Need For Speed Payback

Need For Speed Payback

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There’s a moment quite early in this 23rd Need For Speed title in which the writing and racing meld together, and the promise of a narrative-focused driving game bears fruit. Struggling for employment after his crew disbands, Mac the drift racer earns a crust by taking people on ‘driving experiences’ in which he throws a car around some corners while they scream. One such client is a YouTube ‘influencer’ who speaks more to his viewers than he does to Mac, demands selfies every six seconds, and appears to be cosplaying as Kid Rock. So when our passenger begins to feel quite nauseous during the drift challenge, we suddenly feel a tremendous impetus to drive quickly and aggressively. Making this oik miserable is so much more compelling than hitting the required drift score.

Unfortunately, this moment serves primarily to show the rest of the game up. All the times that our ‘hero’ Tyler tells people, “I’m the best racer in town” over the radio while driving meaningless checkpoint runs. All the times that Jess, the criminal underground connection, evades the cops or delivers suspicious packages to people via meaningless checkpoint runs. Given that The Fast And The Furious long ago cornered the market for creative endeavours about illegal street racing, Payback was always going to be an uphill struggle for Ghost Games’ writers. But as rare glimmers like that queasy drift challenge demonstrate, it’s not impossible to find personality and humour in these repetitive activities.