. Go to the live tuning and reduce the weight and steering response. The car will be much much easier to control the car.

Need for speed payback was like: *inside a tunnel.* Flashbang mode. Also, i got a bug once where i drove in a tunnel, it got completely dark, just how it looks like when the power goes out.

SpeedX is from the Speed Cross DLC

3:36 Yeah, the cops must have borrowed the rubberbanding algorithm from Exient's _Undercover._

with these time missions, it felt a bit like the run

nice to see some different nfs payback content

I bought NFS Payback months after it came out in 2017. It was one of my favorite NFS game until NFSU2 on my laptop.

I’m literally playing this right now and I’m like wow why isn’t no one talking about how amazing this game is the only thing I can complain about is the lack of police chase in cruise mode or races

"Need for Speed Payback deserved more respect..." No... no it doesn't. The predatory nature of its upgrade system alone is reason enough to absolutely despise the game. The car handling is okay for an arcade racer but bad for an NFS game. The story... sigh... it's just a cheap knockoff of Fast n Furious with 3 nobodies that have 0 personality and there's 0 attempt to humanize them. I don't hate the game, I even dare say I had fun at times with it, but to say it deserves more respect? Hell no. It was a shitstain on NFS's legacy, just like many of the other NFS games in the past 10 years. Hopefully the new one won't be but considering Criterion is working on it... I have very low expectations.

I agree, Payback deserved more respect... from the developers

Heat may of had cringe but if everyone doesn't admit that 2015 and payback were more cringy then something is wrong

I loved the speed cross of this game. So fun

Abandoned cars were the best I really want to see that return

Not gonna lie, What they did to unbound should've been a mix of Payback and Heat. Customization of Heat, with a mix of Heat and Payback storyline where sanctions races that leads up to the tourney your crew is trying to enter; With the unveiling of a heist that happening in the background inolving the House? Or unknown organization that is mention in Heat and plays a role in Payback. Hell maybe even URL, can be a cameo.

Just finished the game loved it

Do you actually feel that way? I think it’s just a bad NFS tbh.

As I continued the story it started to become more like Fast and Furious a little bit but the game isn’t bad

The only thing I didn’t like about payback was the lack of cops and chases during free roam. I was always waiting for one to randomly show up and start chasing me. The bait crates were a nice idea but lacking in choosing your escape route.

I'm so glad to play that game and got 100% completion in 3 months (forget the achievements)

With unite I hate the way the runner cars handle but you can cheat really easy by just getting 5 of Eddie's skyline and changing the mode to the different race types and I will take out the handling mod for the runner events other than that I will play it as packaged btw using Eddie's skyline for every race will grind you a ton of money until you get to the last stage of events but by then you already have a ton of money

Man really did forget about Speedcross.

This game was awesome. I dont know why people dislike it

I have a thrustmaster steering wheel and I went back to payback and must say the map is better than heat, the police is more aggressive, and the drops went underrated… I also like the fact that you don’t have to switch from night to day

I still love playing the story

I remember playing NFS hot pursuit in like 2016/2017, than payback in 2018, than heat in 2019, and ever since 2020 I’ve been playing the crew (2014), I’ve played the crew 2 in early 2021 but it’s not as good as the crew 1.

Been playing this game again

This cool video mister black panthaa

Theo, speedx means speedcross like speedcross dlc

One of my favorite newer nfs games

theo, there's a new level of difficulty, that's why those missions were so hard to complete!!

Pants has still yet to try the g63 runner spec house

you gotta try a cut up server on assetto corsa. shit has been popping off

1 car. A 4th gen Camaro. The only NFS that had it, was High Stakes, in 1999

the game is so underrated,its my favorite nfs game and for who hate the handling just try unite mod

do u have a mod, I only have height and camber for stance tuning and my tuning only has 3 catch up packs

I finally finished the game about a week ago

I made the Pursuit System mod which may have made it last a little longer. And I know you were the first one who played it too.

@BlackPanthaa you’re absolutely right bro💯 Payback was good in its own way🔥

Ive complete the mission but i think im gona play again.

I didn't jive with Payback because of the color grading and contrast of everything. I just felt like shadows were too dark and daytime didn't really feel like dayime. Also I hate the gross vignette that's in every NFS

Recently I started playing. It's pretty good but upgrading your car takes forever even if you have all the tokens you need to upgrade your car. But besides that, the story is way better than heats imo

100% agree with this title, I feel like I had more fun with Payback than heat, the crazy gambling plot entertained me a lot more than what heat brought. It's not prefect, far from it but I had a lot of fun with it

Seriously, minus the bull microtransaction-ridden loot box style progression it is my favorite NFS game. It hit at the right time, improved a bunch on the previous, and had my favorite soundtrack in a game since Underground 2. Chases hit a good middle ground between 2015's lethargic units and Heat's coked up chihuahuas

Front wheel animation during the drift kills the mood for me everytime :( Was is so hard to add countersteer animation ? :(

This game was GOOD, the speedcard thing is something to get used to, replay some easy drift events to get more, swap the for points and reroll untill you have the car level u want

I had no problems with this game at all until I started to see people criticizing the game and then I was like, yeah this game isn’t as good as I thought

This game got the respect it deserved, it had a decent map and some great cars, but the upgrade system was pisspoor and "updates" that cause you to lose all of your cars.

i wanted to hurt something when Theo called the Broker "Underground Soldier"

Bro i just want a little glimpse of nfs 2022!

Just so you know in the crew 2 theres a free saleen s7

Payback is one of my favourite NFS

agreed